A few rules of thumb for businesses using Twitter. For beginners and experienced Twitter users alike.
Are you considering using Twitter to promote your business and communicate with customers and prospects? Whether you are a beginner or an experienced Twitter user, the following rules of thumb will help your business get the most out of Twitter.
1. Relax, my friend! It's a cocktail party, not a sales presentation or board meeting.
2. Link your Twitter profile to your website or blog (and your website or blog should include easy links to the rest of your entire Internet presence.)
3. Have a to-the-point but interesting Twitter bio. Include your title and business name, but follow it up with something personal, distinctive or even wacky. You're a human being, act like it.
4. Tweet. Duh.
5. Vary your tweet content and style. Again, you are a human being living on Planet Earth. Don't try to tell me that your business is the only thing you care about. If something random but interesting comes to mind, tweet it.
6. Balance regular tweets with replies. Reply too seldom and you will be correctly identified as self-absorbed. Reply too often and you will be properly pegged as a follower not an initiator. Find an instinctive balance and I might just think you're human.
7. Be genuine. Are you seeing a pattern here?
8. Make your promo tweets AWESOME. Study great newspaper headlines and commercial tag lines. Take note when you see a great tweet and analyze it to find out why you love it. Apply what you learn to your tweets.
9. Time your promo tweets to coincide with UNUSUAL sales, promotions, events, etc. Timing is everything.
10. Help others. Freely re-tweet great tweets.
11. Share great links you think your followers might love.
12. Make friends. This goes along with that whole "try to pretend to act like a human being" thing.
The take-home lesson here is be human, interact, promote others as well as you and your business, be human, be brilliant, be human, and be...
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