For business owners and operators, Twitter can seem like an enigma. People didn’t communicate in 140-character messages 10 years ago, and it’s still not totally clear to many people why Twitter is effective. But for those with successful business Twitter feeds, the results are clear. More people get involved in the conversation and become engaged with the company, and the brand benefits with more customers and familiarity.
The first thing to keep in mind when starting and running a Twitter feed is that followers don’t want to be bombarded with promotional material. You should use your feed to promote your business, but you should also remember that Twitter is about personal interactions with other members of the community. Balance things out by offering fun, personal content so that people can get to know you and your company.
You can work on building your personality on Twitter in a few ways. Multimedia is a great way to connect with other users, because photos are a great way to give people a behind-the-scenes look at your company. Also, don’t take your feed too seriously. The Twitterverse is an informal community, and followers like seeing businesses that like to have fun online.
As a business, it’s important to keep in mind that you have a number of free tools at your disposal for making a better Twitter feed. Several sites offer URL shortening services, allowing you to fill your tweets with more of your own content when linking to external material. There are also a number of sites that allow you to schedule posts ahead of time so that you are always involved.
Scheduling sites should, however, only be used as supplemental tools, as engagement is key. Follow hash tag conversations related to your field, and communicate directly with followers when you can. If someone says something positive about your brand, retweet them and thank them for the compliments.
And although overdoing promotional material can become obnoxious for followers, they do like special offers and contests every now and then. Twitter is most effective when you are able to connect with followers on a personal level and then offer them value for being active members of your community.
Overall, it’s important to remain true to your company’s brand on Twitter. It’s important to know your audience and what they like, but Twitter should ultimately be used as an extension of your brand. Don’t overdo your tweets, and be sure to have the same good judgment for content as you would on your website.
Toby Gonzales
Toby Gonzales is the Revenue Manager for FBiframes. Besides taking out the trash at FBiframes, he enjoys helping businesses implement their social media marketing plan. If your business' marketing plan or strategy needs new insight, drop him a line.
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icon. For those of you who do not know about RSS (which is short for Really Simple Syndication) it is a way for the world to receive regularly updated web content and gather it in one place for easy reading. With RSS you can display your latest blog posts on your fan page, latest products on your e-commerce store, news, events, and much more.
