Twitter local – a mash up shows you local tweets

15 top Twitter tips for beginners

I am often asked how do I get the most out of twitter? My first response is have you listened to Twitter? Many business owners have very little time to tweet and need it to work for them and not be a time vacuum. I have pulled together 15 easy to follow tips which should help you get more out of Twitter.

1. Always treat Twitter like your own personal community not your local advertisement. In other words share stuff don’t push too much.
2. Make sure you set up a Twitter search to monitor for your company name, competitors and other relevant businesses. If you monitor first you can see how people interact in your sector. Tweetdeck has a great search section.
3. Be polite and thank people when they help you out with useful information and point your followers to other people who have good information too.
4. Any person with half a brain won’t follow a complete stranger so make sure you complete your one-line bio and include your website or blog link in it. If I don’t know who they are I won’t follow them simple as that.
5. Try to use a picture of yourself rather than a logo. OK I know Tweasier uses a logo but it’s often better not to do this. Also why not add a bespoke background there are loads of free services out there like Twitter Backgrounds.
6. When tweeting think quality over quantity. Who cares about what you are having for lunch apart from you?
• Try to offer advice or share your own tips (like these) on your area of expertise
7. Don’t expect to get instant results or sales from Twitter. Twitter is a tool for pleasure as well as business – so treat it that way and relationships will build as part of it.
8. Actually click the RT or @ buttons when someone you are following says something interesting. Twitter is about conversation not just broadcasting your own stuff. You may also find that person says thanks – you have started to build a relationship. Why not say thanks when others RT your messages?
9. As a rule try not to tweet more than 10 times in a day as too much tweeting can become a bit irritating to your followers and on the flip side this will save you time.
10. Make sure your content is balanced, so only tweet about your business 10% of the time if at all, people don’t follow you for that, they follow you for the added value they get
11. Try to keep your ratio of followers to followees around 1:1. Don’t go out and try and follow millions of people in a day in order for others to follow you back. Sur,e follow a few people and then relook at your account. If you follow too many people Twitter could block your account for a while and you don’t want to be seen as a spammer. Make sure you stay away from Twitter spam sites as they often like to tweet all of your followers without you knowing.
12. Use a Twitter client to group your followers, so you can follow different groups on different topics – the best Twitter client out there in my opinion is Tweetdeck.
13. Offer something exclusive to your followers – e.g. a voucher offer or a free something. This is a great way to add value but to also track how successful your twitter campaign is.
14. Ask your followers for advice, everyone loves being asked for advice – keep it on message though!
15. Share news and links on things going on in your industry.

You can follow me on Twitter here.

Twitter streams start to appear in directory listings and live searches

There was some interesting news out yesterday about Citysearch, a local business directory service in the US that is now allowing it’s members to add their Twitter streams and Facebook pages into their directory listing profiles.

The post on City Searches’ blog states:

Our new Claim Your Page product, allows all business owners to claim their Citysearch business profile and take control of their listing data.

This marks the first time in the local, online space merchants will be able to list social business data (Facebook Page URL too) side-by-side more traditional data like phone number and address. We firmly believe they are now equally important to consumers and businesses, and we are happy to see them appear this way on our site.

I have to agree with them, I think there has been a bit of an attitude shift in the way Twitter is viewed by business owners. People I now meet seem to be starting to take it more seriously now. For many it is still a bit of fun but I have definitely noticed a number of entrepreneurs looking at ways to use Twitter to raise the profiles of their businesses.

The blog continues:

As part of this launch, we’re excited to unveil Twitter’s new Sign-Up API. Any merchant without an existing Twitter username can now create one entirely and directly from Citysearch through Claim Your Page. Empowering small and medium businesses with social media is an important goal of ours heading into 2010, and we believe Twitter is one of the most important channels a business can utilize to connect with customers and better manage its reputation online.

It seems people are finally starting to believe that Twitter is an important business channel and I expect its importance to grow even further in 2010 albeit not as quickly as it has done this year. I also expect Linked-in to become a much more widely used product now that it’s API key has been opened up for other developers to play with. Get ready to see lots of clever little tools that help you liaise with your Linked-in connections. You can link up with me here.

American Express launches new Twitter app

I have stumbled across this Open Forum Plus, a little Twitter app which has been created for small businesses. It was launched last week by the team at American Express.

It describes itself as:

OPEN Forum Pulse is a tool that helps you find and follow small businesses on Twitter by aggregating and organizing their tweets in one place. This custom platform was designed for small business owners to search and learn from insightful, business-related tweets and share ideas with others.

The thing I quite like about this tool is you can use the drop down box on the right to select which industry you want to view, kind of like Twitter lists.

As a user you can also click on the people section where you get to view all of the people on the forum and you can follow them directly from there. If you are a small business and you are looking for places to share your brand, this could be another place to add to your collection.

I think it’s a nice touch that American Express is trying to create its own little business-to-business community on Twitter. It will be interesting to see how this community grows over the next twelve months and whether it works on both sides of the pond.

