Sign up now for our FREE newsletter and get all the latest tips and 
technology news plus exclusive info on our latest money saving offers.
Twitter is a social networking website which is an ideal platform for promoting your business and your website.
Twitter works on the principal of ‘microblogging’ – posting short text updates of 140 characters or less.
These updates can be about anything you wish, and many people use Twitter simply to share thoughts, feelings and ideas with a network of friends.
But Twitter updates can include links to other web pages, and is a popular site which Google scans for new content several times every hour. This makes it an ideal forum for website promotion.
Twitter works in a similar way to other social networking sites, in that you can build up a network of contacts with whom you share information. But the structure of Twitter is much simpler than that of, for example, MySpace or Facebook.
Other than adding a few details about yourself - such as name, location, and web address – the main focus of Twitter is to share updates. You can do this as little or as often as you like, but every update you post is shown to your network of contacts, as well as appearing, albeit briefly, in the ‘public timeline’ that all Twitter users have access to (unless you have specified that your updates do not feature publicly).
Signing up to Twitter is simple. Visit the Twitter website and click on the ‘Get Started – Join’ button near the bottom of the welcome page. You will then be asked to enter a username (this must be unique - Twitter will advise you if the name is unavailable), password, and your email address. This is all you need to do to register with Twitter.
You can then start building a network of contacts. This is done by ‘following’ people – this simply means that you will be updated every time they create a new post. Users are informed by email when someone starts following them, and if they are people you know, or just like what you are posting, they may choose to follow you. They will then be able to see your latest updates as soon as you make them.
Twitter can help you to find existing friends who have already joined by searching your email address book. If you would rather not share this information, you can skip this process. It is also possible to find friends and colleagues by manually searching for them by name.
Once you have an audience for your updates, you can start to post them. This is known as 'Tweeting'.
Recommendations for effective posts are:-
While this last recommendation may sound flippant, practice has shown that Twitter users are put off when other uses only ever use Twitter for promotional purposes. For example, Tony Hsieh, CEO of shoe company Zappos, makes regularly posts about his day-to-day life. These often have little to do with promoting the company, but Hsieh currently has over 16,000 followers on Twitter.
It seems Twitter users love to hear all this behind-the-scenes information, and it has helped to promote the company’s website far more than a series of posts on their latest line of shoes would have. Take a look at Tony Hsiehs Twitter profile to see for yourself.
Think creatively about what you post. If you’ve seen a really interesting news story or YouTube video, talk about that, adding a link of possible. If you’ve just seen a good film or play, recommend it to your Twitter followers. By mixing updates like this in with more obviously promotional posts, you may find your network of followers starts to grow. The more followers you have, the bigger your audience.
Because Google loves new and original content, it really likes Twitter. In fact, Google’s robots ‘spider’ Twitter around every 15 minutes. What this means is that any links that are posted to Twitter are very quickly found by Google. This makes Twitter an ideal method for telling Google about new blog entries or pages on your website. Normally, it might take Google days or weeks to notice a new web page, but linking to it from Twitter can get it noticed immediately – meaning it will appear in search results for the relevant terms much sooner.
There are many other social networking sites on the web, and all of them present tremendous opportunities for promoting your business and your website.
Contact us to discover how we can help you and your business make the most out of social networking.
Many businesses have been slow to realise the massive potential of using social media sites as part of their marketing campaign. i-Zimbra has used social media technology to increase the online profile of many of our business clients … Read more about social marketing >>
i-Zimbra can monitor all visitors to your website, usually referred to as 'web traffic', and analyse how those visitors behaved while on your site … Read more about web traffic analysis and reporting >>
Search Engine Optimisation is an important way of giving your business website a higher profile on the web and ensuring it can successfully contend with online competitors … Read more about Search Engine Optimisation >>
See also:
Why not find out more about what we can do to help you and your business today?
To contact i-Zimbra, simply call us on 0870 770 6989 or email us now.
Bookmark or share this page with your friends easily using this button:
Interested in our services? Leave a message and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.
The joy of employingRoger Bowell
i-Zimbra to promote your website is the speed with which they respond to customer requests and the excellent results they achieve
» Read all client testimonials
