Originally Published on the Postcode Anywhere Blog
When I talk with my clients about using Twitter, half of them tell me they don’t understand it, and the other half don’t see why they should bother with it.
To be honest, I can see what they mean – it’s not like the average small business owner in the UK needs to know much about Justin Bieber’s latest haircut, or what Lauren might do next week in ‘The Only Way Is Essex’.
However, there are some massively useful things that a business owner can get out of Twitter, without even having to get that involved in it.
Here’s where to start.
Step 1 – Dip Your Toes In With A Search
Just go to www.twitter.com and use the search bar to search for anything you like. If you sell angling equipment try searching for ‘fishing’, of if you run a holiday cottage in North Wales you could try searching for ‘Snowdonia’. What you will you get back is a huge amount of people’s random thoughts and opinions on that subject (as well as a few bits of commercial spam) but still:
Easiest. Market. Research. Ever.
And remember, if you are reading people’s thoughts on the things you sell, then so are your potential customers. Maybe they should be reading your messages instead…
Twitter used in this way is like a great big search engine for thoughts, opinions and experiences around your areas of interest. It’s especially useful if there’s something in the news that’s related to your business – you’ll soon be overwhelmed with information.
To avoid being overwhelmed, people on Twitter don’t read absolutely everyone’s stuff. Once they find someone who is regularly posting interesting things, whether that is the musings of a Stephen Fry or an Ashton Kutcher, or else another business somewhere in the world selling the same sort of stuff as you, you can choose to ‘follow’ them – to opt into their messages. For that though you need an account, which we’ll come onto next.
Step 2 – Register
The best way to think about Twitter is a just like an email newsletter which anyone in the world can potentially opt in to (or, to use Twitter-speak, they can choose to ‘follow’ you). You’ve only got 140 characters to play with, but you can use that to tell people about new products, special offers or just if you had an interesting person in your shop. The magic of Twitter – and the thing that makes it special – is that once you get people following your messages (your ‘followers’), then they can forward (or ‘retweet’ – shown as ‘RT’) any of your messages to their followers, and then those people can forward it to their followers. And so on and so on. It’s not just you broadcasting and hoping people listen – it’s you starting a conversation that anyone in the world can join in on. Your customers become your marketing team.
Registering with Twitter is easy (the tricky bit is actually getting people to follow you, but we’ll come to that in my next article).
To create a Twitter account, go to www.twitter.com and use the fields on the right to enter your full name, email address and a password. Then click ‘Sign Up’.
The next, and most important, thing you’ll need to do is give yourself a Twitter username. Try and find a meaningful name that you won’t mind printing on your company literature. It could be related to your company name and maybe even include a keyword related to the products you sell. Take your time with this and try a few different ideas and permutations. Eventually you’ll find something that works and you can live with for the next few years.
Then just agree to the terms and conditions, click ‘Create My Account’ and you are done.
Congratulations! Kiss goodbye to your free time (just kidding).
Step 3 – Have a Play
The first thing you should do now is click on your username at the top right of the www.twitter.com home page and select ‘Settings’ and then go to ‘Profile’. Here you can choose a nice image (it needs to be square) and enter your web address and a short description of you and your company. Your image will appear against all your messages, and your description and URL will appear when people choose to follow you.
In the next article I’ll give some tips on how to start to get followers and use Twitter meaningfully, but in the meantime search for some interesting people to follow, add your Twitter username to your website and marketing materials, try and post something at least once a day and just get used to how Twitter works and looks. It takes a bit of getting used to but if you can get the hang of it, it’s a fun way to communicate with your current customers, and a great way to promote yourself to new ones.
Part two to follow…