Twitter is a key tool for businesses of all size to streamline real-time conversation amongst consumers, provide updates on the latest industry news, and ultimately grow a following. It allows for instant collaboration between new contacts at the drop of a hat. Because of Twitter’s fluidity, it is best if tweets reflect a personality and are not overly-formal. Good tweeting practices should inspire dialogue not appear as a static message board. Following ‘trending topics’ and properly using hashtags (#) are a simple way to connect with new customers and appear in search results. Twitter pages have personalization capabilities, allowing your brand to develop a cohesive look between its various online ventures.
Ways to engage your audience:
• Join in the conversation. Always reply when people tweet about you. Thank and converse with new followers. Talk to tweeters about their interests (not just your own).
• Experiment with hashtags. Search relevant keywords associated with the values and business practices and gather associated hashtags. See how well select hashtags are performing and develop related content.
• Share links. Always mention all blog posts but also link to outside articles of interest. Share anything that may be of interest to the fellow community. Tweets including URLs are the often the ones most retweeted.
• Ask questions. Not only will questions help you earn valuable opinions but they are a great way to fuel fresh engagement and get followers actively participating with the brand.
• Be useful. Give advice, share opinions and provide photos.
• Be interesting. If feeling ambitious, tools such as Google Alerts will update you about what the type of subject matter your audience is currently finding interesting. Select a few topics and share them on Twitter. No matter what, be conversational. Talk to people, not at them.
• Retweet. Retweets allow you to follow like-minded tweeters and engage with them. They are also a great way to share someone else's tweet about you.
• Outside promoting. Add a tweet button to your website or blog, allowing easy content sharing. Include a Twitter icon in email signatures to encourage new followers.
• Be active. Most successful twitter accounts offer a stream of at least five tweets a day. Tools such as Hootsuite or TweetDeck can help you schedule and manage your tweeting schedule. Consider choosing only one topic for a day and developing upon it.
• Review and revise. Websites such as Contaxio grant insight into your follower’s behavior and allow you to evaluate the effectiveness of your current social behavior.
