Your company’s first steps on Twitter – 1 of 2

If your company has just landed in the Twitter world and you do not know what are the first steps to take or the words follower and retweet sound like Chinese to you, we leave you this guide with the main functions of the social network, some tips on how to generate the greatest possible impact with only 140 characters and some very useful tools to take advantage of it.

Twitter profile settings

Unify names in all social networks

In the case of Twitter, the username accompanies the ‘@’ and you can find all these details in Settings, within the account drop-down.

Whatever the name of your company is, try to repeat it in every profile of every social network you have. For example:

• Well: Tu_Nombre on Facebook, @Tu_Nombre on Twitter and on Instagram.
• Wrong: Tu_Nombre on Facebook, @tunombre on Twitter and @TuNombre on Instagram. Users will find you but it will cost them more and your brand is not as clear.

Biography

This section will describe your company, what it does, what services it offers, etc. By clicking the ‘Edit profile’ button from our page, we can edit everything the public sees. The page will change and we will have the option to edit the profile picture and header, account name, description, website, location and color. What is each thing?

• Location: location of the offices. In our case it would be “Calle Reina, 17 1º Madrid”.
• Header photo: a large image that accompanies and adorns the profile. It will only be seen if users enterour profile page. The ideal size is 1500×500 px.
• Profile picture: This image will appear in our profile and will also accompany our publications. It should be the logo of the company or brand or a photograph that represents us.Clear, simple and easily recognizable. The dimensions are 400×400 px.
• Website: link to the company’s website or blog.
• Color: each user can choose the color in which hashtags, mentions and links will appear within their profile. It is recommended to use the primary corporate color as long as it is legible.

Types of publications

The tone

The tone when communicating on Twitter must fit both the company and the profiles it wishes to target. Therefore, it is necessary to know both the company’s philosophy and the purpose of the brand on Twitter: to educate, entertain, sell, inform, etc.Once the previous point has been decided, the tone will come on its own. It can be corporate, informal, approachable, humorous, testimonial, etc.

Tweets

1. Text: do not think that 140 characters are a limitation, on the contrary. It is an advantage because it conditions us to be more direct, clear and concise. So think about the main idea you want to convey and write it down, the details can always be found in a link that accompanies the tweet.
2. Links: it is not always necessary for tweets to be accompanied by a link, it should only appear when it expands on the information we mention. Keep in mind that including them will always leave us with fewer characters to write. It is also important to know tools such as bit.ly, which shorten links to fit in the tweet.
3. Images: tweets with photographs receive twice as much interaction as those with only text. An image is much more visual, it generates greater impact:

• They will stop to look at the photograph because it attracts more attention among so much text.
• If it is beautiful, eye-catching, informative or complements the information it will be retweeted, bookmarked or commented on.
• When someone visits our profile, they will probably start with the pictures, as it is more visual and lighter.

4. Hashtags: a hashtag on Twitter is a word preceded by the # symbol.

• It allows you to differentiate or group tweets into conversation topics and also adds information for users: to know what we are talking about at a glance.
• When it comes to searching, they are basic.
• Clicking on them will list all the tweets in which it has been used.
• They are used to save characters.
• Depending on their popularity, they can become trending topics, that is, the most commented topics of the moment.
• They have become so popular that they have crossed over from Twitter and are already being used on other social networks.
• Companies use it to account for their impacts.

5. Mentions: mentioning is an ideal strategy to get followers, retweets or Favorites. To do so, the user’s name preceded by @ is used. Just by starting to type the name of the account, Twitter will display a list of matching profiles. The mentions made to you will appear in your notifications section. You can also use the at sign to search for users.

Retweets

This function is used to send our followers tweets from other accounts that we believe may be useful to them, either because they complement our discourse or because they touch on topics that interest us and, therefore, them as well.

They will be saved in the Timeline of our profile and our followers will see them in theirs when we retweet, even if the original message was sent days before.

Retweeting is as simple as clicking on the arrows icon that appears under the tweet from our Timeline. Clicking on it will open a window that allows us to add a comment on the message we are going to retweet and we can use it to mention, add hashtags or simply send it as it is, without commenting.

Replies

If a tweet seems interesting or if we want to add something to the message, or simply interact with the user, we just have to reply. This function will lead us to start a conversation, establish contact with the account that launches it, generate new tweets of interest, etc. To do so, just click on the tweet you want to reply to and a box will appear in which you can reply. The user will appear beforehand. All the replies to a Tweet will be stored as a conversation and can be seen by clicking on the first tweet.