HOW TO: Get your business on Twitter
Twitter is a social micro-blogging tool that allows people and businesses to send 140 character updates to their followers. The idea of 140 characters stems from the text messaging option of 160 characters.
On the Twitter 101 website, they describe Twitter for business as ‘Every day, millions of people use Twitter to create, discover and share ideas with others. Now, people are turning to Twitter as an effective way to reach out to businesses, too. From local stores to big brands, and from brick-and-mortar to internet-based or service sector, people are finding great value in the connections they make with businesses on Twitter.’
To get your business on Twitter, you need to first create an account on twitter. To create an account, go to www.twitter.com and click on ‘Sign Up’. You will then be taken to a signup form where you fill in your business’ full names e.g. ‘ABC for Physio’ and choose your preferred username.
The username cannot hold more than 20 characters so it is important to make it simple, catchy and relevant. For example if your business is called ‘ABC 101 for Physiotherapy and Everything Else’, you can choose a shortened version such as ‘abc101forphysio’ or ‘abc101physio’.
After entering your username, the twitter system will check whether the username is available and report this to you. You can then enter your desired password and email address.
After registering your account, Twitter will send you an email to confirm your email address. Click on this email link and confirm your account.
You can then start following people that you find interesting. After registration, the Twitter system gives you a list of users to follow. You can choose from this list or skip this and find users from your email address to follow.
Another way to find people to follow is to search for their names. For example if you like the men’s health journal, you can search for them on Twitter and then click the ‘follow’ link on their profile. Remember that social networking works likes a two-way street. So for Twitter, the more people you follow, the more likely you are to find more followers.
Twitter has a website widget called ‘Join the Conversation’. This widget shows your tweets and your website visitors can follow you on Twitter. To use this widget, go to https://twitter.com/goodies/widgets and choose ‘Widgets for My Website’. Here you will see four different kinds of widgets to select from. There is the profile widget which displays your most recent tweets. The search widget shows real-time search results, this is best for live events or even just to keep your visitors up to date with the latest news and/or events around the physiotherapy world. The faves widget shows off your favourite tweets in real time. Finally, the list widget also picks your favourite tweets and shows them in a widget.
Related posts:
- HOW TO: Get your business on Facebook
- HOW TO: Get your business on LinkedIn
- Why your business needs a website
- Why your business needs to be using social media
- Why your business website needs to be mobile friendly
