Twitter Tips And Tricks For Your Business

Twitter provides a few tools to help you out on their website. From adding a follow button to your page to widgets that show some of your tweets. These tools are very helpful. There are a multitude of tools created by other companies for Twitter. Some of these are far more valuable than you can ever know.

Setting up automated tweets can make your life a bit easier, however, it can make you look look a spammer too. Do not get into the mindset that you need to be anything other than yourself on Twitter. You do not need to make money tweeting other people's ads. You are on Twitter to help only one business - yours. I would not set up automated tweets until you have a lot of followers. The exception is if you have a blog I would set Twitter to tweet when you have a new blog post. I will explain how to set that up when I get to the series on blogging.

Another handy but underused automation is AutoDM. Basically you set up a message to be sent to all new followers when they follow you. DMs are, in my opinion, a complete waste of time. Twitter never really intended DMs to be much of a way to have a private conversation and it shows. You can only delete one message at a time, so if you have thousands of followers it is very difficult to keep up.

There are many programs for managing your Twitter account out there. TweetDeck, HootSuite, CoTweet and many more. Each one has its benefits and limitations. Most have a free and paid version. Do a web search on Twitter Management Software and you'll get tons of different tools. Look at each one and see if it is for you. I prefer the "less is better" route myself. I do not do much automation on my account. I feel like I need to just be myself and tweet when I do.

Tweet about the process of what you do. Tweet about a sale you just attended. Tweet about a new product line. Try to just be yourself. When you add a coupon code tell your followers about it. Ask how the weather is where they are. Try to relate to your followers and help them relate to you. Don't post 20 new items in a row. If you are going to add multiple items, list them all and tweet with a link to the category saying you added many new items.

Ask questions and answer questions when you see them in your feed. I sometimes ask people about jewelry shops in their area. That has actually resulted in a new shop carrying my work. Ask for people's opinions on your new items. It will get them to view it without being a push for a sale and seeming spammy.

Add people who have the same interests as you. Twitter has a decent search feature. It has a simple search and a more complete search. Be sure when you are adding people to follow that they have tweeted in the last few days and that their tweets are not mainly just links. You want real people to tweet to. I will leave you with a little tutorial on #HASHTAGS I wrote a while back on another blog. Feel free to let me know if you have any questions.

"From #followFriday to #tips, hash tags are a great way to organize and categorize conversations on Twitter.Hashtags.org shows the most recent group tweets on Twitter

To see which groups have already been created, visit www.hashtags.org - the official site that creates, organizes and displays these groups. Use the search box in the upper right corner to see if your group name is already available. If it isn’t, you can create it simply by tweeting and including the hashtag (#) within your post.

It is now time to familiarize yourself with hashtag commands, so that you only broadcast a message out to the people you want to receive it, those being the members of your hashtag group. Here’s a quick rundown of the more useful ones:

1. Follow #tag - (example: follow #tip) - lets you follow all updates tagged with #tip. 


2. Follow username#tag - subscribe to all updates from a certain person that are sent to a group. (Example: Follow @ClearNetworking#tip will give you every post by @ClearNetworking sent to the #tip group)


3. #tag message - Send a message or question to the group. (Example: #tip Don't set up an automated message with a web address in it.)


4. #tag !message - Send a message only to people who are subscribed to updates from #tag. (Example: #tip !How many tips have you retweeted today?) 


5. Leave #tag - Unsubscribe from the group. If your friends are subscribed to this group as well, you’ll still get messages from them that include updates for the group. (Example: leave #tip will unsubscribe you from the Tips group, but you’ll still get messages from your friend whenever send a message to #tip).


6. Remove #tag Unsubscribe from the group and from friend messages that include this tag. So if @ClearNetworking posts directions to #party010 and you’ve typed Remove #party010 in your Twitter status bar, you won’t see the directions even if @ClearNetworking is on your followers list.

It might be a good idea to print out this list and keep it with you for a while until you remember what command does what. Questions? Comments? We'd love to hear them!"