How to Use Twitter for Business

My last blog post talked about why you should create a Twitter account for your business. You’re building brand awareness, engaging with customers, encouraging brand loyalty, monitoring and managing your reputation and you’re listening. Now what are some of the tasks and tactics you need to do?

Setting up Twitter

Name your twitter account with your business name
Unless you’re a solo business person, and your own name is the name of your business, you should use a recognizable form of your business name for Twitter. Like @BluebonnetCafe. If your exact business name isn’t available, consider adding a geo locator to it like @FullerElectricDallas. If options like that are all taken, consider a name that says what you do, like @AptRealtorHouston.

Fill out your Twitter Profile
Put your actual, complete business name in the Name field. This is especially important if your Twitter username isn’t your exact business name. Be sure you add your city and state to the Location field. Definitely add a link to your website/blog. Make the message in your Bio the most important thing you want to say about your business. If you have a business Facebook page, you can choose to have your tweets publish automatically to your Facebook page. It’s all in your Twitter profile.

Customize your Twitter icon with your logo or photo
Make sure that your logo fits into the square shape that Twitter provides. If there’s no way your business logo, or a part of it, will fit into the tiny square shape, consider using a photo. It could be a photo of you or your staff, your company van, your storefront… something that identifies you. Just don’t leave the egg-shaped icon on there.

Add a Twitter header image
When you’re updating your Twitter profile, you can choose to add a header image that displays across the top of your Twitter page. The recommended dimensions are 1252×626 pixels. The advantages of adding a header image are that you can put information in it about your company, and it’s visible on mobile devices, unlike the page background image. Check out these examples of header images for inspiration.

Add your Twitter link to your website and email signature
Wherever you communicate with people electronically, you can give them a link to your Twitter page.

Add your Twitter username to all of your business materials
Add it to business cards, letterhead, invoices, brochures, receipts, etc.

Using Twitter

Following:

Follow related businesses
Follow everyone who talks to you on Twitter
Follow thought leaders in your industry
Follow your customers
Don’t automatically follow everyone who follows you, some of them are bots or spammers
Don’t follow unrelated celebrities, politicians, or other accounts that you are personally interested in but don’t have any relevance to your business

Listening:

Monitor your account and check multiple times per day for tweets sent to you, tweets that mention your business, tweets about your industry, your local service area, and any direct messages
Respond quickly
Take complaints and problem-solving offline

Guidelines for Tweeting:

Tweet regularly – you should tweet at least once a day, not counting your responses to people or your retweets
Add photos to your tweets, it makes them more interesting and retweetable
Use hashtags smartly
Use @ mentions
Don’t abbreviate, it looks unprofessional: “If Ur msg is 2 long U shld use fewer wrds.”
Spelling counts
Don’t flood your followers suddenly with a bunch of tweets if your normal tweet volume is just a few per day
Obviously all the rules of good manners apply – don’t say anything to someone on Twitter that you wouldn’t say in person, no matter how badly behaved they may be.

More Tweet Ideas: