How to Get the Most from Twitter Building a Rewarding Business & Personal Network
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
How to get the most from Twitter Building a rewarding business & personal network Steve Phillip – Director Linked2Success ©Linked2Success Limited Contents Page Why Twitter 3 Where do you start? 4 Planning your strategy 5 Target your market 6 Personal or business profile? 7 Twitter glossary 8 Creating your Twitter profile 9 Twitter’s Home page 10 The @Connect page - who’s interacting with you? 11 The #Discover page –find people & tweets 12 Your Twitter strategy 13 Early Twitter actions 14 Building your followers 15 How to tweet 16 Using Twitter lists to build relationships 17 How to shorten website URL links 18 Using Advanced search to useful people & tweets 19 Managing your social media time 20 Actions for networking & relationship building 21 Summary & other Linked2Success services 22 2 Why Twitter? At the time of writing, over 500 million tweets are sent from Twitter by 200 million active users worldwide - the UK alone has almost 24 million users. Possibly the most misunderstood of all the social media sites, its uses stretch well beyond celebrity chit chat & people telling others what they’ve had for lunch. In its simplest form Twitter allows you to; build business relationships; enter into conversation, on almost any topic around the world, network and have fun, all from one platform. Understanding how you get the most from Twitter, at a level that is relevant to you, is of course the challenge. Like any other social media, Twitter is simply a tool - it will produce results for your business but your best outcomes will be achieved when using this platform hand in hand with other online & offline marketing approaches. This e-reference guide is designed to support Linked2Success training programmes, where we share our combined expertise of more than 9 years, engaging with LinkedIn & social media as business users. To create a Twitter account visit http://www.twitter.com. You may receive an authentication message by email to confirm your account set up. If I can be of personal help with your LinkedIn queries, please do contact me e: [email protected] 3 Where do you start? Ok, let’s be clear; unless you’re going to get serious about using Twitter as part of your business development strategy then don’t expect it to do anything miraculous for your business. You’re going to need a plan and you’re going to need to apply some time – more in the early stages – to get results from Twitter. Your starting point has to be understanding of why you chose to sign up to Twitter in the first place; peer pressure, curiosity, you need to generate more new or repeat business? Once you know clearly why you signed up, don’t attempt to plan your Twitter strategy until you’ve spent some time finding your way around the site. The quickest way to understand Twitter is to look at what some of your colleagues, peers, competitors are doing; what do their profiles look like, what are they tweeting, are they commenting on other’s tweets, sharing useful content, are you impressed with how they’re marketing themselves or could you do significantly better? Do your research then move to the next step..... set some goals. 4 Plan your strategy One of the most important considerations when using Social Media is measuring the results against your objectives. Before you can measure results, you need to know what your objectives are and with Twitter they could be numerous and varied. Here are some examples; 1. Generating new leads - your Twitter strategy will be focused on following targeted prospects that are also on Twitter and directing them, via your tweets, to another social media or website landing page, where you will have useful information waiting for them. Perhaps you have an offer which will pull contacts into your email lists, etc. This could include specifically targeted campaigns. 2. Your objective might be to improve customer service - to be able to communicate better with your customers, business partners, suppliers and interact with them regularly to build stronger relationships or share new product/service ideas. You could use Twitter to set up a listening strategy (more about this later) and respond to tweets about your services or your industry. 3. Perhaps you would like to position yourself as an expert - the go to person in your industry? To increase your profile or brand presence, you will want to ensure you have a professionally completed Twitter profile (maybe a personal & a business profile – more about this later) showcasing your products & services. You will also want to share thought leadership in relevant forums and engage with your target audience. 4. You may simply want to network or engage with others on Twitter. 5 Target your market accurately Before using Twitter, for any of the reasons I just highlighted, it's important that you consider some key questions about the people you want to connect with: 1. What industry sector are they in? 2. Which specific companies do they work for? 3. What is the job title of the key decision makers? 4. Where are these contacts located geographically? So, with these considerations in mind, what are your top 3 objectives for using Twitter? List your 3 main objectives 1.___________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ 2.___________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ 3.___________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ How much time are you prepared to commit (realistically) to using Twitter? Hours per week________ 6 Personal profile, business profile or both? When we first started using Twitter, we encountered a problem. At the time there were 2 of us posting content from our main business profile @linked2success and some tweets were business related, others more personal. When it came to the personal Twitter account, none of our followers knew which one of us personally was tweeting – which would create confusion. Then we decided to create 2 types of profiles, one predominantly for business @linked2success & individual accounts such as @linked2steve etc, where we could be ourselves. This strategy will be explained in more depth later. Now, let’s take a look at how you create a professional Twitter profile First go to the top right hand corner of your profile and using the drop down menu next to the cog, select ‘Edit profile’ Top tips: The search bar at the top right of this page allows you to enter key words or hashtag words to follow people of interest or relevant topics or news. The quill icon in the top right corner is one of two places you can create a tweet from; the other is from the Home page. 7 Your Twitter Glossary When joining Twitter for the first time, just grasping the language can be somewhat of a challenge. However, once you understand some of the basic terms, you’ll soon be hash tagging with the best of them. The following is a list of the more common terms used by users on Twitter and the ones you will want to become familiar with. NB: As of October 2013, you can now alter your own settings to allow anyone to Direct Message you, even if you have not chosen to follow them. We will take a closer look at some of these terms in more depth later in this book. 8 Creating your Twitter profile A Twitter profile is pretty simple. Firstly, you can add 2 photos: Your ‘Photo’ is your smaller profile photo – this will appear as an inset in your main header image and will also be what others see at the beginning of every tweet you post. The ‘Header’ photo is the larger image now seen on all new Twitter profiles (Follow Twitter’s guidelines for images sizes). Top tips: Use images that represent your brand well Include your real business or personal name, website & location so you are found easily in Twitter searches. You are limited to 160 characters for your Biog - make sue you include key words to increase visibility when others are searching for your services on Twitter. Also clearly explain how you can be of help to your target audience and try and get across some personality if at all possible – Remember Twitter is much more social than LinkedIn when it comes to building relationships. You could consider using the ‘Design’ tab to create a bespoke background for your Twitter page if you prefer, although this is not crucial – you can select from Twitter’s own templates or add an image of your own. NB: Make sure you save any changes before leaving the page. 9 Twitter’s home page The home page is your default landing page, you can access your profile page by clicking your name at the top left of this page. Under your name you can see how many tweets you’ve sent, how many people you’re following & who’s following you – just click on them to see a list of each. From this page you can also compose a tweet (choose to add a photo or your location when you click in the compose box ). You can also type/paste a web link http://... into your tweet, which becomes clickable when others view it but will add to the total number of characters used. Top tip: You have just 140 characters per tweet – adding photos and web links will reduce the number of available characters so try to get your message across as concisely as possible. All tweets on this page are from people you are following Twitter suggests people you might like to follow based on your Twitter activity, such as who you choose to follow. Trends are the most popular discussions currently on Twitter.