Tuning Up with Twitter

More and more businesses than ever before have discovered Twitter and how it can help promote their business.  The phrase here is "they have discovered".  Few have actually grasped the power of Twitter, the rest have said "Oh this is cool but now what?"  Either they go off and pay experts to Tweet on their behalf or try to throw up random bursts of phrases and hope for the best.  Whatever your goals are with Twitter, remember if you are going to use it to promote your business, it is open 24-7-365 and make sure you understand it has global outreach.  Don't put your personal life on your business Twitter site.  If it is that important to you, open another Twitter site.   Don't mix business
with pleasure as they say.  If you want to begin Tweeting on Twitter with your brand new site, here are some key tips.

1.  Be Yourself
Let your business reflect through your
personality. Many local people reading your tweets know you anyway so don't try
to be somebody you are not nor post things that are not true or embellish your
business. It is ok to link material that has common ground with your business or
profession.

 2.  Good Material
On those links.  Make sure they are something your customers or followers
would take interest in.  Make those links relevant to your profession or
business.    Don't post something that just because you thought it was
interesting that the rest of world would think so too.  Think outside, not
inside.

3.   Interact
Twitter is more than throwing up posts and links.  Engage your followers,
follow others in your industry, tweet back to your followers and those you
follow.  If you plan on being robotic with promotions and worthless content,
don't waste your time or their time. You know that @ symbol on your twitter
account and on all your followers?   It is crying out to you to say "USE ME!"

4.  What to say in 140 characters
Twitter is popular because it is quick and easy to read. You are forced to
say what you have to say  in 140 characters or less.  Use keywords that reflect
your topic and always keep your business or profession within that context.

5.  Link, link, link
I mentioned links earlier but I wanted to as my last point say
it again.  But this time remember to link your Facebook fan page and link your
website to Twitter.  You can also link Linkedin
as well (wasn't that catchy?)  There are a few more but these 3 are probably the
most popular for SMB's right now. 

My final observation for using Twitter for business is developing a catchy background. While Twitter has standard  backgrounds for "default" use, If you are serious about using Twitter for business social media, you need to brand your background just as you are
branding your business everyday.  If you don't know how to do this, get someone
within your organization to do it for you who is savvy
with Adobe Photoshop, illustrator, or even Microsoft Publisher.  Hope this
has been of some help to you.  Good luck!