When you customize your Twitter profile you have to do it on two levels. First you customize the appearance on your Twitter profile page. Then you take care of the internal personalization of your Twitter profile.

The appearance of your Twitter profile relates to the background of your profile page, the image and photo and the text editing.

Customize your Twitter profile step 1: the Appearance

The first step to take when you customize your Twitter profile is to adjust the background. You have different possibilities to do this.
First your background and side bar should have your company’s colors and be personalized to represent your company. Don’t use the set background given by Twitter. Personalize your profile to brand your company. You can have your logo tile all over the page, which in most cases looks just horrible, or have your logo just once in left hand corner, or you can even have a photo representing your company (eg. if you sell a certain product with your company’s name on it, a photo of that product would work too). If you do not use it as your background it is important to add your logo somewhere. For branding purposes you should make sure your logo always appears on your Twitter profile. However, to give your profile a personal touch, I would suggest to use an image of yourself for the profile picture and upload the logo on your page as part of the background image. Here is an example, how I did it on my MarketUrStartup profile on Twitter! While you are there, remember to follow us! You just need to make sure it is not too overwhelming and hard to read for your readers.

But how do you change the color of your Twitter background etc?

Just log into your account, go to Settings and click on Design. There you can upload a background image and also change the colors of your background, sidebar, links and font. I would suggest to copy the exact color of your logo or Corporate Identity to match exactly and not “hand pick” them. If you want to be very creative, different types of software are available to help you design your own background. There are however certain “rules” to follow to be able to upload your creative background. You can find a few technical tips here. But when being creative remember, you want your background to match your company, and the message you try to pass to your audience. So don’t be overly creative and confuse your followers about who your Twitter profile really represents.

Customize your Twitter profile Step 2: Internal Personalization

Now there is more to your Twitter profile than just the look! Therefore you have more customization to work on. It is important for your audience, to keep its attention and to gain its trust that you show you have put time and effort to introduce your company through your Social Media site. It’s important to share valuable information. Don’t link back to your website or blog, but also to other interesting resources. Share what you are working on, communicate with customers etc.  Here you can learn more about what your business should tweet about!

Customize your Twitter profile Step 3: Give it a human touch

When you create your Twitter profile it is important to not just create a profile representing a business entity, but also include the person behind the scene. Use your personal name as the Name of your Twitter profile, and use your company’s name as the User name of your Twitter profile. This underline that a person, with , passion and attention is behind it all and is involved. Also use your picture as your profile picture. Readers like to know who they are talking to or who’s tweets they are reading. It is important that you chose the same image for all your profiles though to show consistency but also so that readers recognize you. It is another way to strengthen your branding and your online presence.

Customize your Twitter profile step 4: Write a Bio

Twitter gives you the opportunity to present yourself and your company in the Bio section. Use it! What a better way to personalize you twitter profile than by telling your audience about who you are and what you do, and maybe what motivates you? Be concise but clear. Sell yourself but don’t spam. You must inform your readers in a few words who you are and give them an insight on why they should follow you.

Customize your Twitter profile step 5: Behind the scenes

All those previously mentioned steps are quite obvious. There is one more step that is essential in the customization process your Twitter profile, but unfortunately often overlooked. The personality of a person is more than his/her look, clothes, attitude… it is also the way he/she express him/herself. Customizing your Twitter profile to represent your company is like showing the personality of you and your business. Therefore, the way you express yourself through your tweets, how you interact with your followers and who you follow, is also part of the process of customizing your Twitter profile. You must show you are involved, that you are willing to interact with your audience and that you listen. You must prove your audience you are everything your profile setup says you are. Your tweets, your answers and your involvement will truly customize your Twitter profile, because they will show your personality, they will show the human side of your business.

Remember a well customized Twitter profile can help you gain attention, show dedication and help will give you a great first impression with your Twitter Followers. It is important to take advantage of all the tools available to you to make your Twitter profile an efficient Social Media Marketing tool to promote your company and develop your network.

Did you personalize your Twitter profile? How did you do it and did it affect your Twitter success? Tell us about it!

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What should Your Business Tweet about?

So you took the first step and decided to use Social Media for your business. It is a great step, however you do need to know what to do with it. After you found out what Social Media Sites to use, and you personalized your profile it, it is time to use Twitter and get that cycle going. So what should you tweet about?

