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With so much activity on Twitter it can be a little daunting to get started and understand how to interact with your followers.

Nearly everyone understands the concept of twitter, communicating your thoughts in posts of up to 140 characters, but not everyone understands the point. What can you possible say in 140 characters that people will want to hear and ultimately generate more business and sustain current business from?

Twitter provides a quick and concise way of reaching and communicating to a wide audience and is a great way of getting instant feedback. At first this may seem a fickle way of generating interest with no real commitment from followers but working alongside your activity on other social media channels and marketing effort it will build momentum and translate into business.

So where do you start with Twitter? The importance with Twitter is that you are adding value with your tweets and participating in relevant discussions. Here are some top tips to remember when you are tweeting:

1. Twitter is about conversations, it’s not all about self publicity. You wouldn’t expect a stranger to listen to you talking all about yourself / your company, and the same principle applies on Twitter. If you continuously talk about how great you are and your latest offers, no one will want to listen, combine these sparingly with value adding tweets.
2. Be consistent. If you dip in and out of Twitter you will be forgotten, you need to be consistent with your tweets so you have a presence on Twitter.
3. Encourage interaction. Ask questions with your tweets; don’t close all your tweets off.
4. Don’t ignore your followers. If someone shares you tweets or responds, thank them and communicate with them.
5. Understand what content is working. Use link shortening tools like bit.ly to measure traffic alongside your Google Analytics to get a better grasp on what content is working for your audience.

Having a Conversation on Twitter

To start a conversation with someone, use their @username in the tweet followed by your comment/question. Using their @username will enable them to see this in their @connect tab in Twitter – the same way you can, they will then be able to reply to this tweet and your conversation has started. For example we recently attended the Recruitment Agency Expo where James and Gordon were presenting seminars throughout the day, we received the following feedback:

“Great talk from James @InnergyLtd today at the #recexpo on raising the bar in recruitment”

Other types of conversations happen on Twitter using hashtags. A # followed by a word(s), in this case #recexpo, is a way of tagging a tweet so that someone can see the conversation. These can be used for events, such as the Recruitment Agency Expo, particular subjects etc.

You should join a conversation using hashtags if you can add value to that conversation, not just to boost your tweets into the top trends. For example when Habitat furniture shop joined Twitter they decided to tweet using the top trending #hashtags. This method meant they would start a tweet using #iPhone (a top trend for that day) then tweet about their Spring collection with 20% discount. The content of the tweet clearly has nothing to do with the conversation, and so for those following the conversation this is seen as ‘spam’.

Remember to make the most of those 140 characters and add value to your audience. This is just the tip of the Twitter iceberg but will certainly help you to get started. For details on Innergy’s Social Media for Starters workshop, contact James Osborne onjames@innergy.co.uk.