5 Steps to Getting Your Business on Twitter

For beginners, Twitter is a tool that allows people to connect online through 140 characters of information. Why is Twitter important to businesses? Twitter allows you to connect with your customers and business associates quickly and easily. Twitter is a free resource that any business can setup and is an excellent way to begin your social media marketing efforts (if you haven’t already).

To view a quick video on how Twitter works please visit: YouTube - Twitter in Plain English.

1. Plan Your Twitter Time

Will You Have Time to “Tweet”? You should ensure that you plan for a small period of time each day to devote to Twitter. There are also tools out there that will schedule your tweets for a future time such as FutureTweets, TwitMessenger, and TweetLater.

2. Brand Yourself

Twitter allows you to upload a profile photo. This photo should be your business logo or a photo of yourself if you are the face of your business. You can also customize your profile page with colors and background. These are ways to help brand yourself.

3. Find People to Follow

You need to get started by “following” others on Twitter. Use the search feature to find other business contacts and people in your industry to start following. On their profile pages, just click "Follow" to begin following them. These people may even follow you back. You can follow us here.

4. Tweet Useful & Interesting Information

Remember this is your business account, so don’t Tweet about being stuck in traffic on the way to work. You need to tweet new and interesting information that the people following you would like to hear.

5. Get People to Follow You

The power of your Twitter presence depends on how many followers you have. This takes time. You can gain followers by them searching for you, the items you tweet about, or going to your Twitter page. Your Twitter page address is “www.twitter.com/yourusername”. It is always good practice to include this address in your email signature and also your business’s homepage.

So how do you get started? Well it’s easy, just go to http://www.twitter.com/ and click “Get Started – Join!”.