E=MC2 PR's 10 top tips on using Twitter for business

Twitter really is a great marketing tool for driving customers to your website. And with Google now showing tweets in its search results, you need to be making sure that you are search engine optimising your Twitter posts.

Here are E=MC2 Public Relations’ 10 top tips on how to do this and raise your internet rankings:

1. Choose your Twitter username carefully: it should be both memorable and easy to remember as well as suggestive of your brand, products or services.
   
   
2. Keyword: your Twitter company profile, username and blog or website address. For example, your profile should have keywords which relate to your business or products and what you do.
   
   
3. Put your keywords in the first 40 characters: of your Twitter profile - the more keyword rich your profile is, the easier it is for Google to see it.
   
   
4. Prefix your tweet with a hashtag (#): if you are tweeting about a specific topic or subject you want people to see, follow and engage with you on. You can do this by prefixing a word with a hash symbol, for example: #business, #publicrelations. Hashtags also make it easier for people to find your discussion topic.
   
   
5. Use keywords: in the title of your tweets.
   
   
6. Retweet: make your tweets interesting and easy for other Twitter users to retweet you. For example leave enough room for the retweet function ‘RT@username’ at the end of your tweets. Retweets are the way to build influence in Twitter and start relationships with people you want to get to know. Here are a couple of useful links on retweeting strategy:
   How to Get Retweeted by Guy Kawasaki: http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/the-world/article/how-to-get-retweeted
   The Science of Retweets by Dan Zarrella: http://mashable.com/2009/02/17/twitter-retweets
   
   
7. Very long website URLs can be shortened: if you are tight on space to fit your tweet. As tweets can’t be more than 140 characters, you can shorten the URL of your website by using bit.ly. If you don’t know how to do this, here’s a useful ‘how to’ link: https://bitly.com/pages/help#i_0_2
   
   
8. Be helpful: less than 10 per cent of your tweets should be ‘selling’ to people and more than 50 per cent of your tweets should be helpful and add value. For example you might respond to a question, retweet someone else’s post which you think is useful and interesting to others, make a remark, share a recommendation or contribute to an existing conversation.
   
   
9. Quality not quantity: don’t over do it, people who tweet too much get ignored or unfollowed. Your tweets should be ‘qualitative’ so that people stop and listen to what you have to say because it’s good quality information that’s also useful.
   
   
10. Hand feed, not ‘force-feed’: many people automate their tweets – don’t! They should be well-thought out and hand-fed to your followers. No one like’s being ‘talked at’ 24-hours a day!