Twitter Guide

Kathy TerrillSocial Media Insider

Twitter offers a goldmine to sellers who want to use social media to showcase their products.

Twitter is a very fast paced social media. It is ideal for sellers wanting to let the world know about newly arrived inventory and sales events.

It a great place to spot trends and news events. When you see “breaking news” on a trend or news event, use Twitter to quickly engage with social media users. Sellers doing this, gain attention for their posts and items. Bringing customers to your products gets you sales!

To begin, Twitter is an invaluable tool for sellers. You can easily listen to potential customers. "Social" listening is a breeze on twitter. To "Listen" search Twitter by relevant keywords and hashtags. You'll "hear" what people are talking about right now.

Facebook has privacy settings that users can set up on their personal accounts. If someone posts on Facebook for only friends and family to see it, that is who have access to that content.

Twitter has very few users using privacy settings. Sellers searching keywords and terms like baseball, #Baseball, #MLB, #Yankees, #FashionTrends #redtops, #promdresses, etc. can see and read everything posted on Twitter using that keyword or hashtag.

This is fantastic! Are shoppers talking about XX? Wanting YY? Do they post about free shipping and/or looking for coupons? Using Twitter you can find out!

Twitter shows savvy sellers what consumers want in service and products. Post on Twitter addressing that need. Watch the sales roll in! Cha Ching!

A Word On Branding

It's important you use the same name and graphics across all social media. When you do so, you help customers recognize you. This is called "branding".

You want to be clearly identifiable as YOU everywhere you are on social media.

Create Your Twitter Account There are two ways to create a new account on Twitter. You can start an account with your name and phone number. Or you can create an account with an email, date of birth and password. The best way to create an account is the second way with email, DOB, and password.https://help.twitter.com/en/create-twitter-account

Twitter accounts are free. You do not need to be an eBay store owner to benefit from Twitter. You can use Twitter to promote your listings with or without an eBay store. Personal and business accounts are created the same way on Twitter. It is not like Facebook with personal profiles and business pages or Pinterest personal account and business account. Your account is a business account on Twitter because you are using it for a business purpose.

Your Name and User Name You will need a name on Twitter and user name. If you have a eBay store you want your name and Twitter user name to be your store name. So, let's say your eBay store name is Kathy's eBay Store, that would be your name on Twitter. This should be the same name, or very close to it that you use on your Facebook Business Page, Pinterest and Instagram.

Your user name is @ followed by 15 characters. You do not need to use all fifteen. So, for Kathy's eBay Store my user name would be @KathyseBayStore BUT that's sixteen characters

I can then shorten it to @KathyeBayStore. Capitalize the first letter of a new word so it's easy to read and understand. You want your user name to be easy to remember.

Here's a character counter so you can check yours- https://www.lettercount.com/

IF your name is already taken, you will need to tweak your name a bit. @KathyNYCStore for instance. You can add a location, or one or letters to have your username be different than an existing one. You can have more than one Twitter account. It might be beneficial to you to have one Twitter for personal tweets and one for your business. If so, you'll create an additional account with a different email address.

Twitter Header Your Twitter header and profile are crucial for getting followers. They need to stand out. Also, you want to clearly show who you are. With a standout header and profile you attract your ideal customers.The header is the graphic that shows above your profile/bio.

According to design site Canva the ideal dimensions are 1500 x 500 px. Keep your graphic and text towards the middle of your graphic. The reason for this is that mobile devices cut off the sides of your graphic.

You can design your header for free on Canva. Some sellers chose to hire designers on Fiver.com and Upwork.com.

When creating your header, think about what your message is to your customers. You might include pictures of your top selling products, or product lines. If women's dresses are a popular item for you, include that.

Who you are? Your social proof is also important to get followers. Social proof is your "credentials". Are you a top rated sellers, award winner, have XXX feedback, XXX years in business? Whatever you feel is your standout quality, you can include that in text in your header.

