Following people and viewing their tweets is great, but in order to have valuable two-way conversations, you want people to follow you back and view your tweets too. This is why it‘s so important to get your profile fully set up before reaching out for new connections. If you follow someone who doesn‘t already know you, you need to display sufficient information about yourself in your profile so he or she can make an informed decision of whether to follow you back.
Attracting a followers is important because they will serve as your network who will view your tweets.
Think of your total number of followers (AKA your following) as your Twitter reach.
Tips for Attracting New Followers & Increasing Twitter Reach
1. Make your company’s Twitter usernames easy to find.
Create a page that lists all the Twitter handles of the people in your company. By giving your customers an easy way to interact with individual people, it helps them get to know the type of people who work at your company.
It also gives them insight into your brand!
HubSpot has a page showing our presence on Twitter
http://HubSpot.com/Twitter
Zappos is another example of a company with an excellent Twitter page
https://Twitter.com/Zappos
2. Place “Follow” buttons on your blog and various pages of your website.
Make it easy for people to find out if your company has a Twitter account. Visitors to your blog and website might like your content and want to subscribe to your tweets, so add Follow buttons to your site so people can easily find you. Twitter recently came out with an official Follow button generator, or you could create your own and simply link it to your Twitter page.
3. Make your tweets useful resources so people need you. You are what you tweet.
People will want to follow you if they think they will get value from your tweets. Avoid making your Twitter account a purely promotional tool. Would you subscribe to a newsletter if it didn‘t have anything useful to say? What specialty knowledge do you have that you can share?
4. Interact with those people you follow who don’t yet follow you back.
Make sure to monitor your Twitter stream and comment on what other people are saying. Give feedback; compliment people. The key is to engage. This will give them incentive to follow you back.
Great video here from @CarrieWilkerson
For more information about using “Twitter 4 Business” click on the link below
Building your network is the most challenging and time-consuming part of using Twitter. Expanding your network doesn‘t happen immediately, you need to commit the time to use Twitter effectively. By following people, you will be able to view their updates in your Twitter stream. This is your chance to learn more about them: their lives, the blog posts they are reading, the types of links they like to share, the people with whom they interact. Following a decently sized and interesting community can be valuable and fun.
Where can you find people you would like to follow?
1. Use Twitter’s “Who to Follow” Feature
Twitter offers its own “Who to Follow” tool, which you can access by clicking the link in your Twitter toolbar. Choose a few of Twitter‘s highlighted topics or search using your own keywords to find and start following interesting people relevant to your business and industry.
This is a free resource offered by HubSpot. You can use it to discover the ?Twitter Elite? for your city or search for people with interesting information in their profile. For example, find people who list ?software development,? a specific company, or a location in their Twitter profile.
This free resource is a search function that helps you find people who are tweeting about specific words. For example, you can find people who have tweeted about “Public relations” Follow people talking about the topics you enjoy. Also, use Twitter Search to see who has tweeted about your company.
4. Follow People Your Followers are Following
Once you begin receiving updates from a handful of people, watch to see whom those people chat with by looking at @replies. Maybe it would make sense to follow that person as well!
5. Follow Thought Leaders and Bloggers
See if any of your favorite bloggers are on Twitter. Many bloggers include a link to their Twitter account in their blog‘s sidebar or personal info section of their website.
6. Collect People’s Twitter Names at Events
Like we said before, many social media-savvy people will include their Twitter handle on their nametag at an event. Write down their usernames and follow them later. You can locate their Twitter account by replacing their username in the following URL
in your browser‘s navigation bar to find us. If you are not sure if someone you just met is on Twitter, ask!
7. Follow Hashtags (#) at Events
At many events, the organizer will establish and publicize a hashtag (e.g. we‘re using #HUGS2011 for this year‘s HubSpot User Group Summit), so anyone tweeting at the event can tag their tweets with the hashtag.
Use Search.Twitter.com to follow tweets using the hashtag, and follow those people who are attending the same event as you who you may not have met in person. (Hashtags will be explained in more detail later in this ebook.)
Following Don’ts
Don’t follow too many people at once
Best practice is to follow no more than 25-50 people a day, because there will be a time gap between following people and when they follow you back. If your profile says you are following 2,000 people and only 30 followers have followed you back so far, it appears that 1,970 of the people you followed chose not to follow you back. This unfavorable ratio won‘t help boost your credibility and may negatively affect people‘s decisions to follow you.
Therefore, give your followers some time to follow you back before finding a new batch of people to add to your network.?
Don’t follow hundreds of people at once & remove all who don’t follow you
Although many people do this in order to have a “Valuable Ratio” (or more followers than people you‘re following), it is artificial network building and not a best practice.
For more information about using “Twitter 4 Business”click on the link below
Even before you start finding people to follow, we recommend tweeting a few times to give potential new followers an idea of the type of content you will be sharing. Your most valuable asset is the information you provide, and it will often be the deciding factor for whether another user decides to follow you back.
Types of Tweets:
1. An Observation:
Tweet about what you‘re doing, thinking or feeling.
2. What You’re Reading:
Post a link to an interesting blog post or news article.
