5 ways to use Twitter for business

Not having a Twitter account when you're in business should be classified as a form of insanity. There is simply too much to gain from being there, posting there and perhaps most of all listening there to pass it up.

Here is our top 5 ways to use Twitter:

1. Spy on the competition. Register for competitor Twitter feeds and use their Tweets to keep tabs on their next big move, and a whole lot of smaller moves in between. Stay in touch with the pulse of what is happening at companies similar to your own.
2. Share links to interesting, relevant sites, articles, videos. One secret of posting effectively is to make use of all the published material relevant to your business already on the web. Say you run a fitness business and want to share instructional videos. You don't always have to produce your own video, as there are already millions of instructional fitness videos available. Instead use your expertise to pick the best one to share, one that highlights a point you wanted to make or a concept you wanted to share.
3. Answer the question what am I focused on or interested in. In the search for what to post about, too many get caught up thinking they should post what they are doing. This leads to relatively mundane posts like "I'm here doing stuff and then later I'll do more stuff". What you want is to give your audience a glimpse into your thought stream. Like for example "I was researching the coolest stuff ever, and noticed this pile of awesomeness over, you might want to check it out".
4. Use a URL shortener. There are several URL shorteners such tinyurl.com that will help you clean your Twitter tweets up and give you more characters to use for text.
   
5. Ignore the Twitter negators. Let's talk about the naysayers of Twitter for a moment. First realize most people who speak ill of Twitter have either never used it all, or have never achieved anything notable with it. So they not in a real position of authority on the subject. The value of Twitter to a business cannot really be overstated. It is a high impact tool with a broad reach. Used skillfully it can become an effective and extremely high yielding part of your marketing mix.

If you need some help getting your Twitter publishing organized, let us know and we would be happy to help.