The 3-minute guide to Twitter for B2Bs
Twitter is a “micro-blogging” service – it allows you to broadcast up to 140-character “tweets” to your “followers’ and share links and information. Common Twitter terms/ use:
* hashtags – used to ‘tag’ information. You can click on a hashtag to find all the “tweets” with that label.
* retweet (RT) – this is a way of acknowledging copyright, that you’re reproducing someone else’s information. The formula is to use the abbreviation RT followed by the @ symbol to identify the person or people who first “tweeted” the message. E.g. RT@onefish_ic: Yes, that’s right. * @[name] – this means you can reply directly to that person and it will show on their page. It’s also how you identify someone who has talked to you or given you a good idea.
What to say
* Anything interesting you’re doing (a 1-sentence – be succinct) or an interesting link you’ve found (you can use a website like www.tinyurl.com to shorten the link if the link is above the 140 character limit.)
* Reply to others using the @ symbol.
* The general rule is, no more than 1/10 tweets should be self-promoting yourself or your website. It’s all about sharing interesting things and adding value to others, and starting conversations.
A nice way to “play” with it is to go online and have a look around. Use the “search” bar on the side to search for key words, and then log in as yourself and “follow” people who you think have interesting Twitter feeds, or share interesting articles. This means that when you log in, their Twitter feeds would show up on your page, but are only visible to you inside the log-in. So it’s a good way to keep track of industry news, for example.
Why should I care?
* Your prospects are using Twitter to connect with others and find out useful information about the industry we’re in (by following interesting people).
* Even if it seems less tangible than other marketing methods, you’re still creating goodwill, conversations and adding value, and back-links to the website on the interwebs, which will take you up the Google rankings up as well.
* There are ways of keeping track of what’s being said on Twitter, e.g. RSS feeds - drop us a line, if you'd like to find out more!