1. To follow or not to follow?
Building your network of people will rely on following people and having them follow you. It's been compared to a cocktail party where you know one person and they introduce you to all their friends. Some gurus will suggest following at least 100 other Twitterers as a start in the hope that some of them will follow you. Choose relevant Twitterers so you can learn about them and what they are talking about. So for example, if you sell hotdogs you might follow a tomato ketchup company to get relevant tweets about that industry and strike up an alliance. Remember you need to be able to monitor the people you follow - so don't follow too many!
If someone is following you, it's polite to have a look at who they are and to follow them if it is relevant, but don't feel obliged to follow them in return.
There's a Twittiquette behind your followers:following ratio. If you have 100s of people you are following and zero following you, you are most probably a spammer! Try and keep it an equal ratio.
2. Include some nifty gizmos Twitter can be used to display weblinks. As Twitter only lets you have 160 characters, shorten web addresses by using
www.tinyurl.com. Weblinks can also be used to link to your latest article in full.
You can also feature your Tweets on your website by using their widget
http://twitter.com/widgets. Not only will this display your Tweets to the world, but it should also refresh the content on your website and encourage better SEO.
Goodies on your Twitter page will keep people coming back for more. Remember what you give away comes back to you tenfold.
3. Keep it personal (-ish)Twitter is a social networking tool, not a sales pitch! The idea behind it is to build up your personal relationships with people so they see you as an expert in your field, a friendly approachable person to ask advice from and their first choice supplier.
Tweeting constantly about your products/prices/special deals is seen as spamming. Instead aim to build up your Tweets as a reference guide to what you do, who your are and how you conduct business.
4. Search Twitter for new clients
www.search.twitter.com - type in your keywords and off you go. You can directly contact the poster, offering them advice or a link to your site.
5. Tweet Little and OftenIt kind of goes without saying - you have 160 characters to convey a lot about your company. So make sure you post little and often. This spreads your Tweets across a wider range of people making sure they don't "clump" together on your followers' pages.
Avoid writing screeds of text, that's what a blog is for. Your Twitter account should simply be the taster which draws in great customers.
An excellent resource for explaining how Twitter works and what your input achieves is available here:
www.twitalyzer.com - I warn you, it's addictive!
Happy Tweeting! For more advice on setting up your Social Networking contact our Social Media Guru Emma on emma@virtuallysorted.com