Remember when including text, your graphic is what grabs folks on Twitter. So, yes use text, but don't overdo it. Any questions on this, go to your Insiders Facebook group and ask questions. Feel free to post headers you're working on for group feedback. You can change your headers seasonally and or for a sale.

Twitter Profile Picture Your Twitter profile is your avatar logo. For your profile picture you don't want to leave it blank. If you do you will be an boring grey circle. It's not wise to start tweets your products without a profile picture.

It is professional and businesslike to upload a logo or picture in place before you begin tweeting. It speaks to your professionalism. You will get far more followers, comments and re tweets having a profile picture. Most social media experts recommend using a personal picture of your face.

If you are not comfortable with that, using your company logo is fine. I see successful companies making both choices. Do what is comfortable for you.

Your graphic/photo for your profile should be at least 400 px x 400 px. Here is how to know how many pixels your picture is https://support.blurb.com/hc/en-us/articles/207795846-Find-out-how-many-pixels-wide-a-photograph-is

Another way to be sure your image is large enough is to go to Canva, choose custom size 400 px x 400 px and upload your photo and adjust sizing here, then download to your computer.

Twitter Bio Your Twitter bio is very, very important to you for getting followers and retweets. You have 160 characters to capture Twitter user’s attention. The character count includes spaces and emojis. You want to be "you" in your bio. Don't just sell in your bio. Are you a wife, husband, aunt, grandparent? Do you love Texas? Do you have a favorite team, sport, craft you enjoy? Include one to two words about that. Twitter finds slightly quirky bios engaging. So for instance:Mom Lover of frozen daiquiris & long beach walks. Sells classic vintage games & glassware you won't find everywhere. Over 10000 Feedback

Look on Twitter. Whose bios/profiles do you like? Which stand out to you? Look at several. Using what you learn, create your own. Feel free to post your bio, and or any portion of your profile in the Insiders Facebook group for help and or feedback. You will see some Twitter users using hashtags in their bio. You DON'T want to do this. The reason why is, if someone clicks that hashtag it takes them off your profile and into a Twitter search. You want people to read your tweets and respond to them. You're not looking for folks to get pulled away from you and your social media content.

Twitter Hashtags Hashtags are keywords and or keyword phrases that Twitter users take advantage of to find relevant content. Hashtags can include brand, color, style, details, and or usage for the item. Often hashtags will be very similar to the item specifics on eBay, and or the tags on Etsy. Hashtags can also be humorous You can search by words on Twitter. You can also look by hashtags.Search the word weather on Twitter with and without a hashtag and note the difference. So, for sellers, write your tweet. Include two hashtags. Hashtags can be placed anywhere in your Tweet. To make the hashtag easier to read you can capitalize the first letter of a new word. #WomensDress for instance.

Hashtags for automotive parts could be brands, parts and or need like #Ford, #Chevrolet #HubCaps #CarParts etc.Clothing can be: #menshirt, #UnderArmour #WhiteMensShirt, #WeeekendWardrobe, #PartyDress, #DKNY, or #NikeAir.Seasonal can be: #EasterTime, #ValetinesGiftHer, #MothersDayGift, #StockingStuffer, #Gift4Grad etc. When you are logged into Twitter, trending and relevant hashtags will be displayed. If you see something you like, include that hashtag in your tweet. Search on Twitter for ideas. What are brands similar to you using? Watch, learn and test, See what hashtags your followers engage with.

Creating A Tweet Tweets on Twitter, like other social media are most effective when product post are mixed with inspiration posts, tips posts, food posts and humor posts. The basic rule of thumb for effective social media is the 80/20 rule. That rule is 80% of posts should be non-product related, with 20% product related.Select non product content that relates to what you sell.For instance, if you sell pet products, you might also tweet cute pet pictures or pet videos.Fashion sellers can tweet fashion tips etc.You do not need to create your own social content. You can retweet others content.Search by relevant hashtags to find great posts to share with your followers.Look below at Twitter lists, as they can help you with this.