Tweet about: Industry News

One important topic your business should tweet about is what’s going on in your industry. To inform, update, and keep your followers interested, it is important to regularly post a tweet about the latest industry news. It shows your involvement and that you keep your business up to date and on top of things. Let your readers know what is the latest great innovation in the industry, and how the industry is going. This helps your readers understand more about your business in the broader picture.

Tweet about: Company News

Of course, another very important topic is your own business. You ought to inform your followers constantly about what is going with your business. You need to tweet about your companies news. Tweet about a new product or service, but not only that. Tweet about how your company will be/ was social involved. Let your readers know about your business evolution in the industry and on the market. You want them to be aware of what your company does and how it is done. This is part of building a trust relationship with your readers. You keep them constantly informed so they can follow you. By tweeting about your company news you give your followers a reason to keep following you. Also, Twitter is a good opportunity to inform customers about special offers. But remember to avoid pushy talk when using Social Media: the ultimate goal is to inform, gain attention of readers, and keep your followers!

Tweet about: Customer Complaints

Twitter is a great Social Media tool to communicate with your customers. This means, if your customers have complaints it is a great way for them to communicate any problems to you and for you to answer them. Don’t be scared to receive complaints, no one is perfect, and it is by answering and fixing your customers complaints that you will improve your business. When you tweet a complaint answer to your customers you make them feel important and show them their satisfaction matters. You allow your followers to give you feedback to improve your business on different levels. Give different answers in your tweet, not the same typical complaints answer. Customized your tweet to the customer and the situation. Show them they are one entity and their personal satisfaction is important.

Tweet about: Sharing Ideas/Asking Advice

Your business should also tweet about new ideas. You can then engage your readers, to get their feedback and have them share their ideas as well. One of the goals of social media is to make your followers involved, and allow more communication. Other businesses from the industry following you can also benefit fro your tweets and help you get ideas on different topics. You can tweet about an idea you have, to share it. But you can also tweet about doubts or questions and ask for advice. Social Media allows you to get opinion more directly. So take advantage of it. don’t be afraid to present your ideas and ask questions. Twitter helps you getting the information to your followers, but it also is a great tool for you to get the information you need from your followers. It is a give-and-take virtual relationship between customers and businesses, to enhance communication and take share ideas faster and more efficiently.

Tweet about: Company Blog

When you tweet for your business, you have in your hands a great way to present your blog. Tweet about your latest posts. Let your followers know where to find the information and what new topic you presents. But make sure you do not only tweet about your business. Include tweets about other blog post as well. Use links to blog posts that are relevant to your business (not from your competitors obviously) or posts about your industry, the market, the economy, and so on… It is important to show your readers you care more than just about your little bubble and that you get inform, read other people’s thoughts and share them. It makes you look involved, informed, curious and willing to always improve and bring your readers along. Plus, by tweeting about posts that are not yours you might be able to reach other possible followers that didn’t know about you. The posts writers might tweet about you as well, and allow more people to be aware of your presence in the Social Media community.

Tweet about:Yourself

An important point to remember when you tweet for your business it to be human. Do not just tweet about your company in general, or other companies, tweet about people. Have names behind ideas and topics to show your readers it is real and not just a computerized message that wasn’t thought through. Be clear and tweet about what interest your readers. Have a purpose in your tweets. Don’t just post something to post something. Remember you want to keep your followers interested. So show them that you understand them.

To put it in a nutshell: business should tweet about the company and the industry news, use tweets to share ideas and ask for advice, present interesting blogs – not just their business blog, but also others from the industry, and take advantage of twitter to answer their customers complaints and improve their satisfaction.

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How to find more Targeted Followers on Twitter for your Business

So you’ve got a high number of followers on twitter… but quantity doesn’t always mean quality. More important for your business is to find more targeted Followers on Twitter, not just any kind of followers… So how will you do that?

First, create a strong profile.
An important step to attract targeted followers on twitter for your business is to have an engaging profile. This is the first impression your potential followers get! Show your targeted followers you are not just a web page, be human! Personalize your twitter profile by changing the background. Chose the colors representing your business, and put your logo on there. This is the first step, but if you are good with PhotoShop, you can create a more distinct Twitter background yourself. And what if you don’t? Well, there are even design companies out there specializing in making you a very professional and customized profile background for your twitter account! Make sure your followers have a name to refer to, not just your company name. Illustrate your profile with information about your business and yourself. Don’t forget to mention your business website! Make your profile alive.