This Twitter business gets serious with paid for services

Twitter has announced today that it is launching a commercial paid for service next year. Many of us regular twitter users have been scratching our heads as we have watched businesses springing up everywhere offering different business-to-business client services and Twitter is now finally picking up the baton.

The Telegraph reports:

Businesses are under no obligation to sign up to a paid account, but doing so will provide them with a "special layer of access", including feedback and statistics, said Biz Stone. Many big name brands and companies have embraced Twitter as a way of communicating directly with consumers and engaging with customers. Personal accounts remain free.

"This takes advantage of some of the commercial use of Twitter we’ve seen from businesses like airlines and big box stores," said Stone. "We want to present to them a layer of features that allows them to become better at Twitter, show them some of the analytics."

Now the race really is on to see if these analytics/statistics are any better than some of the other services already on the market. I will be watching this area with interest.

Six rules for using Twitter for business

I read an interesting article yesterday on the Small Business Blog from Eric Rudolf, which I thoughts had some interesting points in if you are looking to use Twitter for business.

Twitter business is something many owner managers and even larger organisations are currently struggling with. They are trying to figure out how to use Twitter to increase their brand presence and get more customers. However, the truth is Twitter is far from instant, you need to use it as a relationship tool to help connect with people and get good quality feedback.

Eric provided five interesting rules to using Twitter for business,

Rule #1: Don’t Bombard Your Followers. Anyone who has been on Twitter for more than a week has at least one follower who sends six Tweets in rapid succession multiple times per day, or sends one Tweet every 20 minutes like clockwork.  Here’s a tip: unless you work for a national news organization, your company is NOT important enough to justify this volume of communication.  As a small company, sending one relevant piece of news to your followers per day is plenty.

Rule #2: Only Tweet When You have Something Interesting to Say. If the extent of your Tweet is going to be a rehash of an inspirational thought from your new desk calendar, don’t bother.  Tweeting famous quotes, personal observations and headlines from ESPN’s breaking news section are are also off-limits.  Listen to mom on this one: if you don’t have something relevant to say, don’t open your mouth—or in this case, don’t type.

Rule #3: Don’t Follow People Indiscriminately. When it comes to using Twitter for business purposes, the belief there are no ”bad” followers is absolutely spot on.  Regardless of what your company does, someone voluntarily electing to hear from you might not always be good, but it is NEVER bad. The reverse, however, is not true.  Making a poor decision about who your company follows on Twitter could cost you a significant amount of fans over time.

Rule #4: Avoid the Temptation to Re-Report the News. As a blogger who cranks out two or three original articles every week, I understand how difficult it can sometimes be to come up with fresh content. If something really big happens in the world, there is one thing you can absolutely count on when it comes to Twitter: within two minutes, everyone will already know.

Rule #5: Stop Trying to Make a Sale Every Time. Understanding all of us have bills to pay, even the best cooks in the world take the chef’s hat off every now and then.  If you condition Twitter followers to expect a sales pitch every time they hear from you, your followers will quickly build up an ‘immunity’ to your Tweets . . . and simply stop reading them.  Between sales and marketing messages, be sure to mix in a good amount of ‘no strings attached’ communications—industry facts, trivia nuggets and short “Thank You” notes for supporting your company.

I agree with these, there is a fine balance to play here, but the truth is if you are transparent and use Twitter to give something back to people you are surely onto a winner. For instance, the Tweasier Twitter stream is used to share news, tips and advice on anything we think will help you to use Twitter better and that’s what we think it should be used for – good and useful content.

I agree with point 4 but as you can see I have reported the news right here but put my spin on it because I want to share my views on this news and I have a sixth rule to using Twitter for business.

My Rule 6: Give something back
Try and think of your followers as following you because they want you to say something useful and interesting and if you find something share it. Don’t share your sandwich filling with business followers unless it’s funny and then they may not mind.

Do you have any strict rules on using Twitter for business? I would be interested to hear your thoughts.

Twitter business – social networks combine status updates

Twitter has without doubt become the golden boy of the mainstream media in the last year or so, although some of the more upcoming applications like Foursquare and Google Wave are starting to turn heads too. The really exciting one for me will actually be Google Social Search, which I think will have quite a substantial impact on the way companies market themselves.

The interesting Twitter news this week is that Linked-in has partnered with Twitter so users are now able to update their statuses from either platform. I think this is a good idea, although there were quite a few ways around it anyway by using tools like Ping.

The Linked-in Blog comments:

The idea is simple: When you set your status on LinkedIn you can now tweet it as well, amplifying it to your followers and real-time search services like Twitter Search and Bing. And when you tweet, you can send that message to your LinkedIn connections as well, from any Twitter service or tool.

To be honest, I have always found Linked-in to be a little too static and dry but I know it can be a very useful resource. Most decent recruitment companies have been using it for years to track people down with certain specialism. For a useful list of ways to get the most from Linked-in try this.

It appears Linked-in is finally beginning to make adjustments to become less static and much more instant. I think it’s time for Linked-in to step up and show us all why it is such a widely used business social network – it certainly cannot afford to sit back anymore.

Do you think it’s good you can update Twitter from Linked-in and vice versa?