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How to put your business on Twitter

Posted on 19 Mar 2009 at 17:05

Retweeting
Twitter has a technique for re-publishing other users' messages, known as retweeting. It allows interesting comments to quickly circulate in an viral manner.

For businesses it's obviously good to get retweeted as it exposes your brand and messages to a much wider audience, but do remember that retweets still need to fit into 140 characters, and this has to include your own username and possibly a pithy riposte from the person retweeting you.

There are two things you can do to maximise your chances here: firstly, when setting up your Twitter account, go for the shortest name that adequately identifies your company (hence pc_pro rather than pc_pro_magazine). And secondly if you're posting messages hoping they'll be retweeted, don't use all of the available 140 characters - leave space for others to add a witty remark.

Twitter clients
Although the standard Twitter user interface at Twitter.com (and m.twitter.com for mobiles) is adequate, other clients are available that offer greater flexibility, especially in terms of filtering and alerts.

One of our favourite desktop clients is TweetDeck, and when it comes to mobile clients we have a soft spot for TwitterFon on the iPhone (available for free from the App Store).

A corporate makeover
Many people do use the standard web interface though, so it's worth exploring Twitter's settings screen, and customising your mugshot and background image to match your corporate branding.

Now click here to find out how to put your business on:

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Author: Paul Ockenden