Social Media Snapshot: Twitter for Business

According to Twitter.com...."It took Twitter three years, two months and one day to reach our first billion Tweets. Today, there are over a billion Tweets sent every three days. These Tweets represent conversations related to almost any topic imaginable."

That's a lot of people talking!

So How will this help you?
• The conversations happening on Twitter offer businesses a wealth of information about current and potential customers.
• You can quickly and easily see what people are saying about your brand, your product, your competitors and industry in a few clicks. It's like having the world's largest focus group at your fingertips!
• It's REAL-TIME interaction - you can watch it happen or you can jump in there and get your brand involved in the marketplace...at NO COST!

What you NEED to KNOW...
There are a couple of things you should familiarize yourself with to safely navigate the Twitter universe...

140 CHARACTERS - its a magic number...and it's the maximum length for all tweets (aka messages)

MENTION - Precede a Twitter username with an @ symbol and they will be notified that you have mentioned them in your tweet. (Example: "We love our new client @susanjones")

RETWEET - When you want to share a tweet - click the retweet button below it to send it out to your followers. Again, people are notified when you retweet which helps establish camaraderie.

MESSAGE - Think of this as something similar to email. Privately tweet a message to a user with a DM or direct message.

HASHTAG - Hashtags (like Mentions with the @ symbol) involve a # symbol before a word or phrase (no spaces). Think of a hashtag as the them of your tweet. Users can click on a hashtag to find other tweets with the SAME hashtag. (Example: " Now offering an #extendedsale of 50% off")

Twitter is on the GO!
You might have noticed a lot of people walking around with these things called smart phones...no? Well mobile technology is a MAJOR craze that is changing how people connect with businesses. This means you NEED to be accessible in the mobile universe. One of the easiest ways is TWITTER!

• Twitter's mobile aplications make it easy for people to connect and read your tweets from their smart phone, tablet or blackberry.
• People can subscribe to INSTANTLY receive your tweets to their phone - very cool!
• Tweet from ANYWHERE - this means you can get your information out without sitting at your desk computer.

Need a Widget?
Twitter offers follow buttons and widgets that allow for live streaming of tweets right on your website. Once you place them on your site - you don't have to do a thing! Visitors will see what is happening right from your site on your twitter feed. This is great if you want to tweet during a live event or sale.

Promote your Tweets, Trends or Yourself
Twitter offers several options for advertising on Twitter. This is recent option for businesses so we recommend getting more familiar with Twitter advertising directly. Click here to check out their site.

Conclusion
If you're still not convinced that Twitter is a viable social media platform for your business - we have one final point to make. Twitter is all about REAL-TIME information which is something that search engines (Like Google, Bing, Yahoo & more) really LOVE! This means search engines will prioritize results from a website like Twitter over normal websites. Don't you want a piece of that action?

Qlixite will setup and manage your Twitter account for you

Understanding Twitter #Hashtags for Business

It is not far from the truth to say that Social Media sites like Facebook and Twitter play a large part in what we read and see online.  Whether it is a celebrity scandal or breaking news from around the world, people find that they get their information about what is going on faster by seeing what their friends post and tweet about rather than conventional news sources.  As a small business - it's important to understand how you can make these two 'tricks' work for you as well....don't worry - it's easy!

#Hashtags in Twitter

What is a hashtag?
According to Twitter: The # symbol, called a hashtag, is used to mark keywords or topics in a Tweet. It was created organically by Twitter users as a way to categorize messages.

What do they do?

• People use the hashtag symbol # before relevant keywords in their Tweet to categorize those Tweets which are more easily displayed in Twitter Search
• Clicking on a hash-tagged word in any message shows you all other Tweets in that category
• Hashtags can occur anywhere in the Tweet
• Hashtagged words that become very popular are often labeled as 'Trending Topics'

Example: In the Tweet below, this person added the hashtag before the phrase "thankyousteve". The word is now a link to search results for all Tweets containing "#thankyousteve" in the message.

 

How do I use hashtags?

• If you Tweet with a hashtag on a public account, anyone who does a search for that hashtag may find your Tweet (obviously this means that people looking for your type of business could find you)
• Don't #spam #with #hashtags. Don't over-tag a single Tweet. (See Twitter's Best practices which recommend using no more than 3 hashtags per Tweet.)
• Use hashtags only on Tweets relevant to the topic
• Don't use spaces between words. The hashtag will only attach to the word attached to it so if you want to tag "landscape design" - use #landscapedesign or if you want to tag your business name "ABC Fitness" - use #abcfitness.

Further Discovery and Reading

• The third party site hashtags.org offers an overview of popular hashtags used on Twitter. Find out about trends, look at small, pretty graphs, and search to see which hashtags related to your business or industry exist.
• You may also want to read this article about hashtags, which appeared in The New Yorker Magazine

While it may feel foreign at first to include hashtags in your business tweets - you'll soon find that it is quick and easy to type these short tags which can mean big things for your business in the social media world.

Check out our Blog on http://qlixite.blogspot.com/2012/01/understanding-facebook-tags-for.html