Simply Zesty wins four major international new clients

New appointments by Teradata, Kaspersky Lab, Eurofound, and ebookers takes Irish social media agency’s revenue from exports to 25%

Niall Harbison and Lauren Fisher founders of Simply Zesty

2nd December, 2011; Dublin, Ireland: Simply Zesty, the Dublin-based social media agency founded by Niall Harbison and Lauren Fisher, has today announced it has secured four new major international clients. It means the young company, which was only set up in 2009 and employs 25 people at its St Stephen’s Green HQ, now generates 25% of its revenue from outside Ireland. The firm expects this figure to increase significantly in the next two years and will soon outgrow its third office.

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Twitter by numbers – Should I use Twitter to promote my business?

This post is an extended version of the article featured of August’s issue of the Irish personal finance magazine You & Your Money.

Should I use Twitter to promote my business?

Yes, Twitter is a great communication tool and it’s free. But there are a lot of misnomers and misunderstandings about the social media tool. It is very effective at growing your on line network, highlighting your skills and business and, because it is used to share information, it is very good at keeping abreast of the news and developments in business.

Twitter started of as being called a ‘micro-blogging’ site, but since it has migrated into a much more general communication tool with very rich and varied content, albeit with on proviso, that the each ‘Tweet’ you can post is limited to 140 characters.

Here are a few tips:

1. Before you start using Twitter for your business set up a personal account and get used to using it.
2. It’ll be easier and quicker to grow followers to your personal account as people are much more likely to follow you back, so start by getting to know people personally.
3. Use your company account to post links to news on your website, services, or articles on issues in your industry or commentary.
4. In order to promote your business follow potential customers either in your target sector or in the locality of your business.
5. ‘ReTweet’ your company Tweets using your personal account to the higher level of followers.
6. Respond to every Tweet you receive addressed to you.
7. Never ever do hard sell. It simply does not work on Twitter and you’ll lose followers.

Before you start a corporate account use Twitter via a personal account first so that you can get a feel for it and use it properly. The way you grow your follower numbers is by following other people because most people reciprocate and follow you back.

As I am a freelancer I only use one Twitter account because I am currently the only person in business, and I want to be as transparent as possible in how I operate.  But, if you have a large business it is best to keep your business and personal accounts separate, especially if other staff members are going to be using the account.

More people are likely to follow your personal account and less will follow your business account. This is because there is a lot of spamming and hard sell by businesses on Twitter. Therefore, you should concentrate on building follows for both your personal and business accounts, then post any company announcements only to your businesses Twitter account and then ReTweet is via your personal account.

Twitter users are heavily focused around smart phones users because people often Tweet updates on whilst they are on the move. This means Twitter users are skewed to those who are more affluent, so it’s a great way to target a higher demographic.

Twitter is now being used by Google to help assist their Page Rank of websites. This was revealed by Google’s Matt Cutts at a recent presentation in Dublin. He indicated that using Twitter to promote information on a website can help boost how Google views the authority of the website. Google considers each ‘ReTweet’ of a link to that website by other Twitter users is considered a vote of confidence in that site by other Twitter users and also by Google, so it is a great way to boost your website’s search engine optimisation and your Google Page Rank.

If you have multiple members of staff posting to your businesses Twitter account then you need to be careful as the Twitter feed will be considered the official voice of your business. It is best to nominate one member of staff t to post to it and at first get them to approve the Tweets with you.

Ensure all your company details and website etc are in your Twitter accounts Profile details as this will make it easier for Twitter users to find your business. If you staff also use Twitter get them to put your website address in their Profile, but ensure they put a disclaimer that all Tweets are there own and not that of the business.

If you have any questions about Twitter please leave a comment and I’ll get back to you.

Ends