Like many of us know, Twitter is a website of social network type in which we can communicate with others through the publication of messages that can be up to 140 characters.
The original idea for Twitter was that people could communicate with other responding to the question “what am I doing”, but was soon used to communicate other things, such as moods, reviews, events, and all you can be written in a maximum of 140 characters.
Also, the idea of Twitter was that people could communicate with others, but soon was successfully used by companies, either to maintain contact with their customers, promote their products or services, consumer information, including things.
And we cannot be left behind, then see a little guide made by eight steps on how we can harness the potential of Twitter in our business:
1. Create an account at Twitter
The first step to leverage Twitter in our company is to open an account, for which we can enter the following address: https: / / twitter.com / signup.
Once there, we must enter the following information: full name “(where you enter the name of our company or business),” username “(where we will put the name by which we want to be known on Twitter, what is usual to put the same name of our company or business, a password and an email address.
Then, Twitter will guide us through some sections where people can choose or which companies that want to “follow” and then to activate our account, we will have to click a confirmation link located in an email to us send to our email address.
2. Set our profile
After opening our account, we created our profile page, which is the page where we write our messages (known as “tweets”) which will be read by users who choose to subscribe to our profile page (known as “followers “).
Also, our profile page can also read posts by people or companies to which we have chosen to subscribe to (“follow”).
For our profile page attractive and visitors know what it is about our company, we upload a photo representative (e.g. logo), and write a brief description thereof.
To do this, we must click on “Settings” link located at the top right of our profile page, and then click the “Profile” tab.
3. Publish our first messages
Once we have our Twitter profile page, it’s time to publish our first messages or “tweets.”
For example, we announce that our company is already on Twitter, telling a little about what is our business, give a welcome message, etc.
Always interesting trying to post messages, and taking into account that the maximum number of characters you can have is 140 each.
4. Capturing “adherents”
Once we have created our Twitter profile page, and published our first messages, the time has come to attract “followers”, i.e. people who choose to subscribe to our profile page, and thus can read our publications in their respective pages.
The more “followers” come to take, the better we can harness the potential of Twitter in our company.
To attract followers, we must promote our profile page, for example, on our website or business blog (for example, by one of the buttons provided by the same Twitter, which can be found at the following link: http:// twitter.com / about / files, or simply putting a link that says “on Twitter”, and directed towards our profile page), other social networks (such as Facebook or LinkedIn), in our email signature , etc.
But also, we can promote our Twitter page off the Internet, for example, inviting our employees or customers to “keep” our profile or Twitter including our address in any of our advertising.
5. Strengthen relationships with our “followers”
Our next objective, once we have some “fans” should be to strengthen relationships with them, to their loyalty.
To do this, we can issue informal or casual messages to allow us to humanize our dealings with our “followers” for example, we can tell something about our company, we are developing a project, and we have a story that has passed, and so on.
In our messages, we can share links that are of interest to our “followers”, for example, a link is directed to an article we wrote on our website or business blog, or to any news published elsewhere web.
You can also share messages posted by other users (including links or not), for which we simply have to click on the “Retwitter” located under the message you want to share.
Another way to strengthen relationships with our “followers” is communicating with a “follower” in particular, either by sending a message or letting you know that we are talking about it, for example, we can congratulate a client for making a purchase, answer any consultation we have done, attend a grievance, or even meet an order.
To do this, type “@” followed by the name of the user that we want to address, for example, if you want to write a message to our “follower” juanpablo, we would write something like: “@ juanpablo thanks for your suggestions, we will consider”.
We should note that this message will be public, i.e. visible to other users, if we want the message is private (so only the user can read it is received), we can use the internal messaging system to Twitter we can log in by clicking on the “direct messages” located on the right side of our profile page, or write “d” followed by the name of the user which want to, for example: “d juanpablo hope that our product has been to their liking. ”
Finally, we can also communicate with our own employees, for example, to know what they are doing at any given time, give some news, congratulate them for a mission accomplished, etc.
6. Communicate new products, promotions or events
One of the main advantages of Twitter for companies or businesses is that we can communicate easily, quickly and effectively launch new products, launching new sales promotions (special offers, discounts, coupons, sweepstakes, contests, etc .) or the approximation of future events (which will make or participate in only) to our “fans.”
If we have a number of “followers” and have developed a good relationship with them, communicate these messages where the launch of new products, new promotions or approximation of future events, will be very well received and considered by them, to the point of becoming more effective than messages sent via email, or advertisements that they posted online.
However, we should not abuse this advantage of Twitter, and only send such messages after you have created a good relationship with our “followers” and in doing so ensure that their publication is sporadic, otherwise we might fall badly our “followers” and lose some of them.
We attempt to use Twitter as a communications medium that allows us to have a close relationship with our “followers” rather than as a means of communication that allows us to advertise or promote our products.
7. Gather information
Another major advantage of Twitter for companies or businesses is that we can obtain information that can be helpful.
For example, we may collect information about the view, print or degree of satisfaction that users have about our products or services, for which we can enter the name of our company, brand or product in the form of Twitter (located on the right of our profile page), or by entering the following address: http://search.twitter.com, and entering in the search bar the name of our company, brand or product, and thus know what they are talking about users thereof.
Or in any case, we can just do the query directly to our “followers”, for example, asking them what they think a product that we sell.
We can also enter the name of the type of product we sell in the form of Twitter, and so know what it is being talked about today.
For example, if you sell wine, we can enter the word “wine” in the form of Twitter, and to explore new tastes, preferences or tendencies, or, for example, if a user is making a comment or a question about a wine, we can use it and send a message with another comment, responding your question, giving some advice or even offering our products.
We may also use the form on Twitter to gather information about what’s happening in real time in any market, for example, to know their tendencies, to know what your current situation, to see if there are business opportunities there, and so on.
And finally, we may also gather information about our competitors, either according to their profile page or by searching for this information in the form of Twitter, and so know it is about to launch new products, consumers are saying this, the satisfaction with their products, etc.
8. Keep updated our profile page
Finally, to capture the largest number of followers and to retain them, we must maintain our profile page updated, i.e., post and reply to messages or “tweets” constantly.
There are some methods that can help us with this, for example, can publish and receive messages from your mobile phone (for which we must click on the “Settings” link located at the top right of our profile page, and then make Click the tab “Mobile”).
We can also send and receive “tweets” from the desktop on our PC without having to enter the Twitter website, for example, using the application TweetDeck.
We can also automatically publish (syndicate) directed links to articles or posts that we write on our website or business blog, through the application Twitterfeed.
We must strive to post messages as often as possible, however, we should not feel pressured by this, a couple of publications a day may be sufficient and even leave should not worry about publishing a day or two, then when we come back to join to our account, it is likely that our “followers” still with us.
Same time responding to the messages we send, we must try to answer it all, but if these come at a time to be too many, or it may take a long time to answer it, we should not feel pressured by having to answer them all, or having to do so immediately.
We should not feel pressured to keep our website updated, however, keep in mind that the greater the activity we conduct it, the greater the number of “followers” that captures, the greater their loyalty to us and, in general, the greater the benefit we bring to our company Twitter.