How to Make a Business out of Twitter

You can make a business out of twitter if you really know what Twitter is. I have met countless people who sees my twitter profile and ask how did get that huge numbers of followers? Some even tell me that ‘I don’t understand Twitter’. Truth is, Twitter is complex but you can make the best out it.

 
Why Make Business out of Twitter?

Everyday, millions of users create, share and discover ideas on Twitter. Users also find great value in connecting with businesses of all kinds on Twitter to:

 
• Share their experiences, both good and not so good
• Provide feedback on recent events or launches
• Discuss product ideas
• Learn about exclusive deals or offers
• Get customer service

 
A few of many Twitter success stories;

• Twitter users follow Dell Outlet for exclusive deals on electronics—and have driven more than $3M in
sales through Twitter
• Ice cream eaters in New York give local chain Tasti-D-Lite marketing feedback via Twitter—and sometimes get surprise dessert deliveries
• Coffee drinkers in Houston choose CoffeeGroundz for the personal relationships they’ve built on Twitter—and the shop’s
• Banks in Nigeria e.g. Guaraty Trust Bank, UBA and Zenith Bank uses Twitter to get lot of customer base.

 
How does it work?

• Twitter lets you write and read messages of up to 140 characters, or the very length of this sentence, including all punctuation and spaces.
• The messages (also known as tweets) are public, and you decide which accounts you want to receive messages from
• Twitter works equally well from your desktop or mobile phone

 
Before you dive in

• If you want to spend time listening first, you don’t need an account to search at search.twitter.com
• Try searching for your company and a few key topics in your field
• Listening can help you get a sense of how you want to engage on Twitter

 
Follow relevant accounts

• Following somebody means you’ve subscribed to their tweets.
• To find people talking about your company or topics in your field, use search.twitter.com
• When you find a good candidate, look under their picture for the Follow button
• You can also choose to interact without following an account, just send them a tweet

 
What people on Twitter likes

• People like tips, links to interesting stories and blog posts (they don’t have to be about your company), exclusive deals and a good sense of humor.
• People like the human touch and will appreciate posts with your thoughts and experiences more than you think
• They also like it when you say hi, respond to their questions, comments, praise, complaints and jokes Key terms…
• To follow somebody is to subscribe to their messages
• A tweet is an individual message
• A DM or direct message is a private message on Twitter
• RT or retweet is to repost a valuable message from somebody else on Twitter and give them credit
• Trending topics are the most-discussed terms on Twitter at any given moment

 
…and some special lingo

• @username is a public message to or about an individual on Twitter
• A hashtag—the # symbol followed by a term and included in tweets—is a way of categorizing all the posts on a topic
• Shortened URLs. To fit links into the short messages, Twitter shrinks some URLs down automatically

 
Twitter Best practices for Business

• Build relationships on Twitter
• Listen for comments about you
• Respond to comments and queries
• Ask questions
• Post links to things people would find interesting
• Retweet messages you would like to share
• Use a friendly, casual tone
• Don’t spam people
• Leverage the real-time nature of Twitter
• Ask questions, float ideas, solicit feedback – and expect fast feedback most of the time
• If you’ve launched a product, new store or new campaign, search Twitter for comments
• Respond to customer service issues quickly
• Engage in discussion on a tricky public issue your company is dealing with
• Measure the value of Twitter
• Before setting up measurement tools, focus on the quality of your engagement: do a gut-check of how things are going
• Try to analyze the quality of feedback and topics of discussion, you may find this changing over time
• Keep a tally of questions answered, customer problems resolved and positive exchanges held
• When offering deals on Twitter, use a unique coupon code or separate landing page

Originally posted 2013-09-24 08:00:48.