A guide to social media for business: Twitter

Twitter is one of the world’s most popular social networks with nearly 300 million active users every month. It’s also one of the most mobile, with 80% of its users using mobile version of its site, giving it a fast-moving and exciting feel. Twitter can be extremely valuable following these tips and with a good website behind you, it should be easy enough for your business to vastly improve web presence. A good website for Twitter, by the way, will need to be a certain type: responsive websites. Responsive websites allow users of all sorts of different devices to access your site easily - Google prefers responsive websites too.
So, how do you get success on Twitter?

Getting started on Twitter

It’s easy to create a Twitter account, and the site will guide you through creating your profile. Make sure you have a catchy username (or your company name so you’re easier to find in the current Twitter search). A Twitter username would be something like @myusername. Although this can be changed at a later date, it’s a good idea to be creative and original with it in the first place. You can customise the background and colour scheme of your Twitter profile, so theme that to your company image as much as you can.
Also make sure your profile picture represents your business well, and add details such as your business summary and website address to your profile. You may like to offer an incentive for your first followers, maybe utilising the discount code option in your eCommerce website features.

How to tweet

Twitter is fairly unique in having a very short character limit (currently 140 characters). This is what keeps posts on the site punchy and to the point. For this reason, you should always use a link shortener in your posts. aprompt’s CMS Websites, Blogs and eCommerce websites come with Twitter integration built in meaning that it’s easy to Tweet directly from within your website and Blog and the page link will automatically shorten and be included in your Tweet. Twitter is a great way to share links, around your website and to increase your PR

It’s important to also create other interesting content for people to be able to share. Short updates on what your company is doing are great and give a personal feel to the connection between you and the client reading your feed. Whilst less crucial than on Facebook, images are still a great way to put across ideas (particularly those that can’t be expressed in 140 characters).

Online Networking

Getting found on Twitter requires followers, and people who retweet. Because of the nature of Twitter, it can be really useful for you to keep up to date with others in your industry far more than other social networks. Following these people often means they’ll follow you and you can retweet any content from them that you think will interest your clients. They’ll often return the favour, which is great for you.
Once you have a following on Twitter, customers will often begin to respond to you. Use this as an opportunity to build a good rapport with current and potential customers.

Summary

The most important points to remember as a guide to using Twitter:

  • Twitter is all about being fast and exciting, make sure your content stands out.
  • Twitter is great for keeping in touch with your customers and industry. Post often, and take interest in replies and follows.
  • Twitter highlights the importance of getting business websites right. A responsive website is essential - talk to us for more on how to get a responsive website.

Contact aprompt website designers in Wiltshire today. 

Written By Kirsty Paget