Second, find your niche and its gurus.
You need to find your niche on twitter to find followers that share the same interests than you. Your niche represents your industry, and your targeted twitter followers the people who tweet about it and are also most likely to buy from you. You can find those targeted followers by using Twitter Search – you just have to search about a topic related to your industry, to your niche and find who talks about the same topics. Once you find people to follow on twitter it helps you find the gurus in your niche. The gurus are the one who have more followers, but also with some sort of authority within your niche ( such as a leader in your industry for example). To find them use Twellow: a directory where you can search by niche, areas of expertise, and so on… where the results are organized by the numbers of followers. You want to follow gurus and on the long run make them follow you because they allow you to find your targeted followers on twitter.

Third, use twitter efficiently.
Once you got your targeted followers to follow you: Don’t lose them! So how do you make your targeted followers to stay, and maybe bring more of them? You must write interesting and helpful tweets. Write about your business, but also about what’s going on in the industry. Draw your targeted followers attention to what is important and feed their appetite for relevant info. Participate, listen and be helpful for your audience. Show them you pay attention to them. Re-tweet what they tweet! If they share links to their blogs, share about your targeted followers blogs to give them exposure, they will be grateful for the attention. Don’t be scared to engage in discussions and state your opinion. If they see you show interest in their blogs, they will most likely do the same and tweet about your website and blog, allowing more followers to get to read about your business and maybe follow you. Also, if they have questions answer them, or direct them toward what they are looking for.

Finally, remember what not to do.
Twitter is a social media marketing tool. Remember that the idea behind that concept is to help you reach out to more customers to make them aware of your online presence and inform them about your business. What you tweet about is the most important factor to get more targeted followers on twitter and not lose them! Don’t give them your Sales talks. Forget about being pushy and try to get them to buy what you offer. Inform them instead! They are already attacked by spam enough. What they want is something different, not the everyday common marketing bla bla. However, this doesn’t mean you can’t offer something that your target audience wants for free… this can always be one more way to get more targeted followers on twitter!

So to recap, make a difference with a strong personalized profile, make sure you reach out to the right niche and find the gurus you need, tweet efficiently and leave the spam to the other business… now your targeted followers on twitter will be more numerous everyday!

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Many people enjoy using Twitter just for the social interaction that it provides, still businesses started to use their tweets as another facet of their overall marketing plan. Do you tweet yet? For witty companies, Twitter can be leveraged with many other business activities your business may already be doing. The benefit of doing this, of course, is that it allows you to automate this portion of your marketing activities – freeing you up to pursue other things to grow your business. To be specific, Twitter can help you and your company with the following aspects:

- Market Reseach
- Branding
- Customer Feedback
- Customer Service
- Product Development
- Product Improvement
- Business Development
- Networking with Clients, Partners, Suppliers etc.
- Oh yeah, I almost forgot: Promotion

All in all you can say: KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid!

EzineArticles.com, among with many other sites, has recently added the capability of tweeting your articles. It takes only a few moments to set up, but could potentially provide users with long-term dividends. First, there is the obvious visibility among your own followers, who are likely to visit the article, or your website directly. As you know, creating awareness is the most important task of marketing, whether it is online or offline! Second, a well-titled article could potentially show up in keyword searches of other Twitter users that may also be interested in the same niche – they may seek to reprint your article on their site, contact you for partnerships, or become an affiliate for your product. One important factor that make or break your article from becoming a viral epidemic is the length of your original URL. While most websites already shorten the URLs on Twitter automatically, the original URL determines how many characters you have left to write a catchy tweet. Keep your URLs short to leave space for enough RT @username! Here goes another KISS!!!

When you have a business blog, you can harness the power of Twitter in several ways. First, there are several useful plugins for WordPress that can tweet your blog posts automatically for you. There are also little buttons  that you can install that lets your readers Retweet your blogs easily! You can find one on the bottom of this post, too. Click it! Now!!! Last but not least, you can use TwitterFeed to serve up your blog’s RSS feed to your Twitter profile. Each have their own advantages – you’ll need to compare them to see which one will suit your business best. Another KISS!