The average lifespan of a tweet on Twitter is 20 seconds. Twitter is one social media you can err on the side posting more products and less social as it's such a fast paced social media. Twitter is highly effective for promoting sale events or auctions as it is so quick. In contrast, Pinterest is better suited to content that you want to live for months and years. On Twitter your tweet can be up to 280 characters. Prior to November of 2017 it was 140. Think about what you want to say about your product. What is compelling about it? If you were to be looking to buy it, how would you be searching? Would you search brand. color and or style? What need does it meet? Is it helping me to look good, stay warm, dress for a party, add to my collection or save me time? With that in mind write your Tweet and include two hashtags. Then click tweet.

If you're on a computer click the "What's happening" box you see at the top of your Twitter feed and compose your tweet. You can add up to four pictures, a video or Giphy. If you are sharing a product post you'll write your post, upload your picture and tweet. Be sure to include a link to buy your item. If the ink is long, you can shorten it with a free bitly account. https://bitly.com/

If you are sharing an item from a site like eBay, Etsy or Amazon, your product will have a Twitter share button. You can use it. Often the tweet image is wonky or cut off. Also look carefully at the prefilled suggested Tweet that the share button pulls. Is it what you want to say about the item?

On a iphone or ipad, while logged into your account click the feather icon with the plus sign. Then write your tweet. Click tweet.On Android scroll to the bottom and click on share this item.

Adding Videos And Giphy To Tweets You can share video in a tweet. Twitter will support videos from one second to two minutes and two seconds. It can be highly effective to Tweet a video of your product with a tweet about your product with a link to the product. You can also tweet social video content. Don't overlook retweeting others videos to your followers.Here's howhttps://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/twitter-videos You can also include a giphy with a tweet. Giphys are fun short videos. They are free to use. Here's how with a link to available Giphys.https://giphy.com/posts/how-to-share-giphy-gifs-on-twitter

SharePic Video is an app that creates videos of your online listings. It grabs the pictures directly from your listing. You can include your logo, recent feedback, and price if desired. SharpicVideo has a scheduling feature. I use SharePicVideo. It’s a fast, simple way to create video content. You can also post to other social media sites with it. Here is my affiliate link for SharePicVideo

Use Of Emojis

A recent study by Larry Kim of the Ad Agency Wordstream, found ads run with emojis got more clicks and engagement than the ad without emojis.Emojis are fun and communicative.You can use emojis in your Twitter bio and in tweets.Here is a link to emojipedia. Look at the emojis available. https://emojipedia.org/. If you are Tweeting from your phone or tablet, look at the emojis you have in your keyboard.You can cut and paste them and add them to your tweets.Look at big brands similar to what your sell.Study their use of emojis.Test the use of emojis. Which emojis do your followers like ad respond to?

Pinned Tweet When you create a Tweet, you have the ability to pin it to the top of your feed. You want to do this. Whatever tweet you want followers to take notice of, should be your pinned tweet. Newly arrived product, top selling items, most expensive listing, eye catching piece of information or a sale event, all make great pinned Tweets.

A pinned Tweets lets your followers know, this is what I want you to see. For your followers that retweet you, it says, "This is what I want retweeted".

Here is how you pin a Tweet on Twitter.https://youtu.be/w3sYyIyUIeE.

How Often Should I Tweet? If you have under 1000 followers on Twitter I'd start with 5-10 tweets a day. These tweets include retweeting others content and live tweets.As your followers grow, pay attention to what tweets are getting liked and retweeted. Do more of those. Using schedulers and retweeting others content you can grow to do over 30 tweets a day.

Be sure to jump in and periodically live tweet. Tweet a picture of your morning coffee, or packages ready to be mailed.

In the past, Twitter was very tolerant of tweeting the same content over and over in rapid succession. That changed in March of 2018. In the past some large marketers would push the same tweet out across multiple accounts many times within 24 hours. This was called Tweetdecking. It is no longer allowed. To make sure you don’t get flagged as a spammer, when you reuse tweets, spread them out with at least 24 hours before reusing the same tweet.

