42.5 Tips on how to Tweet for Business

When it comes to social media Twitter is a bit of a double edged sword – on the one hand it is one of the most popular and easiest to use social tools; BUT on the other hand the terminology of Tweeting, Re-Tweeting, #, Tweets, DM and Follow Friday bewilders a lot of serious people who see it as a flippant waste of time.

Personally I believe that Twitter is one of the key social media tools for business but that all depends on how you use it and whom you follow; So in this blog I am going to focus on how to use Twitter strategically and well basically how to Tweet for business. The key marketing role of Twitter in a firms social media mix will be as a first point of contact with a larger number of “weaker connections” in the business community whom you can then move up the engagement ladder into valuable contacts by promoting blogs, Flickr and video content and most importantly by having conversations. Getting started

1. Read the PDF How to use Twitter for Business – A Beginner’s Guide. Hubspot is a great resource for basic beginner guide like this and it covers the basics including the language very well
2. Make sure you complete your Twitter profile including location, website and upload a photograph of yourself – “no photo no follow” is a rule for a lot of people (including me)
3. If you are Tweeting on behalf of a brand put your logo up as the profile picture and the name of the account manager in brackets after the company profile e.g. (Tweets by Gordon)
4. At first when you have no followers posting tweets to no-one will be frustrating but don’t worry you are building up a library of tweets (tweet stream) that will show people what you tweet about and will help them decide to follow you – so always tweet as if a 1000 followers were reading your very tweet
5. Connect your LinkedIn profile to your Twitter account so that people can decide to follow you if they see your LinkedIn profile but don’t set it up so that every update goes to your LinkedIn contacts as this is one of the big mistakes made by new people. Tweets and LinkedIn updates have different audiences with different information needs
6. Do a search on LinkedIn for the keyword Twitter, this will locate all contacts that have a Twitter account that you can follow
7. Use a Twitter client as the Twitter website is hard to use when you have more than a handful of followers – either Tweetdeck or Hootsuite, I recommend Tweetdeck
8. Link to your Twitter account from your website so that people can see you are looking to engage but also as a link will help it show up on search results
9. Post news and links to your firms blog but also “pay it forward” share interesting online articles
10. Look at the lists of the people that follow you and follow the relevant lists then make answering others questions and responding to their tweets should be a prominent content theme
11. Follow bloggers who write about your industry or things that interest you and Re-Tweet the blog posts that you think will be interesting to your followers
12. Re-Tweet often it’s a big compliment and genuine compliments build community
13. Funny is good sometimes, just not inappropriate humour you are posting on behalf of a brand
14. Remember a tweet is like a tattoo it can be removed but it always leaves a trace – think about what you tweet
15. Don’t just advertise: no one wants to follow a tweet stream that just says “buy my product”, it weakens your relationships, people will tune out and stop following you
16. Promote your blogs two or three times in the week that you post them but don’t just dump the blog link – preview it “I am writing a blog on winning council contracts will be posted this afternoon”
17. Say thanks when someone re-tweets you and when people engage you in conversation but you don’t have to thank people for a mention, that can look a bit sad especially if you have answered their mention / question
18. Comment on others tweets and ideas conversation build community
19. Talk to people find out what they are interested in don’t just sell – be human
20. Ask questions start a conversation – did I say that conversation builds community?
21. If you start a conversation give it a hashtag eg: #twittertips so that others only seeing half of your conversation can do a search on the # and see all the responses. It isn’t a open conversation unless you help people access it.
22. Follow people that you think may be potential customers – what better way to get to know them? Want to know more about #s read my Glasgowfilms# blog
23. Use re-follow to identify the followers of companies that target similar markets to the specific accounts. http://refollow.com/refollow/index.html
24. Don’t underestimate the people who follow you – profiles don’t always tell you the full picture
25. You also don’t have to follow everyone back that follows you but its good practice to do so most of the time – you are not a celeb and if you don’t follow back people won’t be able to Direct Message (DM) you
26. Block and report spammers and don’t leave them sitting in your follower list to boost the numbers – aim for quality not quantity
27. Use Twitter to show a genuine interest in your followers – your next best business contact is one of them – you just don’t know which one yet
28. If you want to broadcast make a TV ad – TV is for broadcasting Twitter is for conversation.
29. Use Twitter grader to analyse your Twitter account and aim to get above 80% by month two. http://twitter.grader.com/ My account @theintelligiser scores 100 /100
30. Don’t try to read everything – Let the tweet stream flow past and dip in when you have a minute – trying to read every Tweet will make you go blind once you follow more then a few hundred people
31. Watch your mentions and DM’s respond to them within 24 hours
32. Keep a search loaded in your Twitter client for your brand name so that you see when people are talking about you and your competitors
33. Don’t get involved in arguments – no one ever truly wins an argument but with only 140 characters on Twitter no-one ever really understands what you are arguing about
34. In Twitter arguments frustration with the medium leads to nastiness every quickly
35. Read your own tweet stream as if you were a potential client – would you want to follow you – would you find your tweets interesting – do they add value?
36. Don’t be tempted to auto direct message (DM) new followers and especially don’t push links at them you don’t have that good a relationship yet
37. Times in the day? – this is a frequently asked question but most people don’t plan tweets to this level but if I was going to plan it out I would say – 9.30am / 11am / 2.15pm / 3pm / 4.15pm would give you a good working day spread and promoting a blog again in the evening can give some followers more time to comment
38. If your brand wants to attract an international following (consulting) then think about time zones and tweet appropriately
39. Don’t get too hung up on frequency – it is ok to take a day or a half day off – I have gone on holiday tweeted twice in a week and come back to 50 new followers!
40. How schedule? – If you have an event coming up you can schedule the tweets that promote it via Hootsuite or Tweetdeck and that way if you have a busy day the essential messages get sent
41. How often? – as often as you have something to say that people want to hear
42. How often is too much? – a dozen a day is as much as I will ever do unless I get involved in a conversation and then a dozen in an hour is acceptable – people can just tune out if they don’t want to follow the conversation

And finally (42.5 if you like) – If you are from Scotland you can follow my Scottish Business Tweeters list on the @theintelligiser site to get started. Click to follow the individuals on the list who seem interesting to you, follow them individually as you are not following the person till you do this just the list.

I am sure that I must have missed something pretty obvious so If you can think of any additional tips to help people – hit the comment button and share – or alternatively just let me know what you think.