Networking sites, such as our beloved Facebook, also have useful Twitter applications. As usual the best advice is: Don’t overdo it! Use the middle way and update your followers only on the most important news. When you use a Facebook Fan Page (btw, Market Your Startup has one, too!)  you can send messages to your Fans! A great tool, when used efficiently. Yeah, you guessed it! KISS, again! Depending on the industry, I would suggest not more than once a week! Frequent updates may become aggravating to your followers. Facebook also allows users to integrate their tweets into their status updates as well. For those who tweet frequently, keep in mind that those who have friended you on Facebook will literally be bombarded with these updates if they have opted to receive them. That said, use this automation with caution – at the very least, let your followers know in advance that they will be receiving frequent updates.

You can safe a lot of time with automation tools and they can be very appealing, but they should always be weighed against the potential for aggravating the very people you are trying so hard to attract. First and foremost, social media is about establishing genuine connections. Read more about Seth Godin’s Tribe Theory and understand that you should connect with the people that already support you, foster them and make them spread the word for you! And the last KISS for today goes to Seth Godin! Do not spamm people that are not interested in your product. (Yes, that is the naked truth, there are people out there, that currently have and never will have any interest in your product!) Use discretion and consider all of your options fully before you place your social media dialogues on auto-pilot.

Oh yes, and enjoy KISSING!

Read more on Social Media and Twitter here:

7 Business Twitter Tips

Characteristics of a Good Business Blogger

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7 Business Twitter Tips

Twitter is a highly effective Social Media Tool that can help you to reach potential customers and create awareness of your company and your products and services online. Thousands of businesses already use Twitter for the same reasons, but many of them fail. When you want to promote your business through Twitter, there are quite a few pitfalls that you can fall into. Follow these 7 Business Twitter Tips to promote your business effectively on Twitter:

1.  Don’t be a pushy salesperson

All Twitter users have followers that only use Twitter to promote their company, products or services on Twitter. Spamming on Twitter is not the way to go and will hurt your online reputation in the long run. Unless you are trying to make a quick buck now, you should make your knowledge an accessible resource and build a positive and lasting online reputation. So don’t be too pushy on Twitter, grow a targeted network and share information that is useful for potential customers and stop bothering people that are and never will be interested in your product or service.

2.  Share industry news

People will only follow you , when you provide useful information to them, so instead of promoting your own business over and over again. Go to Google Blog Search and find relevant information about your industry and post the links on Twitter. Share your expertise of your industry and use Twitter to become the authority in your field. This way, you will gain the trust of your target market and they will come back to buy from you!

3.  Promote your blog

However, some promotion is good and often not seen as so pushy. If your company has a blog (and every company should have a regularly updated blog on their website), you should let your customers know, that you posted a new blog post on an industry relevant topic. If you have a targeted group of followers, this will not be received as spam, but as valuable information. And once they are on your blog and are in buying mode, chances are high that they are going to purchase from you!

4.  Networking

Twitter can be a great tool for networking (I guess you have figured that out already). Find the industry leaders and your direct competitors and follow them to pick up useful information about them. Of course Twitter is also a great tool to find potential business alliances, post jobs and present yourself and your company.

5.  Be responsive

Twitter is a great way to establish 2-way communication between your company and your customers. You can ask them for feedback about your product or service, share new product developments and update them on recent changes of your business. You should also monitor what other Twitter users have to say about your company and utilize it to your advantage. If you use SearchTwitter, you can search for your company name and respond to people that are mentioning your business. If they are promoting your business, thank them and if they are complaining, try to establish a connection and offer them a special deal.

6. Find targeted followers

Instead of just adding random Twitter users to your following list and hope that they are following you back, try to find your target market and provide useful information that makes them want to follow you back. It is better to have a small but strongly connected number of followers than to have 25,000 followers that are not interested in your offerings and will not buy from you.

7. Personalize your business

Use Twitter to personalize your business and let people see that there is a person behind the company. That does not mean that you have to reveal personal details, but show that you are human and not an automated Twitter program. You can tweet about your company’s vision and mission, share your thoughts on recent events that are related to your industry, while staying on topic. Be responisive and communicate with your followers, answer questions and provide helpful information.

To sum it all up: On Twitter, it’s a give and take and the most successful Twitter users are the ones that have a good balance in sharing useful information and promoting themselves, their blog or their company! Follow the tipps from above and your business will benefit from Twitter and you will be closer connected to your potential and existing customers.

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