How Do I Delete A Tweet? Go to the Tweet you want to delete. Find the V icon. Click it and delete.https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/delete-tweets Twitter Lists Twitter has a list capability that is very handy. You can make your Twitter lists public or private. Let's say you are a collectibles seller. You could make public lists of the twitter ids for brands you carry, or twitter ids for well-known collectible bloggers. Do you sell video games? Then a Twitter list of the Twitter the brands you sell with their Twitter ID might interest your followers.

Do your fans like a certain music style or celebrities? Create a Twitter list of profiles that your followers might like. To create a Twitter list - click on your profileClick Create List.Name Your List. If it's public,chose a title that easy to understand. If it's private, only you see it. Select a name that you know who is on your list If you have seller friends that regularly retweet your items, a private list of the sellers can come in handy. When you are running a sale, you can go through your seller friend list and tweet some of their items They will in all likelihood come over and tweet your pinned tweet.

Think about what lists would benefit your followers? Make those lists public.Brands and people you want to track for your business research, those Twitter lists should be private. Lists have to be done manually. Consider if they are worth your time.

Your Twitter Feed Or What You See On Twitter What you see on Twitter more or less is displayed in real time, with the most recent tweets of the accounts you follow at the top. Promoted Tweets (twitter ads) will also be mixed in.

Twitter will also include Tweets from accounts similar to what you follow. I find the Twitter feed less controlled than the Facebook feed. You'll see more Tweets from folks and businesses you follow without the businesses having to pay for their tweets to be shown.

Finding Customers There are several ways to find your customers on Twitter.★ Tweet content that appeals to them and they will find you.

★ Find big brands that appeal to your ideal shopper. Click Followers under their name. Go through the list. Who looks like a potential customer? Follow them. Look at what they tweet. Can you like, retweet or comment on any of their tweets? When you comment, like, or retweet someone's tweets that user is notified. They will come look at you. See the importance of your profile and bio?

★ Find big brands and look at who they follow. Do you want to follow who they follow too?

★ Search by hashtags that would appeal to your customer. Look at who is using them. Like, comment on and or retweet tweets you find.

★ Use Twitter Advanced Search https://twitter.com/search. Type in phrases or question your customers might be asking. What do I wear to a formal dinner party? What jeans fit best? What cat bowl is the best?, etc.

★ Subscribe to Social Quandt. Using keywords you select, Social Quandt finds you followers. The service grows your followers at a very rapid rate with algorithms they put into place for you. Try it and see what you think. This is my affiliate link. It has a 14 day free trial. After the trial the special rate you receive is $25 a month.https://www.socialquant.net/?ref=12.

Like, Comments, and Retweets In addition to creating your own Tweets it's good to like, comment on and retweet others tweets, You can like a tweet, by clicking the heart icon on the tweet. The person who tweeted will get a notification you liked their tweet, For retweeting you can retweet with or without a comment. Both are fine.

To retweet - underneath the tweet you want to retweet click the retweet icon

Once you've clicked, you are given the option to retweet with or without a comment.

If you want to let your followers know why you are retweeting, adding a comment is great. You can add relevant hashtags. You can also include the original tweeters name. So if @sassysavings tweets about her favorite breakfast is pancakes with a picture of her breakfast. I can retweet and add the comment - I'm hungry already @sassysavings #Pancakelover.

When people retweet your content. It's nice to thank them on Twitter. Thanks for the RT. (Retweet). You can also thank them by retweeting something of theirs.

Use of Schedulers Schedulers are an invaluable tool for Twitter.Hootsuite and Buffer both offer free versions of their tool. Connect your Twitter account. Compose Tweets and schedule them as instructed. Here is how to schedule on Hootsuite. You will use their calendar/scheduling icon. You cannot automatically recycle tweets on Hootsuite. But you can schedule the tweet using the calendar feature several timeshttps://blog.hootsuite.com/how-to-schedule-tweets/

In Hootsuite you can add streams from social media. You can add a stream of who mentions you on Twitter. You can also include a stream of when folks retweet your tweets. This is very handy for thanking retweeters and or reciprocating by tweeting come of their content. https://help.hootsuite.com/hc/en-us/articles/204585760-Add-a-stream. Hootsuite has browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox. If you use another browser, you can drag their bookmarklet tool to ithttps://business.twitter.com/en/a/get-started.html.

