Advice on use of Twitter for your business

Communicating in 140 characters, to many who do not use Twitter, is quite a limited and foreign concept, but it does offer a very unique way to communicate with both your existing customers and potential new ones, as well as you finding out what your competition is doing. The world of Twitter is becoming more and more important for businesses especially those run by young people.

1. Be active. Twitter can be a fantastic asset provided you are an active participant. It is essential that you give your followers a reason to check your feed every day and see what has developed for your business.

2. Incorporate #’s into your tweets. Hash-tags can be used as something in common for your business and your audience to re-tweet and keep the conversation going. The more people who use the tags in their tweets and re-tweets, the more it trends and by extension, the more people see it. You can also use a currently trending hash-tag to insert yourself into the conversation, provided it is smartly done and relevant to your business, people will respond. This is fantastic for getting your name and brand out there.

3. Use visual media. Pictures and videos increase the response rate and the likelihood of your tweet getting a response via a reply, re-tweet, favourite or all of the above. Some kind of imagery is far more likely to not only catch the eye of a twitter user, but also gain their attention enough for them to actually read what you are tweeting.

4. Seek out similar accounts to your own. By following Twitter accounts that are run by other people in your industry and those of your clients, will create additional awareness for your own account if they already have an established following of people with shared interests. By extension, if any of these people decide to support you by re-tweeting your tweets they are seen by everyone that follows them.

5. Brand your account. Use your company logo as your profile picture; customise your background and theme to further advertise your brand. You should also include a small bio about your company and link to the website in your profile.

6. Increase cross-traffic. Place a link to your twitter account on your website, blog, other online sites and even your email signature to you get as much visibility for it in as many places as you can. Do not be frightened to direct tweet someone after all you never know – you might get business from it, the more people that see it the better.

7. Give people a reason to follow you. Twitter exclusive promotions will make all your existing followers happy to be following you in the first place, and providing the promotion is relevant to other people they know, they will advertise the promotion for you via re-tweets, telling them they should follow you to take advantage of it.

8. Have a Follow Friday at least once a month. The #FF is a great way for you to not only promote those that you work with but also follow yourself this can not only gain you new followers it can get you further noticed in Thank You’s and re-tweets

Twitter can be a very powerful tool for any business, provided it is used correctly. Keep your account active and interact with people as much as you can to not only increase the visibility of what your are doing and what you have to offer, but also the business' reputation as a company that interacts with people, this makes you human