We’ve spent a lot of time this month discussing the importance of social media. This week we’re narrowing our focus to talk about one of the web’s most popular social media sites, Twitter. We’ve put together an easy five-step plan to get your business up and running on Twitter.
1. Sign Up
- Your first step is the easiest–go to twitter.com and sign up for an account!
- Use an email address you check often and select a password that is DIFFERENT from your email password.
2. Choose your Twitter handle
- Keep it simple and use your business name where possible.
- If it’s too long or already taken, get as close as you can to the business name while avoiding dashes and underscores that can confuse people.
3. Follow people
- Following someone isn’t as creepy as it sounds. It just means that those people’s posted updates will appear in your news feed.
- You can add family and friends, but also follow other businesses and potential clients in the area.
- If someone follows you, it’s customary to follow them back as a courtesy (provided that they’re not a spammer, and you can be sure those do exist on Twitter. No worries though, if you follow someone and get sick of their tweets, you can always unfollow them at any time!).
4. Start tweeting
- Tweeting is simple and easy–don’t over-think it. All you have to do is write a sentence, how hard is that?
- The key to tweeting is balance–alternate between business related posts about specials, events and other activities going on at your business and some more informal posts. For example, you can comment on the weather, a local event you recently attended, a TV show you like, anything that your customers might connect with.
5. Let people know you’re on Twitter!
- Don’t overlook this step! Once you’ve signed up for Twitter, you need to get with us so we can put a Twitter icon and link on your website to let people know that you’ve got a Twitter account so they can follow you.