How to Set-Up a Twitter Account For Your Business

 

Social media is a great way to reach out to clients and find new ones for your business, and Twitter is one of the better ones to do just that. This step-by-step guide will walk you through how to set-up your account in  5 easy steps, cover some useful Twitter vocabulary, and orient you around Twitter’s interface.

 

1. Go to Twitter.com and click Sign Up to get your account started. Follow the steps and fill out the form with your contact info and choose a username. Your username (also called a handle) is what people will see when you tweet, use to mention you in relevant posts, and message you.  It should be something relevant and identifying to your business. Because Twitter only lets you make posts of 140 characters or less, choosing a shorter username if possible is best. It will also be easier for users to remember. (Avoid extra numbers and symbols when you can.)
2. Twitter will then ask you what types of topics you are interested in so they can suggest people you might like to “follow” or see their posts. This step can be skipped.
3. Next, upload a relevant picture for your business.  Choose a picture that is relevant for your business and looks good small (such as a logo). Twitter automatically resizes the images to be a square of 400 pixels by 400 pixels. People who follow or search for you will see this picture and it will accompany every post you make. After you’ve uploaded your photo, click “Continue.”
4. In this step, Twitter will help you connect with anyone you’ve been in touch with via email. Depending on which email service you use (Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, or AOL,) Twitter will generate a list of contacts that also have Twitter profiles. You can choose to follow all of them or pick and choose which users you would like to follow individually. When you’re finished with this step, click “Continue.”
5. Twitter will then take you to the main page. All that’s left to finish setting up is writing your bio, adding a cover photo (in the same way you added a profile picture,) a link to your website.

 

Glossary

If it’s your first time using Twitter, you’ll realize it has a language of its own. We compiled a glossary of common Twitter terms to help you master the art of Tweeting.

(Buttons from Left to Right: Reply, Retweet, Favorite, More Options)

Tweet: A tweet is your 140 character message to the world. Tweets can include hashtags, mentions, pictures, and videos. Newest tweets appear at the top of the page.

Hashtag: A hashtag is the written content behind the “#” sign. It’s used primarily as a categorizer so that users can search through hashtags to find specific topics. Other times, they offer additional information about the tweet.

Follow: Following someone on twitter means you want to see their updates. This includes their own tweets and people they have retweeted.

Retweet: If you retweet a post, it shares the post with your followers. If someone retweets you, it shares your post with all of their followers.

Mentions: Mentions are used to notify people of the post. If someone wants you to see a post they will mention you by writing “@yourusername”, or you want someone to see a post you mention them by writing “@theirusername”. That user is then notified of the mention and can check out the post. Mentions are standard in replying to a thread of posts and are part of the 140 character limit.

Favorites: Favoriting a tweet notifies the person who wrote the tweet that you favorited it. It also saves it in a Favorites page so you can see tweets you’ve favorited previously. Depending on people’s privacy settings, you can see tweets that they have favorited.

Impression: An impression on your tweet means that a user has either retweeted, favorited, or clicked on the tweet and expanded its box to view it (and see things like which users have favorited it). The more impressions your tweets have, the larger their text. More popular tweets will be larger and stand out more on your personal Twitter page.

Moments: Twitter Moments compiles popular events that you might be interested. For instance, moments include things like politics, the World Cup, and breaking news.

Pinned Tweet: To pin a tweet means that you’ve selected one of your tweets and placed it at the top of your home page. It will be the first tweet that followers/users will see upon going to your page. There is only room for one pinned tweet at a time, and it can be changed out as often as you like by clicking on the “More” button at the bottom of tweet that you want to pin.

Handle: Handle is another word for your @username.

 

Twitter’s Interface

How your home page is laid out:

• The navigation for your account is laid out along the top of your page. “Home” is the main page you will see each time you login on Twitter. Next, is “Notifications.” You will get a notification from Twitter anytime a user interacts with your tweet by favoriting, retweeting, replying, or mentioning another user in it. After that you have “Moments” page and “Messages” for direct, private messages from other Twitter users.

• The top left box is what other people see about your business. When you’re logged in, if you click on it you can edit it. Click “Edit Profile” at the top right of the page to edit your photos, add your website or a short blurb about your website. Click “Save Changes” to finish.
• At the top center there’s a bar with a text field that reads “What’s happening?” This is the easiest place to write a post. You can also write a post with the “Tweet” button at the very top right of the page.
• In the center of the page is your news feed. Here you can see live updates of what those you are following are tweeting about. Under each tweet is the option to reply, retweet, favorite, or see more options about the tweet.
• The trends box along the left of the page are trending hashtags and topics other users are tweeting about. Try incorporating trending topics to get your tweet noticed more.
• The box at the right of the page gives you suggestions for who to follow to build your network based on people who are similar to you or those you follow.
• The search bar at the top of the page lets you find hashtags, topics,  other users, and businesses you may want to follow or learn more about.

Now that you know how to use Twitter, one very important point to remember is that consistency is key in social media. Search for hashtags that are popular in your business, join discussions, retweet industry leaders, and share original content often to really grow your business.