Twitter And Your Business

Is

TWITTER RIGHT FOR

YOUR BUSINESS?Stephanie Jacques

http://www.twitter.com/KeeneNHRealtor

What is TWITTER?

• Microblog• 140 characters or less• Accessible by mobile device or desktop• A social network• A means for communicating to many people

at once• Free and available to anyone

Who uses TWITTER?

• People of all ages• Businesses: newspapers, film, actors, musicians,

Realtors, teenagers, entrepreneurs, sales’ people, friends/family, insurance industry, groups, clubs, communities, organizations, etc.

Do you Tweet?

• Have account?• Tweet with mobile device? VS. Desktop?• Use it for business?

Why use TWITTER?• Broadcast quick news announcements to many people

at once.• Assisting the spread of printed news through feeds• To get help, opinion, advice, insight from many-

quickly.• To meet new people and drive traffic to your profiles

online, to your website, to your blog• To be involved in real time conversations and

discussions• To become accessible to a wider pool of potential

consumers

How do people use TWITTER?

• Set up profile when first registering• Add photo• Select a handle with keywords to help lead

people to you or to help identify what you’re about

• Post regularly but don’t be obnoxious• Respond to people’s posts• Ask questions and answer questions• Don’t be afraid to make mistakes

Is TWITTER safe?• If you have a website, a white pages or yellow pages listing,

or operate your business in public this is very similar• Think about the varied audience you could be reaching and

post accordingly. • Block followers who you don’t feel comfortable with.• Don’t post that you are someplace alone or that you are

leaving your home for vacation.• Don’t include your home address.• Don’t post names of people who don’t want to be or

shouldn’t be bothered by the general public.• Don’t post negative things about people or businesses, they

will find out and you could get in trouble.• Don’t complain.

TWITTER Topics

• Create your own micro-press releases, share history• Share your vision/mission• Reveal industry insights• Recognize employees, clients or vendors (etc.)• Profile customer successes, use headline in Tweet and

link to a blog story, video or website• Ask questions of the future, survey, look for feedback

TWITTER Tips

• Find people you know (use a tool to find friends on other networks like AOL, Yahoo, Gmail, etc.)

• Find local people (do Twitter Search/Advanced Search Option or use TwellowHood or Localtweeps)

• Get a desktop (or mobile for iphone) client, (use Tweetdeck or Seesmic

• Get help and additional ideas from a Twitter application directory (Twitdom)

• Check out websites or Google Twitter questions (Mashable is a good resource for anything Twitter)

What’s all this jargon?

• d keenenhrealtor – direct message to this user, public will not see it

• #hannahgrimes – hashtag forms groups• @keenenhrealtor – Replies to a Twitterer.

They and their followers are able to see it• RT @keenenhrealtor : congrats to my 1st x

buyers on this am’s closing! Yay (congrats)

PEEPS = people

Tweeter = User of Twitter (or Twitterer)

Tweeps – Posts on Twitter by Twitterers

Tweeple – Twitter users

Tweeter = User of Twitter (or Twitterer)

TweetIn = When group of Twitterers agree to get together at

set time to twitter

Twellow = Twitter Yellow Pages

Twoogle = Twitter as human Google, post question, get near-

instantaneous results

Tweetup = in-person meet up of Twitter members

Twitpic = Tool that lets you share photos on Twitter. Post from

iphone or through the site itself

Other Resources:• Snaptweet – snap mobile photo, upload to flickr.com, post it

to twitter stream through snaptweet• Pingtwitter – ping twitter account from your blog so it auto

updates when you post a blog• Tweetdeck – split main feed (all tweets) into groups or

topics/columns allowing broader overview of tweets (a Tweetfeed too)

• Mashable – everything twitter, very informative• www.Search.twitter.com – search for people or topics using

key words• www.hashtag.org – find/form groups using “ #keyword ”