What You Need to Know About Twitter

Twitter is one of the most dynamic consumer engagement tools available. The issue is knowing to how use it. Simply starting an account and posting content is not enough to get your small business connected to your customers. Twitter Gurus around the world have developed tricks of the trade for building dynamic communication, brand voice and, ultimately, gaining followers.

So where do you begin? What can you do to keep people interest in what you have to say? Here are a few ideas of how to get the most out of Twitter and build your business at the same time.

Start with a Solid Profile – This includes choosing an applicable name and appropriate picture that represents your business. Keep your Twitter handle or name easy to remember so Twitter users are more likely to engage with you. For your background photo, use something that is expressive of your business’ story. For example, café, coffee beans or a unique picture of your establishment are a good place to start. Keep your profile picture simple: use your logo or a headshot for a personal touch.

Brand Voice – Know your personality and stick to it. Marketing experts love to emphasize the importance of brand voice and for good reason! Your company’s brand voice is what makes it unique and gives it a personality. If you are a fashion company or accounting firm, your choice of topics and content will be vastly different. Make sure that your word choice and topics stay true to who and what you are. Develop a communications brand kit that outlines what and how you communicate with your customers. Keeping your brand voice true to your company and consistent will also ensure that your audience gets to know you faster and keeps coming back for more.

Follow for Follow? – Building your audience After creating your profile and establishing your brand voice, you need to make sure you are encouraging people to follow you. If you have an existing blog, e-newsletter or other social media profiles, promote your Twitter account and ask people to get in on the conversation. Another good tactic is to start following prominent people and companies within your industry. Reach out to customers directly by asking to follow them and ,hopefully, they will return the favor.

Bridge Twitter with other media A reason why Twitter is such a dynamic consumer engagement tool is its versatility. Sure, you are confined to 140 characters per post, but within those characters you can put links to interesting articles, blogs, images, videos, etc. Spicing up your tweets with different media keeps your posts interesting and followers interested. tweetpic.com offers a free photo shrinking service so you can easily share pics with your followers. If you want to share articles without lengthily links, use bitly.com or ow.ly to shrink links to a fraction of their original size.

Leverage your Twitter content on other Platforms – Using cross-platform promotions is a great way to drive traffic to your site and keep your brand voice strong across multiple channels. If you are posting a new blog, promote it on Twitter with a catchy phrase. Have a new e-newsletter coming out this month? Why not promote it on Twitter with a picture that’s related to the content. Make sure that you have links to your other social media sites or website on your Twitter profile. Also put your Twitter handle on Facebook, Instagram or any other social media outlets that your small business uses. The goal should be to keep people moving around on different platforms but still ultimately focused on your company.

Twitter started as a means to generate conversation and awareness, now it’s your turn to leverage the power of the Twitter-verse. For more Twitter tips and tricks, check out these articles. However, other social media experts such as Forbes and Social Media Examiner provide great tips that will help you to leverage your Twitter account.

We would love to hear some of your Twitter success stories! Share them with us.

–Jamie

For more Twitter tips, read:

Forbes’ “31 Twitter Tips: How to Use Twitter Tools And Twitter Best Practices for Business”

Social Examiner’s “How to Use Twitter for Business and Marketing“