Using the first two blog posts in our B-to-B Twitter series, you should have already created a Twitter profile for your company and begun posting interesting tweets. Now, you need to begin building an audience for your company on Twitter.

Connecting with Other Users on Twitter
Being “social” is the key to social media success. So, it’s important to be as polite and responsive to people on Twitter as you are in all other aspects of your business.

To see who is talking about – or trying to interact with – your company, click the @ Connect link near the upper left corner of your Twitter profile. This will display a list of all tweets that include your Twitter handle. Once your Twitter account is established, you’ll see several types of tweets on this page:

• Re-tweets: Other Twitter users who have re-tweeted one of your posts.
• Mentions: Tweets that mention your company.
• @Mentions: Other Twitter users who are talking to your company.
• Favorites: Other Twitter users who added one of your tweets to their Favorites.
• New Followers: Twitter users who recently followed your company.
• Lists: The name of a list that another Twitter user has added your company to.

When people are talking to – or about – your company, be sure to acknowledge them as you would in real life. Be thankful to those who are promoting your company. Reply quickly to those who asking questions or complaining. And be “social” by sharing information posted by others that your audience might be interested in.

To reply to another user, simply click the Reply icon underneath their tweet about your company. You can also compose a new tweet to them by typing @ followed by their Twitter username in a tweet dialog box (i.e., @BoommMktg).

Add Hashtags to Your Tweets
To help other users find your company on Twitter, you’ll also want to include a Hashtag in your tweets. Hashtags make it easy for other B-to-B Twitter users who are interested in your company or industry to find your tweets.

Hashtags consist of a # followed by a popular term. For example, since Boomm Marketing & Communications often tweets about social media, we add the hashtag #socialmedia to our tweets.

If you are not sure which Hashtags are prevalent in your industry, check out tweets by thought leaders and competitors. You can also use Hastags such as #FollowFriday to build relationships with others or trending Hashtags that you see on your Twitter home page to newsjack top stories (such as #SuperBowl).

Twitter also offers some more advanced ways to interact with other users. We will talk more about this in next week’s blog post on using lists, favorites and direct messages.