Twitter Guide for Businesses

Almost all the worlds top brands are on Twitter and if you business doesn't have a presence on Twitter you might be losing out on potential customers and business deals.In this Twitter guide for businesses I will show you how to get started on Twitter, How to find targeted followers who are interested in your products or services and how to effectively use those followers to brand your products and increase your sales. I will also discuss common mistakes made by most user who are new to Twitter and how you can avoid common Twitter mistakes. One Important thing to remember is that as with most services you want see a huge impact in the beginning, but if you follow the steps listed below you should be able to have an impact on your business with Twitter.

The first things you need to do is create a free Twitter account, but before clicking the signup link below there are few things you should consider when creating a Twitter account. There are only four fields in the sign up form, the most important one being the user name.

Selecting the User Name

• Keep it Short - Twitter only allows 140 characters in a messages and those include your Twitter handle as well. So if you choose a Twitter user name that is 15 character long you only have 125 characters to utilize your message. Keep it short but meaningful.
• Add keywords or Brand name - You can choose to add your targeting keyword in the Twitter user name or you can add your company name. Adding keywords does help in getting some Twitter search traffic but Twitter is about building a community and it is always a good idea to build your community around the brand name.

Filling out the Profile and other Details

The next step is to fill out your profile. You can add a location, a line to your website and a small description in the bio section. Make sure to clearly explain your business in the bio section. For the profile picture the best possible option is to add your company logo. If you don't have a logo then add something that best describes your business.

One of the biggest problems business face is how to grow Twitter followers. There are several ways to do this but organic growth is usually the best and tend to give out lasting results. One of the common things done by businesses is giving away something for following them on Twitter. If this is something rare and expensive you have a very good chance of quickly increasing your Twitter followers. However if you don't engage with your followers and you will soon find out that numbers mean nothing. Another thing you can do is use automated software to increase Twitter followers. These software search Twitter feeds and profile based on keywords and automatically follows users for you. This is also a good way to build Twitter followers without too much effort, but as with the previous method it is engaging with them that really makes the difference.

Effectively using Twitter to promote your business is not easy, especially if your not a popular company. But if you patiently build up your followers and genuinely engage with your followers you can start seeing results. Patience and persistence is a must when it comes to Twitter marketing.

If you are using Twitter to promote a product outside US it is important to identify the niches and how your products relate to that. You should be aware of Internet penetration levels of those countries, age and income levels of Twitter users etc to better target your product. Taking the time to study brands that are already successful in those countries can bring your great rewards and much insight. It is also important to identify who are the Twitter power users in that country so you can use there influence to promote your product or service.

After building your followers the next step is to promote your product. It is important to do this sparingly. If you are running a restaurant you can share a beautiful picture of one of your breakfast items. If you are selling mobile phones you can share a picture of the latest mobile phone available at your shop. Sharing these are much more effective than sharing a direct link to your product page. Also make sure to look natural as possible by retweeting other users, replying to your followers and also by sharing valuable content that are not directly about your product.