In my “spare” time, I manage Twitter profiles for a number of businesses and a couple of minor celebrities and I recognise much of what you.

There is an important aspect if you are going to use Twitter as a marketing tool and it is often overlooked by many companies, even some of the big companies. That is your Twitter page background.

I always strive to convince my clients to have a background that is relevant to their company – one of Twitter's standard backgrounds are of no use and the free background design programs always seem to have an ad to say where they have come from and, again, are usually not relevant to the company. I usually design the background for my clients because I get to know their companies.

To show what's possible with a Twitter page background, I set up a Twitter account for my little girl (she's 17 months old) and anyone thinking of using a Twitter account can take a look at her profile just to get an idea. Her Twitter account is @oliviarita

In my “spare” time, I manage Twitter profiles for a number of businesses and a couple of minor celebrities and I recognise much of what you.

There is an important aspect if you are going to use Twitter as a marketing tool and it is often overlooked by many companies, even some of the big companies. That is your Twitter page background.

I always strive to convince my clients to have a background that is relevant to their company – one of Twitter's standard backgrounds are of no use and the free background design programs always seem to have an ad to say where they have come from and, again, are usually not relevant to the company. I usually design the background for my clients because I get to know their companies.

To show what's possible with a Twitter page background, I set up a Twitter account for my little girl (she's 17 months old) and anyone thinking of using a Twitter account can take a look at her profile just to get an idea. Her Twitter account is @oliviarita

As a last thing, can I just plug something that I recently got involved in on Twitter through a client. It's basically a Twitter account that raises money for charity by tweeting ads/links and all money raised goes to a charity. Twiving adopts a new charity every month so it can help raise money for as many worthy causes as possible – please follow @twiving and if you see a link that interests you then please click it for charity. I designed the background but it's not one of my best – it was a design offered to them in a range and that was the one they liked but again it will give you an idea of what you can achieve.

I'm relatively new to Twitter and like you said Todd, engaging with people has been the best thing about it. I'm so shocked at how many spammy messages are sent shouting out “click my link, click my link”. I think those people are completely missing the point!

I've already made some friends and potential partners via Twitter. Hope I can continue to use it as a great social tool.

I've found that engagement has been critical to success – not shocking obviously. But I like engaging with people that have nothing to do with my target market, as well. It's turned into amazing REAL friendships, but also connections to other people that have turned out to be tremendously helpful to my business and brand. I've hosted an online reality show with Deal or No Deal models and gotten a book deal all through engaging other people on twitter outside my market.

It's a fantastic platform for personal and professional success, when done right.

Thank you!!
Cheers
Teresa

Thanks

Interestingly, this is a very timely post for me. My agency has recently been asked by a financial consultancy business in the UK to give their head of marketing and a team of their consultants a workshop/seminar on how to use social media in promoting their brand and they specifically made reference to linkedin and twitter.
I have marketed and used Twitter for some time now, but I have never given any kind of presentation on it. I am just putting the content together at the minute, and it was reassuring to see my content and approach mirrors a lot of what was described here.

With regard to search.twitter.com you can use this to search out the discussions that your business needs to be a part of. Once you find those discussions, its imperative that you get involved in them.

One more thing, that many (actually too many) businesses are missing the boat on. Being “social” as in interacting with your followers is critical. If followers wanted one way info, they could simply go to your website and be done! You can’t just show up and spew out data, you need to put a face on the brand. Interacting encourages engagement and engagement creates unshakable brand equity!

Thanks again Lee!

Respectfully,
Paul Castain

cheers, Mark

Mark Evans
Director of Communciations
Sysomos Inc.