Create a Twitter Profile
Once you have setup your Twitter.com account, it is critical that you spend some time to personalize your profile. Most businesses who do not do this will be perceived as spammers when they ask Twitter users to follow them.
When it comes to setting up a personalized profile on Twitter, there’s not much to do. All you have to do is select a pre-existing background (or create a customized one), select your avatar thumbnail photo, and then fill in some short “bio” and “about me” information.
Finally, remember to add the URL of your business; and to create a bio section that briefly explains 1) what your business does; and 2) what the purpose of this Twitter profile is (i.e. to give away free stuff, to hold contests, or to provide free information).
Track Your Twitter Results
As with any marketing campaign, you should monitor your Twitter promotional campaigns by tracking the results. One free way to do this is to use http://search.twitter.com/ to find all instances of people talking about you or your business on Twitter.
Another tool you can use is called Tweet Beep: http://tweetbeep.com/. This service will automatically email you whenever something about you or your business is Tweeted.
Finally, you can check your website’s analytics/traffic statistics program to determine how much traffic you have received from Twitter. If you don’t currently have a good traffic statistics program, you can get one for free from here: http://www.statcounter.com/.
Using the Twitter Search Engine
Another approach you can take is to use the Twitter search engine to find Tweets related to your business’s niche. This is an easy way to locate people who might be interested in your products or services.
Initially, a lot of people you add may opt not to follow you; however, over time, if you accumulate 50 new followers each day, you’ll gain momentum. If you make interesting tweets, offer coupons, or tweet vital information, you might get re-tweeted, expanding your reach and possibly bringing in new followers.
Use Twitter to Conduct Market Research
Unfortunately, marketers often approach social media with the wrong attitude. Marketers often miss the great opportunities that Twitter presents—such as doing market research. In the past, it was very hard to observe your customers when they talked casually about your products or about competing products; however, this is exactly what you can do with Twitter.
Link Your Twitter and Facebook Accounts
One way to save some time while maintaining your presence on both Facebook and Twitter is to link the two accounts. This will allow you to have Facebook automatically update your status using your Tweets.
Doing this is pretty simple; and can save you the hassle of moving between the two accounts and re-posting the same messages multiple times. If this sounds like a good idea to you, go to the following URL http://apps.facebook.com/twitter/.
Once you’re there, all you have to do is click the button to allow Twitter to post your Tweets to your Facebook account. After that, your Tweets will automatically be posted to your Facebook account.
Encourage Others to Promote Your Twitter Account
You can use contests and other incentives to get people to become a “fan” or a follower. But even if you don’t want to go that far, there are much simpler things that you can do to draw in new members of your network.
For starts, you can encourage people to tell others about your fan page or Twitter account. This is as simple as including 2-3 lines of text on your profile that explicitly state that visitors should tell friends and family about your profile if they find it useful.
Integrate Your Twitter Feed with Your Homepage
If you want to make your site more dynamic, you may want to consider adding a scrolling Twitter feed. In brief, this is basically just a script that cycles through all of your tweets, displaying them in sequential order in a nice-looking frame.
This is always a nice touch to add to your site. It will not only improve the appearance of your site, but it will also create the feeling of dynamicity. Visitors will enjoy reading it; and may choose to follow the feed to your Twitter profile, where they can become a follower.
To create such a feed, all you have to do is use a widget like this: http://www.widgetbox.com/widget/twidget. It will generate code that you can simply copy-and-paste into your site editor.
Promote New Products Using Twitter
One useful way in which you can employ Twitter is to promote new products. It’s important to note that the bulk of your tweets should be high-quality, free information about your niche; however, when you have a new product available, you should also tweet to let people know about the upcoming launch.
Using Twitter to Promote a Firesale
In addition to promoting your new products through Twitter, you can also use it to promote a firesale. You can do this by bundling together a bunch of your products, reducing the price drastically, and then creating a salespage. You can then tweet about it to let your followers know that you are offering a one-time steep discount.
Using Twitter to Grow Your Email List
You can use your email list to grow your Twitter follower list. However, you can also do the reverse: you can use Twitter to grow your email list. You can then use this list to sell products.
If you don’t already have a mailing list, that’s a good place to start. Setup an autoresponder using www.aweber.com, create an introduction mailing series that includes several product pitches, and then begin capturing subscribers.
Once you have setup your autoresponder, you can announce this on Twitter, so that your followers know that they can get free, useful content through a free subscription.
Use Twitter to Promote Recent Updates to Your Website
Another good use of Twitter is to promote recent updates to your website. In this case, you don’t have to say anything blatantly commercial. Instead, you can simply point out that your site has been updated; and mention that followers should check it out and let you know what they think.
Create a “Tweet This” Button
Another thing you may want to consider doing is adding a “tweet this” button to your blog posts. This will make it easier for visitors to promote your site to their friends and family members, which will ultimately benefit you.
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