Twitter basics

Twitter is massive still, and evolving all the time, so you must embrace this element as part of your social media strategy, I get asked a lot about Twitter on my online marketing training courses so I thought I will give you the basics again:

Growing your following

Can’t rush this, no quick pay and get followers is going to really help you here. You have to follow people you are genuinely interested in, what’s the point otherwise? Your Twitter wall will be populated by tweets from these people, so you may as well be interested in them in the first place. When you will click the link in their tweet and visit their website, Job done, for them at least!

When you follow someone you are interested in, they will receive an email telling them you have followed them on Twitter, most will then click to see who you are, and if your profile has been filled out well, they may follow you back, the ratio for this is actually very good, I tend to follow most Twitter accounts (people) after they have followed me, because they will, more than often, share similar interests to me.

You’ll need to schedule around ten minutes a day to search a keyword on your Twitter home page,  then read the profiles of the people and follow a few. Don’t go over-board; Twitter hates it if you have followed 200 people a day, looks suspicious and spammy!

You may say well Alan what about hash tags and profile images and all the other sites that help send followers? I did say it was the basics did I not? In the end it’s all about quality of what you do rather than how often you do it, one great post on Twitter could really mean a lot to your business, thousands of mediocre posts tells people you are busy being busy rather than being of any real use to anyone!

Linking Facebook

When you first get a Twitter account it asks you if you want to link Twitter to Facebook, I find the opposite way works best as in; link Facebook to Twitter, so that whatever you post on your Facebook business page is posted to Twitter automatically with a link back to your original post, which was the blog you did or the infographic on your website which is the very essence of all social media which is to get people to read your stuff on your website, trust you and buy from you, if this is not what you are doing, contact Netmedia now because we need to go straight back to the start!

Retweeting

You read something cool you saw originally from a tweet, and you feel this would be of benefit to your followers, right under the tweet there is a re-tweet button, click that and send that link to your followers. The original poster gets a message about your re-tweet; this is a social grace of the internet and is always appreciated by the original poster, and they will more likely to share something you tweet in return one day. Some people have a lot more followers than you and if they tweet something of yours you may find fame overnight, all Lady Gaga has to do is re-tweet something of yours and you can become very successful, very quickly indeed!

Getting your tweets on your websites

Search engines love websites that are current and have a daily evolving home pages, but few of us can write something amazing every day, so how to get your home page to change regularly? Get a plug in called ‘Juiz last tweet’ widget, I have it on all my Joomla and Word press sites, so that whatever I post to my Facebook not only goes on my Twitter account to all my followers , but also on my twenty websites home pages immediately. You have to get your keys and codes and register with Juiz but well worth the time taken.

What to post

OK not everyone is a social media marketer as a full time business, so try to schedule regular times to post your stuff, when I say stuff, I mean your altruistic blogging and information sharing that is part of your brand management that I preach till I am blue in the face on all my blogs.

At the very least create an image 504×504 (maximum Facebook image size) and say something cool on that image; a quote, a top tip, trick, or a piece of information and share on your Facebook business page, make sure you say something in the text above the Facebook business page, or it will appear as “I have posted an image on Facebook” hardly compelling enough to get people to click is it?

How often to post? is a common question I find; 4-6 times a day is useful to me I believe in quality over quantity, better to spend more time writing or sharing a great blog post of infographic that will endear you as a leader and knowledge base than post a load of pictures of Thai food 15 times a day!

Videos

For the love of all that is holy; people are reading less and less and are watching more and more videos; so get one NOW and get your own You-tube channel pronto! We have helped over 40 clients build and optimise their YouTube channels this year alone so contact Netmedia for help

Once your video is posted to YouTube; use the share buttons on your channel and share it on Twitter, it will appear on your twitter account on the left and it stays there! Videos are not the most expensive marketing strategy they used to be, we have created a number of storyboard videos for clients and marketed it for them for around £100.

Vine App.

Download this cool free application on your phone and create 6 second videos, they are immediately uploaded to your Twitter and on the net for all to see, whatever your business; I am sure you can think of something you can say in 6 seconds to showcase what you do!

You know when you ask clients fr a testimonial and some of them take months well no longer just click your phone and tell them to talk for a few seconds about what you did for them and HINT if you make your Vine in Landscape by holding your phone horizontally , you can’t change it back to Portrait mode:

look what we did for our clients

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