Twitter 101

For anyone interested in Digital Marketing for a company especially startups - it is essential to master the beast that is Twitter. As the Marketing Manager for a startup called Chef’s Basket, I had zero budget and no training in Digital Marketing, or for that matter any sort of marketing. What I did know was that Twitter was fairly popular amongst the audience I was targetting. This brings me to my first point:

1) Audience - Make sure your target group is on Twitter. The best way to check is to see if your competitors have an active presence on Twitter. If not, it’s more likely that Twitter will not work as a Marketing medium for your brand. However if your competitors have an active Twitter presence - learn from them:

• Follow the companies they are following
• Look at who is retweeting their tweets and follow those people. Also tweet at them as they are the ones that will most likely engage with the brand and follow you back.
• See the kind of posts that are getting retweeted the most and ensure your posts are in a similar vein.
• See the posts schedule - are they tweeting daily, hourly and if so is there a specific time?

2) What is a tweet - a tweet is a 140 character sentence used to give bits of information. It is considered acceptable practice to ignore grammar and use phone accronyms such as LOL, BTW, u, pls, w/ (for with) and w/o for without etc. Remember that links and photographs will take up some of the characters of a tweet. For longer tweets - use 1/2, 2/2 at the end or beginning of the tweet.

3) Handle - if you have a common name - it is most likely taken on twitter. If you’re a new brand - it’s better to create a name so that you can get the handle you want on all the social media portals including your own domain name. But if that’s not a possibility then it’s best to add numbers to your name. For e.g. if your name is John Doe and @JohnDoe is taken - don’t put @Itsjohndoe or @Thejohndoe. If someone is trying to tweet at you they will likely just write @Joh hoping witter will automatically give them suggestions. So it’s better to make your handle as @john_doe or @johndoe1

*If your brand name is a registered trademark and is being used by an inactive account  - you can submit a report to Twitter to transfer the handle to you. If you don’t have a registered trademark then Twitter will not help get the handle.