Happy New Year! And what’s this Twitter thingy anyway?

Yes, believe it or not, in the year 2010 there are still people, small business owners, who are not plugged into the social networks. No Twitter, no Facebook, no MySpace, and they don’t even have a blog! Wow, you aren’t on LinkedIn yet? These are intelligent people who are busy (actually working their butts off) trying to stay afloat in a bad economy. What is surprising to me is the number of people who approached me over the holidays and asked me about my experience with social media. For example, at our neighbor’s New Years party; the food was delicious, the drinks were flowing, and the people asking me about social media were plentiful.  I had a couple of friends who asked the same question almost in the same exact way: “What is this Twitter thingy and why does my small business need to get on it?”

The people who asked me the questions were sober and coherent, but I am not sure that my answers were and even if they were coherent I think it would be helpful to put my “Elevator Pitch Party Speech” on a blog.

1. First, reserve  your Twitter handle. Hey, BTW, do you already have a company website? If not, grab a domain for your company name and reserve it using one of the domain providers. If you have no website and just a domain name, pick a blog site like WordPress and point your domain name as a redirect to wordpress as a placeholder and post a basic web page. Also make sure you have a Facebook fan site for your company. Get a company site on LinkedIn.

2. When you sign up for that Twitter thingy go to twitter.com, get a handle for your company name, and build your profile. Put your website, your product info, whatever you want into the profile. You might want to grab all of the relevant handles, such as “companynameCARES” and any of your brand or trademark names.

3. Make your first post. Say that you are happy to be on twitter and point to your website just to get something going. If you are making a new product announcement, even better. The first post doesn’t have to be that interesting.

4. If you want to get fancy you can make a custom Twitter background that shows your brand, a picture of your product, whatever. Read the help or search the web for info on this. Your company or product logo should be your profile picture.

5. Identify keywords that pertain to your product and determine the “experts” in your industry. Go to  http://search.twitter.com and search on those terms. Or better, use an automated service like tweetbeeps.com to monitor keywords. Once you identify the right people, look at who they’re following and who is following them as your potential pool of people you should follow.

6. Download Tweetdeck or Seesmic. Pick one, they are both good. You can designate many columns that you can personalize and track what you want to follow. Examples include key users you want to follow, your company name, your product names, your competitors, etc. If you are a small business you won’t have anyone you can dedicate to this but you should at least check on this once a day.

7. The best way to use Twitter (my opinion) is to help other people. If you see someone suffering with a problem (especially in your niche) that you can help with, help them. Provide content that your followers will find valuable; anything from the press, from people within your company, etc. Just remember that your competitors will also be reading your Tweets.

8. You can also use Twitter to find new customers. If you sell bamboo furniture and someone Tweets “I hear that bamboo furniture is green-friendly, where do I get some?” and you sell bamboo furniture, then there you go! There are lots of ideas on the web about this, and the people I list at the bottom of this blog can give you advice.

9. You MUST use Twitter to provide Customer service: listen to the customers complaining about and praising your company and find a way to thank them for doing this. Of course if they are complaining, try to fix their problems so you can turn them into a loyal customer.

10. Experiment! If you anger someone, oh well. Try to be positive, not negative. Don’t be offended by other people using “FAIL” and profanity, they will. That doesn’t mean that you have to.

Again, this is the “Elevator Pitch Party Speech” for getting started in social media.  I can expand each of these points by 50 paragraphs but instead I recommend that you learn from some of the social media experts like Guy Kawasaki (@guykawasaki), Natalie Petahouff (@drnatalie), Esteban Kolsky (@ekolsky), Ray Wang (@rwang0) and many others.  Also, what would you add to your getting started elevator pitch for social media?

One last thing, if you would like to invite me to your next party to talk about Social Media I am a wonderful dancer, NOT.

Charlie cannot dance