Many brands have decided to get on to Twitter, but most don’t really have a clue where to begin. Here are a few basic tips to get you started.
Tools
Start using a decent social media dashboard right from the start. It’s very easy to slip into the habit of using the standard Twitter interface, but you’ll be losing out on some powerful functionality. My personal favourite is Hootsuite, but there are several out there including Tweetdeck and Peoplebrowsr. These tools offer so many handy features like analytics, scheduled tweets, searches and multiple account management. I highly recommend getting into the habit of managing your brands social media using a tool. Using a tool will ensure that you never miss an opportunity to interact with potential clients.
Get out there
Right, so you’ve got your tool set up and ready to go. The next step is to get yourself out there. Begin by following accounts that are going to assist you with managing your brand. For example, if you run a store that sells sneakers, follow the major sneaker brand names. When they tweet about something, you can re-tweet (or even relate their information back to your brand). Make sure you do searches (Twazzup is great for this), follow people that are talking about your brand or areas that your brand works in. Try and participate actively in a few conversations (try to avoid hard selling, this will just annoy people). Tweet useful content. Tweet shareable content. Tweet re-tweetable content. For more on content creation, read my posts on ‘The Importance of Shareable Content’, ‘The Conversation Spark’, and finally ‘How to build a DCS profile’.
Love the people
When people follow you, follow them back. It’s courtesy. You may have heard that you need to have a higher follower to following ratio. That’s not true. The key metric is not the amount of followers. Your key metric on Twitter is engagement and follower quality. A great tool to measure this is The Archivist.
I hope that this post has given you some idea on how to get started. Develop good social media habits right from the start.
