• How-to

Twitter, if used correctly, can be an amazing tool through which you can reach out to your existing and potential customers. Here’s how to go about it…

Set it up
Log on to www.twitter.com. Create an account. Use your company name without any dots or hyphens. Link your Twitter profile back to the main company website. Having a contact e-mail or a contact phone number on your Twitter profile page is a good idea.

Build followers
The more people who follow you on Twitter, the more influence and networking opportunities you have. Here are some ideas to get others to follow you:
Follow others. Use third party tools like twellow or socialwhois. Look for people with similar interests and follow them. Get into conversations with them. Help them if possible. Look for trend topics and if it’s of your interest be a part of it.
Post it. Post some good tweets right before following someone else. Give value for people who are interested in following you.
ID check. Complete your one-line bio and include a URL in the More Info URL section of your profile. Check for spelling mistakes and make sure it’s the right ID.
Blog-wise. Add your Twitter feed to your blog or to other social media profiles. This way you can loop everything. Since you already have followers over there, let them know about your Twitter ID.

Build credibility
You can now start using Twitter’s many services to do the following tasks:
Introduce your company, write about your company’s services, list your products and also share your vision
Share insights and opinion on the product or service domain that you are in
Reply to common customer questions
Pass on links to interesting posts in that space
Promote conferences where your company member is a guest speaker
Share good quality content that is relevant to your customers’ needs
Share information that they might be interested in
Offer special discounts to customers who come to your through Twitter
Tweet links to Slideshare presentations or videos of product demos
You can request writers for your magazine
Hold contests
If you have a restaurant or an eatery, ask for volunteers to test new recipes
Conduct Twitter polls to quiz consumer opinion
Find new employees. This is gaining quite a lot of popularity now.

Twitter helps you build relationships and maintain them. Do more than just promoting your own agenda. Be respectful.

Additional tools
Twitxr: You can upload photos through this application.
Twtqpon: This application can be used to offer coupons to customers through Twitter.
Tweetdeck: This application operates on your desktop. You can not only tweet, reply, direct message, and retweet, but create groups of followers, shorten URLs, send pictures, and execute customized searches.
Twitt(url)y: It tracks and ranks URL shared on Twitter by popularity. A quick glance at a Twitt(url)y list will help you track trends, popular products and reports.
Twellow: It calls itself the Twitter Yellow Pages. Twellow lets you search Twitter users by category or keyword, helping you find networking contacts and competitors.

PRATHIBHA SASTRY runs Uncut Donut, a social media management company along with two business associates. www.uncutdonut.com was launched in late 2009.

©Entrepreneur August 2010

Tags:
How-to, market, Twitter