50 Ideas for using Twitter for Business

I was chatting with my sister, Jane,  recently about the social media sites we both use.  We are totally into Facebook and I use others such as Pinterest and Twitter.  Jane had one word to use to sum up her opinion of Twitter: "Pointless."

It started me thinking……what exactly can you do with this "Twitter" and how can you make any strides forward, business-wise?

For those who are far from being "twitter-nerds," here are a bunch of ideas from Adam Toren to get those creative juices going.

1. Jump right in and start an account! It’s easy and you will have taken the first step.

2. Take some time to prepare your profile. Don’t use one of those stock backgrounds as it just screams "newbie" and doesn’t inspire.

3. Always, repeat always put a photograph in your profile. Hundreds of thousands of users don’t and ensure that they join the ranks of the also-rans. The visual image is very potent.

4. Try some tweets. Don’t get stuck watching, but dive in.

5. Do not talk business all the time. This is a big turnoff and you must learn that, within the world of social media, the hard sell is a big no-no.

6. Engage with people on a personal level and talk about all kinds of things that they may be interested in. This helps to establish you or your organization as "fun" to interact with.

7. Engage your staff or associates and "communize" yourself. Add as much depth as you can as you strive to show that there are humans and human stories behind your Twitter account.

8. Whatever line of business you’re in, tweet people’s attention to things, places, people and organizations in your niche. Then establish why your business should garner their attention.

9. Make your business multi-dimensional by creating Twitter names for key personnel. Project your organization as having depth.

10. Always be positive and never negative, even if something in your industry is somewhat controversial. Make sure your Twitter glass is half-full.

11. Put character in your tweets. There may be only 140 characters and people tend to think that they cannot get any message across in such a constrained space, but you should add colour and dimension always.

12. Don’t just be tempted to re-tweet other elements. Always add your own twist to it. Twisty-Tweets!

13. Most of your tweeting should be about non-business-related subjects. Go out of your way to re-tweet other people’s stuff.

14. When you tweet about your own products or services do so from the perspective of offering advice rather than hard selling.

15. Add photos and visual links as much as you can.

16. Establish a policy of tweeting as often as you see fit. Please don’t go overboard and always be focused, but there should be a daily activity to establish any kind of consistency.

17. Use search.twitter.com. This will help you to find lots of interesting people who are in your line of business.

18. When you have found interesting people who have a great following, make sure that you follow them.

19. Make a habit of following interesting people if you really want to build up a good base. Look at the people who are following those interesting people and follow them, too.

20. Take a look at some of the myriad Twitter applications for add-ons that are available. Some of these will help you to be far more productive as you interact.

21. As you are in the process of building your Twitter follower base, make sure that your personal message notification is not set to e-mail you each time somebody "follows you."

22. Spend the first few weeks or months proactively building your Twitter following with people who you know are interested in your line of business or your product or service operations, in general.

23. As you are building your Twitter following, make sure that you get rid of those people who you are following but who are not, in turn, following you back. There is a great application at Twitter Karma to help you do this.

24. Log onto Twitter Counter to see how many people are following you and your general success rate as you build your Twitter follower empire.

25. Join Tweet Beep to be notified when something in relation to one of your keywords, or your Twitter name is discussed. Just like Google Alerts.

26. There is a great application at Tweet Deck that allows you to view all your tweets, your favorites and even your Facebook messages on one screen.

27. Do allocate some time each day, at the same time of day to maintain this. Don’t think that you have to retweet everything or to reply whenever you are mentioned, but do try and interact some.

28. If you use Tweet Deck (see above) you will see that you are able to instantly shorten any URLs that you are tweeting about. In any case, make sure that you use shortening tools as it will make your tweets look ever so much more neat.

29. Once you have completed your dedicated follower building process, you may enable direct messaging and will not get all those automatic messages bombarding you. You may use direct messages for one-on-one conversations.

30. As you are trying to build community, remember to try and participate in conversations as this may take a little getting used to.

31. Remember that this is still an emerging social media method and there is no hard and fast way to interact.

32. Don’t become a "twitterholic" and remember that this is just part of your overall strategy.

33. Compose your own strategy and establish why you are trying to get your message across through this medium. This may entail some thinking outside of the box.

34. Understand that Twitter is probably the fastest-growing social media phenomenon of all time and you really, really should be involved.

35. Think of ways that you could use Twitter to complement your existing customer relations or customer service pipelines.

36. Make sure that you understand the Twitter terminology, what RT means, what the @ means and so on. Go to Twitter itself and swot up on it.

37. Understand that while many still do not understand it, other organizations have been very, very successful by using Twitter in ingenious ways to spread virally.

38. Ask some quick easy questions and get loads of opinions from targeted people, rather easily.

39. Realize that there are a number of like-minded people and organizations represented on Twitter and the platform is becoming a melting pot for ideas and resources in a variety of different spheres.

40. Twitter is not going to replace any of your current initiatives.

41. Don’t be afraid! There’s a lot of anonymity behind Twitter, as is the case in other forums and online platforms. This community is, however, a great place to promote feedback.

42. Twitter can be very educational and if you open your mind up you will be surprised what business "nuggets" you can bring on board.

43. Realize that we are likely only seeing the tip of the iceberg when it comes to social media. How important will this be for businesses in the future?

44. Remember to seek out associates and add them to your list as well.

45. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that Twitter followers are anything like dedicated, opt in e-mail list members. They’re not!

46. If you want to convert your Twitter followers into potential clients you will need to engage in a process of soft marketing, by providing valuable insights and information and establishing yourself as someone to trust. Only then can you tempt followers into your sales funnel.

47. Be flexible and prepared to change, as we said before this is an evolving medium.

48. Be understanding of those who think that Twitter is just "ridiculous." You may come across some criticism while engaging your business and you might have to carry out some internal public relations within your organization to assure people you’re not wasting your time.

49. As you progress, add another element of professionalism by having your own, tailor-made Twitter background design.

50. Focus on a long-term goal and, have fun with it!

Also, check out our post on Great Twitter Applications for Small Business here: Twitter Applications for Small Business

So guys, do you have Twitter? If so, how often do you tweet?

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