Small Business Design Resources

How To Effectively Use Twitter For Business

Many small businesses have been resisting Twitter for a long time now, but the reality is that more and more of your customers are using Twitter – and so should you. A basic rule of marketing says that you need to be where your customers and prospects are. If your prospects are using Twitter, and your competitors are using Twitter, then NOT using Twitter could turn out to be a costly business mistake.

To properly use Twitter for business, you need to start by shaking the notion that Twitter is “stupid,” that you “don’t get it” and that it’s basically a huge waste of time. Twitter need not waste your time at all. In fact, most businesses spend about ten minutes per day twittering. A selective, disciplined use of social media in general and of Twitter in particular works beautifully for small businesses that can’t afford to hire someone to tweet all day for them. Ten minutes per day is all it takes to connect with prospects and to build your brand on Twitter.

Five Useful Tips for Using Twitter for Business

1. Add a personal touch. A cold corporate account is a turnoff – even if your customers are businesses too. Your tweets should include company news and info of course, but you should also have conversations – real conversations with followers. Many businesses add the name of the person who tweets for them to their bio as another great way to be more personal.

2. Use Twitter Search. One of the most important uses of Twitter for businesses is to respond to customer issues. Use Twitter Search to find out who’s mentioning your company on Twitter, and respond as necessary.

3. Don’t be too pushy. Tweets about your products are fine, but you should also tweet general industry news and links, retweet (which basically means repeat to others) what others are saying, ask and answer questions. If all your tweets are promoting your company and your products, you are not using Twitter properly.

4. Twitter is a great platform for promoting your blog posts. When you do, it’s a good idea to add a personal touch by introducing the topic, or asking a question about it, then providing a link to the blog post. Tweets that simply say “New blog post,” then give a link to the post don’t normally generate a lot of responses, because they’re not very interesting!

5. Be generous. Don’t promote just yourself. Promote others too, link to them, and be nice. There’s no need to promote direct competitors (although following them if they follow back and congratulating them on successes is good manners), but do make it a point to be generous with anyone who is not in direct competition to your business.

Above all, don’t be afraid of Twitter! Many small business owners worry about wasting entire days on Twitter and especially about the possibility of Twitter backfiring if used by customers to criticize them. But Twitter only wastes your time if you let it, and although it CAN be used to criticize your company, it can also be used by you to promptly respond to criticism, provide excellent customer service publicly, make things right for your customers and make your brand even stronger.

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• 10 Newbie Twitter Mistakes Made By Businesses (socialmediatoday.com)
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