Justin Taylor

Archive for June 5th, 2009

An increasing number of my SEO clients are now evangelizers of Twitter. However, many are still not big fans. A few days ago a client sent me a link to a recent Nielsen report which indicates that “more than 60 percent of U.S. Twitter users fail to return the following month.”

Well, she didn’t mention the report also says it might be jumping the gun because Twitter’s 40% retention rate is already quite decent compared with other start-ups. That explains why Twitter is all the rage amongst internet marketers; the only question is how to make the micro-blogging site beneficial to your businesses?

Registration can be done in seconds and inviting friends is semi-automated. So what’s next? Here are 8 ways to use twitter to promote your business:

1. Complete Your Business Profile

A complete bio of either you or your company makes it easy for followers to know who you are and what business you are in. Don’t forget to use right keywords in the bio. Use your real picture or company logo if you want to be credible. A picture of your pet or kid could be cute, but are you operating a pet shop or daycare?

2. Enhance your Brand with Custom Design

A picture is worth a thousand words, which also holds true for a twitter account. Besides default background, Twitter provides 12 stock photos. They are pretty dry. Fortunately, there are tons of royalty-free photos online and paid custom designs are also available. www.twitterimage.com has both of them and is now offering free custom Twitter backgrounds to anyone with over 10,000 followers.

3. Integrate Tweets into Corporate Blog

Your twitter page is an extension to your company site or corporate blog. The traditional Tweeter widget enables you to display tweets on almost any web page, whether it’s your company site or face book page. If you’re blogging with WordPress, plug-ins such as Tweet Suite and WordPress Sidebar Widget can integrate twitter into your blog too.

4. Find and Build Business Network

Most business people tweet to convert conversations into actions. Now you already have a complete profile and want to find business partners or clients?  Go ahead, you can use keywords to search for them. Or you may use free services such as Mr. Tweet which analyses your profile and find relevant accounts for you. Similar tools include We Follow and JustTweetit.

5. Add links to Drive Traffic

Twitter can generate traffic to your web sites or blogs when you put links in your tweets. A tweet has a limit of 140 characters, so it’s impossible to publish lengthy news releases or promotion info there. This is when links kick in, but make sure your message is interesting and has a personal touch since a traditional call to action or link dumping will most likely be ignored.

6. Alternative Tool for Customer Satisfaction

Twitter has become such a powerful real time communications tool that many companies use it to eavesdrop on what people say about their brands and engage to enhance customer experience. Jetblue (over 470,000 followers), for example, was heavily criticized for flight delays in Feb, 2007 and has since been using Twitter to announce weather delays and tweeting customers to address their concerns.

7. Look for Niche Info in Real Time

I’ve been using twitter to monitor the latest news and hottest tech updates on search engine optimization. The biggest difference between Twitter and major news networks / niche sites is that tweets are generally real time. It’s not a secret that the news media are actually monitoring twitter for scoops, so searching and reading tweets keeps me updated in a timelier manner.

8. Recruit Employees

A friend of mine operates a web design company and was recruiting graphic talent. After failing to find a perfect match on several job searching sites, both free and paid, he tried posting the message in twitter and got some applications from his followers. Guess what?  He soon interviewed them and finally hired a woman that had all the qualifications. More and more tech savvy job searchers are looking for employers or freelance jobs on Twitter because they find it more effective than traditional job placement media. So if you happen to be recruiting, a 140-character tweet may generate some quality leads. And it’s free!

Communication is king in business. Twitter has provided a platform to facilitate business networking and free-form conversation in a rapid-fire fashion. If your company is just jumping on the bandwagon, doing some research and learning how to tweet effectively and creatively is a good starting point.

Ernie Schwarcz, Founder of www.seotrump.com
- Grew up in Vienna, Austria.
- Studied at the famous University of Vienna;
- Reluctantly discharged with a Masters in Economics, Business, Statistics ;
- Lives in Montreal, Canada.
- Independent SEO Consultant.
- Makes a living from pretty decent SEO work but will give free and helpful hints.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/social-marketing-articles/8-smart-ways-to-use-twitter-for-business-952124.html

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