3. What You’re Watching:
Post a link to a cool video from Hulu or YouTube.
4. What Events You’re Attending:
Share a link to the next conference you plan to attend.
5. Your Content:
Post a link to your most recent company or personal blog article.
6. Someone Else’s Content:
Post a link to someone else‘s blog article as a helpful resource.
7. Chat With Someone:
Direct messages to other Twitter users using an @ sign. (We‘ll cover this in more detail in Step 6.)
8. Retweet What Someone Else Has Tweeted:
Retweet (using “RT” or “Retweet” at the beginning of the message or clicking Twitter‘s Retweet button) to repeat to your followers what another user has tweeted
Remember that everything you say is public! Don‘t say anything you wouldn‘t say at a networking event. Even if you delete a tweet, it might still be archived on the internet with the potential to get found.
Now that you have your account, you need to personalize it. It is important that you personalize your account before you begin interacting with and following people. Before you add your information, your account will look inactive, and if you start following people without a personalized profile, your chances of being followed back will decrease dramatically. Other users may even mistake you for a spammer, which is definitely not something you should shoot for.
Your profile is the place where you can reference your company, your blog, your location, and interests. Let‘s get started!
Click the “Edit Your Profile” on your profile page, which can be found at http://twitter.com/USERNAME (insert your Twitter handle in place of USERNAME).
The first order of business is your picture, also commonly referred to as your avatar. It‘s very important to put a face to your name. For this step, click on the ?Browse? button and select a nice, smiley photo from your files to represent you. (If you‘re creating a company Twitter account, use your logo.)
Next up on your profile is your name. Always list your real name when using Twitter for business. You wouldn‘t introduce yourself with a fake name at a tradeshow. Why should you do it here?
Then, add your location so people know where you‘re based!
For your URL, or web address, it‘s always best practice to include a link. Put a link to one of the following:
Company website
Blog
Personal website
LinkedIn Profile
Dedicated Twitter landing page (more on this in Section 3 on using Twitter for lead generation)
In the “BIO” section, be as descriptive as possible. This is your elevator pitch—your opportunity to convince people to follow you back. You‘re only allowed room for 160 characters, so consider it a snapshot of your background. You can include:
Your company
Your position
Your hobbies/interests
Your specializations
Your recent projects
The last option under the ?ccount?tab within your profile settings is the ?rotect my tweets?box. By clicking this, your Twitter stream will be private, and no one will be able to see your updates without following you. We do not recommend checking off this box to protect your updates. Many people judge whether to follow someone back by evaluating that user‘s tweets. You are as valuable as your updates, so don‘t keep people from getting a peek!
If you‘re worried about strangers seeing your updates, remember that you are in complete control over everything you tweet. At the same time, you should feel comfortable being yourself.
How to Customize Your Twitter Background
One of the great things about social media is that many of the tools are free. This also happens to be one of the worst things about social media. Free tools mean the barrier to entry to use a platform like Twitter is low. This low barrier attracts spammers and other less than reputable people. As a business that wants to use Twitter to drive revenue, you have to take your presence to the next level. While anyone can quickly set up a free account, few take the time to customize that account.
Customizing the actual background of your Twitter profile is a significant step in bolstering your credibility and educating new and potential followers to the content and products your business provides. In 2010, Twitter launched a redesign of its website, which caused some changes for folks who had done a custom profile previously. However, if you are just now starting on Twitter, you can follow these simple steps to customize your Twitter profile page. When customizing your Twitter background, you will need to have a tiny bit of design skills and access to Adobe Photoshop or be willing to pay a designer to help with the project.
Step 1: Understand Your Brand on Twitter
Before you can create a custom profile, you first must decide what you are trying to communicate to people on Twitter. While you understand your prospects and customers, it is important to note that Twitter might be the first place that many new prospects discover your business. In your background, make sure to communicate information that appeals to prospects who are extremely new in the buying cycle.
Step 2: Beware of the top tool bar
As is evident in the above example, Twitter has a toolbar at the top of the page that is 40 pixels tall. Be aware of this element when creating a design for your Twitter background, and be sure to leave head-room for the toolbar.
Step 3: Design for Minimum Monitor Sizes
The left-hand side of the Twitter profile is prime real estate for a company logo, company description, or important links. However, it‘s important to note that the dimensions of the left- and right-hand columns are fluid and change with the size of the user‘s browser window. Design for smaller monitor sizes in an effort to keep all of your design elements in full view. Designing for larger size monitors might result in elements being partially cut off on some users‘ screen.
Step 4: Don’t Tile Backgrounds
Due to the columns layout, background images should be one image instead of tiled. One core image is better at handling the transitions from the columns on the page.
Use the advice from these steps to create an awesome custom background image for your Twitter profile. When you have the image, you can visit your Twitter account settings and, under the ?esign?tab, click the ?hange background image?button to upload your new image to your account. If you are looking to stay clear of Photoshop, Themeleon has some great Twitter themes for customization.
How To Make or Customize Your Twitter Background @AmazingVidTours
For more information about using “Twitter 4 Business” click on the link below
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