Alicia of The Soft Landing (and now 3 Green Angels!) is often asked how she makes Twitter work well for her small business without becoming overwhelmed and frustrated. Her answer is a gold mind of information and we’re so lucky she’s sharing it with us. Here are Alicia’s tips and what she suggests for small business:
Through much testing and many failures, I’ve found a combination of Twitter clients and techniques that allow me to be successful with a much smaller time investment.
- Monitoring my specific keywords (for me = BPA, Phthalates, The Soft Landing, Alicia Voorhies, etc.)
- Creating and monitoring groups of Twitter users who interest me (for example I have a group for social media experts, one for green moms, etc. – and I update my groups as I find new people I like as well as dropping people I don’t really get much from)
- Tracking mentions about @thesoftlanding, DM’s – and replying to them as needed)
- Perusing all friends twitters (just a glance for anything that catches my eye – I follow too many people to continually monitor everyone)
- Sending general tweets or RT’s
- Tweet Deck is also available for the iPhone; the program is amazing and syncs with my Tweet Deck account so I can stay involved on the go
- You can learn more about using Tweet Deck here
- Tweeting anything and everything while surfing the internet – the Hootlet is a must have!
- The Hootlet automatically grabs the headline and shortens the line
- Scheduling future tweets (this function is the best I’ve found in any program yet and is very reliable)
- Tracking clicks and most popular links I’ve tweeted – HootSuite offers analytics for all shortened links included in my tweets
- You can learn more about using Hootsuite here
Twitter (yep, just the regular Twitter)
- Finding user names and checking to see if a specific business or person is using Twitter
- Choosing winners of our live Twitter Tuesday Giveaways – this is the easiest way to watch fast moving giveaway entries. Twitter lets you click “view older” as many times as you want in order to see all tweets included in the contest on one page. That way you can count through to find the winning tweet.
So if you’re about to call it quits – don’t! The benefits of Twitter for small businesses are numerous and worthwhile! Using a variety of different programs to create your perfect combination is key to staying focused, attracting more followers, and building your brand.
P.S. Twitip, TechCrunch and Twi5 are my favorite resources for staying up-to-date on twittering tips and highlights of new Twitter applications
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