How to use Twitter for your business

A short introduction

Ana Dinescuhttp://de.linkedin.com/in/anadinescu

Social Media for Business UseHere there are only a couple of questions we have

to try asking before entering our topic.

How important is social media for making business today?

- The main key-words for defining social media for business are:

Interaction – Visibility – Awareness – Credibility - Opportunity

Can you stay away of the mainstream without missing important businessconnections?

- The choice to enter or not the social media landscape and networking is only yours,up to the profile and targets of your project(s).

- But getting involved will naturally bring you significant advantages in terms ofpersonal and professional branding

Social Media for Business Use

Is social media enough in order to have a successful business?

- Before networking, you have to be aware that the main object of your actionsis to make yourself known to a wider audience.

- You have to offer more than an online presence – you need to provide contentand to be able to enter the global conversation

- Social media is a tool for making your success known and exploring newopportunities. Don’t expect to obtain easy and ready-made results out of yournetworking without doing nothing!

What do you need for making social media an useful tool for your business?

- A short-, medium- and long term plan:

What are your business expectations? What do you want to communicate? Towhom do you want to communicate? How this communication fits your reallifeprofile?

- You need to be coherent with your public – offline – image, to be authentic andreliable.

What is Twitter

A social micro-blogging free platform allowing you to share links and ideas withpeople across the world in the limit of 140-character “tweets”.

• You have the option of sending: links, audio and video files, announcements, shortobservations.

• For big links, for fitting the 140-character requirement, you have the option of usingshorter versions via: http://tinyurl.com, http://is.gd, http://ow.ly, http://bit.ly

A very rapid way of communication, with a high possibility to reach a veryspecific audience.

• Creating an ID is easy – all you need is an e-mail address. Then chose an ID –recommendable a short name duplicating your name or the name of your company,and write a very short bio – eventually a link to your website(s) or blog(s).

• The “followers” option allows you to identify people from the industry – all overthe world, co-workers, professional friends and connections.

• You have the choice of making your tweet “public” or “private”. In this case, thepotential followers will send you a request for being included.

• Became a follower of the people following you. In this way you show interest andopenness for dialogue.

What is Twitter

An opportunity for networking and open dialogue

• Hashtag – # + name of your business or interest- is allowing you to find rapidlydiscussions and individuals touching your domain of interest.

• For identifying the trends of the day, follow @hashtags and the service will followyou automatically

• You have the option of sending Direct Messages (DM) – still keeping the limit of140-character - but only to those people who are following you.

• Via http://tweetchat.com you could chat with people of interest– enter yourTwitter username and password – enter a # followed of your area and interestand be part of the conversation.

• Use http://search.twitter.com – for finding friends, celebrities or organizations tofollow

• Re Tweet (RT) interesting links and information to your followers. At theRetweets section you will find the “Retweets by Others”, “Retweets by you” and“Your Tweets, Retweeted”.

• Reply to people of your area of interest by using @ followed by the name of theperson or individuality you want to address.

Twitter for BusinessQuestions

After entering a bit the main functioning of the Twitter, it is time again to askyourself: What place for my business ?

- Try to think again and again: What are your short-,medium-and long-term interests? What do you want toachieve by entering Twitter?

- How much time do you dispose for dedicating to yoursocial networking?

- How do you can connect your social media presence –blogging, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, local socialnetworking etc. – to Twitter?

- How reliable is the information you are providing onTwitter?

Twitter for BusinessPossible answers

• Twitter is an useful platform for sharing rapidly information about yourself and your business• Here there are a couple of possible information you can tweet about:Information published on your website;Projects you are involved in;The philosophy of your company;Thoughts about your company or your domain of interest;Partnership you achieved;Ideas you are interested to discuss;Press releases, articles about you, newsletters of your company;Articles or topics from the industry you want to open a conversation about;Articles or interventions made by you;Webinars, conferences, events you attended and/or you intend to organizeJob postings;Direct professional experiences• Be aware: Being on Twitter is never enough. Do not expect miracles! Your online

presence should be supported by your activity and your professional integrity. IF youprovide faked and unreliable information, it will be easier to be exposed online, asother people who know you – directly or via online – will be completely free to testifyagainst.

Twitter for Business - SWOT

• As for any other aspects of your business, a pondered analysis of your interests and plans isrequired.

• The easiest is a short SWOT analysis, which will map easily the benchmarks of your activeinvolvement in the social media.

• Be realistic: There will not be 100% advantages or 100% disadvantages.• In the same time, you have to understand that your online presence is only the interface of

your daily activity. Mostly in the case of Twitter, what you will share with your followers areshort ideas about what you’ve achieved, are preoccupied by.