Buffer has similar capabilities. Once you create an account and link Twitter, you will need to create a schedule. https://faq.buffer.com/article/281-how-do-i-review-my-posting-schedule/.Once you schedule is set up, you are ready to start adding your Tweets- https://faq.buffer.com/article/574-adding-posts-to-the-queue.Buffer has browser extensions for Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Operahttp://www.dummies.com/education/internet-basics/how-to-use-the-buffer-browser-extension/.

Evergreen Content on Twitter With Schedulers Due to the short life span of tweets, Twitter is a social media sellers can recycle social and product posts. Most of the higher end schedulers like AgoraPulse offer this service. I like Social Oomph. It doesn't have scheduling calendars, but it's less expensive than AgoraPulse and highly effective. It uses a bucket or reservoir system. There is a free and a paid version. HERE is my affiliate link,

After you link your Twitter account, you'll create a reservoir. Name it in a way you'll know what's in it. Twitter eBay Products, Twitter Humor etc. Chose how often you want posts from the reservoir to go to Twitter. Once, twice, or three times a day?

You can start with once a day and as you add more content edit the reservoir to post more frequently. You don’t want the same post to appear more than once in 24 hours. Click pause on the reservoir. You don't want it to start until you've filled it.Next click Posting, then create new update. Click new image and text. Create your tweet. Include a link to your item. If you want to be able to shorten your links, Social Oomph will do it for you. You can also connect your bitly account to Social Oomph. This enables you to track the number of clicks on your links https://www.socialoomph.com/help/index/activatebitly.

If you want evergreen content of your products, look at Tweet Eye. Using Tweet Eye’s keyword function, you can create a schedule of Tweets. As products in the schedule sell out, according to your keyword selection, Tweet Eye will continuously fill and tweet your schedule. It is a “set it and forget it” tool. It has a free version. HERE is my affiliate link.

More Automation You can automated thanking the followers that engaged with you the most. Two free ways to do this are:

Sumall https://sumall.com once set up will auto tweet thanking the top three followers that engaged with you the most during the week. You can chose which day you want the tweet to go out. It will also offer to Tweet your top metrics. I don't see the purpose in that for a seller, so I deleted that when it was offered. Sumall has free analytics that are great. You get a weekly email with a summary of the effectiveness of your social media. You can link many social media accounts. Currently Sumall is free.

IFTTT https://ifttt.com/ IFTTT, which is If This Then That has numerous free applets or recipes you can use for Twitter.

You can choose from applets that will announce the sunrise and sunset, the day's weather, retweeting your Instagram photo posts, get notifications when @username you select tweets (great for following celebrities), mention, and thank new followers, and more.

Browse IFTTT and see what applets appeals to you.

When you activate a new recipe be sure and check it a few times to ensure that it is working correctly.

Twitter Ads If a product post is very popular consider a Twitter ad.

I find Facebook ads most successful for sellers as Facebook has greater targeting capabilities. That being said, if you have a Twitter post going wild, look at boosting it with a Twitter promotion or ad. https://business.twitter.com/en/a/get-started.html.

In closing, Twitter is a great social media for social listening. For sellers it is ideal for getting quick attention to products, as it is a social media that moves very fast. When sellers run sales, Twitter is a great social media to turn to. Mix in great social tweets along with product tweets. Use schedulers to tweet and recycle content, saving sellers valuable time. Watch for what tweets are the most popular with your fans. Popular content can often be re-used, and looked at for guidelines for creation of future tweets. Jump in periodically and live tweet. Tweet, like others tweets and retweet. Enjoy discovering your shoppers on Twitter and showcasing your products to them. Using Twitter effectively can get you more sales!