May 15, 2010: Twitter for Business: My First 2000 Followers
In a brief departure from my traditional Nutrition and holistic approach blog entries, I wanted to share some sound advice I've learned about using Twitter for business.
I reached a milestone recently--2000 followers of my Twitter account. I'd started @LiquidWholeFood on a lark, because I finally got fed up with all of the SEO articles telling me I had to if I wanted to be smart.
Truthfully, I had no idea why Twitter even made sense as a business asset. Less relational than Facebook, it limits the account holder to 140 characters per "tweet." (It took me about 100 followers until I could say that with a straight face.) Then there were all of these unspoken ETIQUETTE things: symbols, and unspoken practices, especially on Fridays. How on earth was my business to benefit from such a weird concept?
Well, it has. From higher traffic to deep links on my website, to networking and meeting really nice people, I'm hooked. What follows is a guide for Twitter newbies who are specifically starting Twitter to promote their business.
- Four Foundational Concepts of Using Twitter for Business:
- Understand that your business account represents your business, not yourself. Have a separate account for yourself if you wish. In it, tell folks that you're eating a peach for breakfast, going to get the kids, or that you're sicker than a dog. The followers you get on that account are following you to know that information. After 2000 followers, I have found only 2 personal accounts that I have enjoyed on a long-term basis, because they are fascinating, interactive, enjoyable people: @RobertZurel and @Evangelic_Diva. Repeat after me, "My Twitter account is not about me."
- If you wouldn't say it in your brick-and-mortar store for others to overhear, don't say it in your Tweet stream. One of the mistakes I made early on (read: within my first 10 followers) was that I had a conversation with someone I knew from a different forum. She made a catty comment about men, and I responded in kind. She and I knew it was all in jest. She knows I'm crazy about my husband and I'm a better person because of him. But the bodybuilding-related follower who had been following me for a couple days didn't, and I noticed within hours he'd unfollowed me--and blocked me, too!
- Be real, but not too real. I followed someone whose search engine optimization newsletter I'd enjoyed via email for years after seeing the invitation to follow in the newsletter. She has a great sense of humor and wise words. But her tweet stream is filled with personal information with little offerings in her area of
expertise and also rare interaction with her followers, she has a 1:8 ratio of whom she'll follow, and every so often she'll make references to the mother superior of all 4-letter words. It's made me think I don't want to hire her or use her services. Repeat after me, "My Twitter account is not about me." - Follow people who follow you back. There are different opinions about this, especially when you're talking thousands of people. Here's my take, though: Sending out 2,000 (of the equivalent of) bulk mail postcards is bound to get interest at even a 0.5% return. If someone clicks through to your site or product, even if they don't buy, you have traffic that Google won't ignore. The fix so you can have meaningful interaction with people? Lists. Make lists of people you enjoy interacting with and learn from their tweets. Then instead of having your Twitter home page open in your browser, have your favorite list open. Or, use tweetdeck.com to help manage your stream. (If you are a hardcore user, you have to watch your output with this application, or you get put in "jail" for several minutes.) You can use friendorfollow.com and thetwitcleaner.com a couple times per month to make sure your relationships are reciprocal and worthwhile.
Practical Twitter Dos and Don'ts for the Business User
Biggest Rule of Thumb? Always look at your profile page and pretend you are a prospective customer.
- Do make your Twitter account name your business name, unless your name is your business, like @AriaaJaeger or @basically-any-celebrity, or you have a large following already in your business sector like @DarrenHardy.
- Do put your name in the "name" section that will show on the right bar of your Twitter page. LiquidWholeFood is my account name, but "Carolyn et al." is the name listed on my profile page.
- Do write a bio that makes sense and includes keywords about your products, but also reflects a warm touch.
- Don't use cutesy symbols in your bio--they are very search engine unfriendly and resolve as jibberish.
- Do use your photo. For my first 1000 followers, I used a photo of my top-selling product on my retail site. Finally, @LynnHarrisberg said something akin to, "It would be great to see your face to know who I'm talking to," I changed my photo...and my daily follow count consistently increased.
- Don't use profanity or abbreviations or shortcuts in tweets that include profanity. (ie. wtf, dam, etc.)
- Do use tweets that are related to your field and make sure they are informative in nature.
- Think of areas of interest related to your business and do find people in those areas to follow. For instance, even though my business focuses on nutrition, I enjoy finding people in all areas of wellness, such as natural health (@apothecary21c), counseling (@Ellen_Brown), motivational speakers (@FredCuellar), life coaches (@beingswell), organic living.
- Do retweet people by using "RT" and not the "retweet" button.
- Do follow people back within 72 hours.
- Don't fall for any tweet or DM (direct message) that says, "you'll get thousands of followers if you just..." The types of people you will get will rarely be worth what you put out to get them. Plus, there are those nefarious Twitter-ers who will follow you and then un-follow you when you follow back and hope you don't notice in order to make their "followers" number higher than their "following" number. Your name isn't Conan O'Brien. You no longer look choosy or above-it-all when there is a dramatic unbalance between those two numbers. You look snobby and elitist--not the reputation you want to give your business.
- Don't steal other people's material. Repeat after me, "My Twitter account is not about me."
- Do follow the competition.
- Do thank people who retweet anything you tweet, or link to your website, or mention you. That's a huge gift of exposure.
- Don't badmouth anyone. In fact, save your negative comments about anything for your personal Twitter account. Or better yet, leave it lay. Angry tweets attract angry people.
- Don't talk politics, unless it is your business. Really. Not even once.
- Do provide links to helpful sites related to your business's areas of interest.
- And I'll say it again: Don't put links about your products or services in every tweet. You look smarmy and cheap when you do.
- To understand how to use links in tweets, do follow @michael_arndt. He tweets links that are aligned with his profile and are meant to help, encourage, and build up.
- In sessions when you are doing your Twitter etiquette, do try to intersperse helpful tweets in between the thanks and @replies.
- Do follow @AskAaronLee and watch his tweet stream for how he models great Twitter practices. Then, ask him Twitter questions and enjoy his replies. There's a reason he's got 126,000 followers.
If you follow these few guidelines, you'll find that your followers grow on their own, without you automating the process. I rarely even go out looking for followers anymore, but have around 80 new net followers a week. It's been worth it, even if it hasn't been about me.
Winking Twitter bird courtesy of Hongkiat.com free Twitter icons sets.