And, before starting the complex business analysis, a very important question to beanswered: How much you have to share your private agenda with your list of followers?

After a short exploration of Twitter, it will be easy to realize that many people are using thisplatform are sharing various very personal thoughts about themselves. For your businessinterests, your time is always limited, and the same for your potential followers. It is true thatonline you must be as “authentic” than in your daily life. But: think twice before posting a linkor a tweet for not annoying your audience and overloading them with very personalconsiderations about you and your program. Keep always a polite and civilized language, avoidpersonal, gender, racist and any other discriminatory references. Try as much as possible toconnect your tweets to your daily life.

For example: you could post an observation about a soccer game you can’t wait to watch, but in avery “diplomatic” way as in this case:

“Ready for the soccer game, at the end of a fully day”.

Twitter for Business – Strong Points

• Reaching a wider audience from any point of the Globe, active in your area ofinterest

• Visibility

• Your Twitter account could concentrate all the other social media and real lifeactivities – sharing the links with posts from your blog or from the website ofyour company, updating your successes and media coverage in local and/orinternational media

• You are an active member of global conversations about your industry

• Rapid and simple way to share links and information, independently of yourlocation, in any moment of the day

Twitter for Business - Opportunities

• Developing new projects, partnerships and new business

• Finding solutions to your problems via online conversations

• Increase your profile and your leadership potential

• Sharing up-to-date information about the industry

• New career possibilities

Twitter for Business – Weak Points

• Time consuming . A possible solution will be to hire a company or to create anew team dealing with updating your social media accounts. In this case, thereare new budgetary challenges to be taken into account.

• Not all the connections made online could be reliable and serious enough forcontinuing a sustained partnership in real life.

• Too many first side information delivered to the media.

• Low or lack of any kind of feedback.

• Lot of time wasted with unreliable and impossible to check information.

Twitter for Business - Threats

• Your ideas might be stolen and used by your competitors.

• Wasting your resources – instead of looking for a new project, you have tothink about how and what to tweet.

• Exposure to various influences, complicating the decision-making process.Instead of looking to your own solutions, fit to your special case, you will betempted to wait for other people’s ideas.

• Attacks of any kind from the part of your competitors.

• Hacking, spamming, irrelevant connections.

Final Conclusions

• Twitter, as the phenomenon of social media in itself, is permanently and rapidlyexpanding and developing.

• But, independently of these changes, your aims and objectives are more or less thesame: you are looking to achieve profits, to continue working to your projects, tocover the needs of your customers, to maintain your company at a certainsustainable level, against troubling economic waters.

• Social media requires patience and wisdom. As in your business, you – togetherwith the members of your team - are the one and only to decide the strategic stepsand the most appropriate changes for achieving reliable results.

• Plan and organize your social media life with the same care as devoted to yourbusiness.

• Include social media activities in your plans, but as a complementary part,supporting your general efforts.

• Make, for example, a detailed plan of subjects, topics and ideas to be launchedon Twitter during one week or one month. In this way, you avoid being mostlya “trend setter” and you will gain a voice in the global 2.0 concert.

Final Conclusions

• Be authentic, real and trustworthy. Be yourself!

• Stop focusing mostly on yourself, trying to create visibility for your team and people involved in your projects.

• Don’t be aggressive or impolite. Keep in mind the various cultural differences and sensibilities.

• Be careful in choosing your words. If you don’t communicate in your mother tongue, use a correct grammar and avoid misspellings.

• Answer and be interactive! If you are launching a discussion, be able to give a feed-back and do not let your messages unanswered more than 24 hours.

• Keep yourself informed on the trends and the industry.

• Information is power!

Recommended Links

• http://twittonary.com – a smalldictionary of various Twitter-relatedwords

• www.hashtags.org – informationpertaining to tags, users, trends

• www.whoshouldfollow.com – most-followed on Twitter

• http://twitpic.com – for postingpictures

• http://twitalyzer.com – measuringyour activity and influence

• http://tweetwaster.com – measuringthe time you spend on Twitter

• http://twitblogs.com – allows you theopportunity to post more than 140-character information

• http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/twitter - news and informationabout Twitter from The Guardianwebsite

• http://twitterlocal.net - identify localbusiness

• http://tweetmeme.com – find thehottest links on Twitter

• http://beta.twittervision.com –localize tweets across the world

• http://www.twerpscam.com/en -how to avoid scams

Thank you!

Looking forward for your comments and impressions!