We’ve written about Twitter before, but it is such an important topic that we wanted to cover it again! The mirco blogging service has already proven that it’s here to stay and has become a major tool businesses can use to reach out to their customers, prospects and overall network. But for newbies, the Twittersphere can be noisy and confusing. If you haven’t figured out how to use Twitter yet, here are a few ideas to get started.

1.       Customer Engagement On average there are 140 million tweets sent per day and more than likely some of these tweets are already talking or will talk about your company and its products or services. Don’t let these conversations happen without you because friendly and informative interaction can encourage new followers and repeat customers.  Here are a few methods to monitor tweets: 1) Social Mention (socialmention.com) and Twitter Search (search.twitter.com) are two easy to use and free tools that come with various features including email notifications for specific phrases. For example, you can track phrases like “emergency plumbing in pa” or “copper piping philadelphia”, so you can respond in real-time if someone is in need of your services, 2) Create and bookmark searches based on your company name, product names, and services and 3) Subscribe to RSS feeds to follow mentions in real-time.

2.       Search Engine Optimization Search engines index social media profiles plus individual tweets; unless you’re protecting your tweets by setting them to private. Here are some tips if you are like most businesses that want their Twitter efforts to help them rank on sites like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.: 1) Complete your Twitter profile, 2) Try  adding words to your profile that a consumer may use when searching for your services on search engines, 3) Remember to add your website URL and 4) Tweet often (a good goal is once per day)!  Search engines love fresh content.

3.       Driving Traffic with Content Distribution Twitter is a great way to drive traffic to your website. By tweeting out links to content that is housed on your site, like blog posts, promotions, coupons, and newsletters you are driving traffic back to your website. And don’t forget to shorten your links using Bit.ly or Google’s URL shortener since you have only 140 characters to carry your message.

4.       Humanize your Brand This is your opportunity to give customers a feel for the personality of your company. Find a voice that works for you; whether it’s professional or casual. You can post pictures of your employees at work or your events, and show a more personal side of the business while still being professional. We also recommend using a personal picture for your avatar, as opposed to a company logo, to increase approachability.

5.       Brag Board One feature we really like is the “favorite tweet.” You can add tweets raving about your company, products or services to your favorites and use the URL twitter.com/@yourtwitterhandle/favorites to share these testimonials with potential customers. Add the twitter favorites URL to your website, business cards or anywhere someone might want to know what others think about your company.