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How To Get Your Business Tweeting – The Basics of Setting Up a Twitter Profile

Guest post by: Keredy Stott

Article Overview: You've looked at Twitter and you understand how it works but now that you've made the decision to open an account for your business, you've realised that you're not sure how best to set up a profile. Changes can be made but it's best to get it right from the beginning because it can mean the difference between a user wanting to follow you or not. Any business can follow these easy tips to create a profile and start tweeting.

How To Get Your Business Tweeting – The Basics of Setting Up a Twitter Profile

You've looked at Twitter and you understand how it works but now that you've made the decision to open an account for your business, you've realised that you're not sure how best to set up a profile. Changes can be made but it's best to get it right from the beginning because it can mean the difference between a user wanting to follow you or not. Any business can follow these easy tips to create a profile and start tweeting.

When you sign up to Twitter you need to choose a ‘username', which will create the unique URL for your public profile. For example, punchcomms becomes twitter.com/punchcomms and @punchcomms when the account is being addressed in a tweet. You can alter your username at any time without affecting your existing tweets, @replies, direct messages, or other data. However, this is not recommended or you will need to let all your followers know about the change if you want to continue receiving messages with the new user name. The name of your business might not be available so choose your username cautiously and be very careful when pushing multiple words together; you don't want to spell out any new or inappropriate words, or for it to be difficult to make out what your company is called. Adding numbers can appear unprofessional, even if they mean something to you, so try using hyphens, underscores or capitals. For example, punch-comms, punch_comms or PunchComms but not punchcomms34. Your ‘name' doesn't have to be the name of the person signing up, it can be a replication of your username or be entered as your company name. To add personality to your business, why not introduce the primary tweeter, for example, ‘Keredy - Manager'.

Your company logo is the most obvious profile picture choice but to add a personal touch, the person doing the tweeting could be photographed with the logo in the background. A team picture or a photo showing your business premises are other options - you can be as creative as you want if it suits your business. Pre-designed background themes are available to choose or you can customise it with an image of your choice, such as your logo or a specially created picture that is appropriate for the dimensions of the page. If your profile looks unprofessional, too busy or doesn't reflect your business then it might turn people off from following you.

Your bio should be drafted first and carefully thought out as you only have 160 characters to sum up your business offering but without sounding too dull. The bio is especially important if you intend to reach out and follow members of your target audience as a way of getting them to follow you back; users will make a decision on whether to follow you in a matter of seconds and if your bio lets you down, many people won't bother scrolling down to look at your tweet content. Other elements you might wish to include in your bio space include a personable snippet about the person tweeting, for example ‘Keredy is an Account Manager who loves herbal tea and cake' or the type of content you will be offering, such as, ‘opinions and top tips from a leading UK social media agency'.

Before any business starts creating a new Twitter profile, it should think carefully about its username, name, picture, background and, perhaps most importantly, bio options. Discuss your ideas with others in the company and utilise staff who may already be an everyday user of twitter.com so you can make sure your company profile is the best it can be.

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Article Tags: business Twitter, new Twitter profile, social media
Referred by: http://www.punchcomms.com



Related Forum Posts
ReTweet Buttons Now Shown on Forums Threads - For those of you Twitter die-hards we've now incorporated retweets into the forums. If you like a particular thread and want to ReTweet it you'll see the green ReTweet button next to the title at the top of every forum thread. Happy Tweeting!
Re: Twitter vs Facebook - I use Facebook pages for Business and rarely ever use Twitter. I hace lost count of the no. of Hotels that I have visited, regarding their marketing campaigns, that may have 5k Facebook Fans and only 100 followers on Twitter. It is a lot more difficult to engage with people on Twitter and thus harder to gain traction. If you are a business like Nike, then Twitter is great, but if you are an SME, then focus on Facebook or LinkedIn (if you are providing a professional service.) You can always have your Facebook feed directly in to Twitter, so you can have a presence on both, but do the work on one. Also check out ping.fm for managing campaigns - it is a free tool, and a great time saver.
Re: Who are the best entrepreneurs to follow on Twitter? - I've got to start Tweeting so I can figure out what you're all talking about. I feel out of the loop. Wish I had more time.
My entry - 1. The Best Business Books Ever: The 100 Most Influential Business Books You'll Never Have Time to Read - this is a fascinating book about the history of Business theory, and I'd recommend it to anybody. 2. The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants, by Tom Gegax. Ditto. 3. PADI: The Business of Diving Book Okay, so this book won't be of use to anyone who doesn't want to start a scuba store, but I did, and this book was of course invaluable to me in reaching that goal.
Re: The Storm Brace a new invention - Hi Breck, To add your signature, click on "User Control Panel" above, then click on "Profile" and then "Edit Signature". You can also add a photo via the "Edit Avatar" link in the Profile section. DH


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