Developing Your Twitter Strategy
Twitter can be a great branding tool. If you are not already using Twitter to get the word out about your business, you probably at least know that you should be. There are lots of benefits to using Twitter, and some things that you should definitely avoid. And in the end, everyone needs to decide for themselves what kind of role Twitter will play in their lives and businesses. It’s perfectly fine for your Twitter strategy to be unique to you, your personality, and your business needs. But here are some things to think about when deciding how to best use Twitter.
What would you like to accomplish? How you use Twitter should depend on the answer to this question. Are you primarily looking for a social outlet for yourself and a way to connect to like-minded entrepreneurs? Are you wanting to connect to customers, potential customers, and readers? Are you going to try to promote your products directly from Twitter? The answers to these questions will help you develop your Twitter “voice”.
Tread lightly with promotion. Twitter can be a great way to get the word out about your own and others’ promotions, but just make sure you don’t go overboard. If your tweets never add any value other than what you’re trying to sell, you may find that they’re not as effective and you could lose followers. There’s nothing wrong with letting your followers know when you have a new blog post up or product available, but just make sure it’s not always about you. Link to other websites and lighten up your Twitter feed with some fun and random tweets too. (As long as that fits your personality.)
Be yourself. No matter how much you strategize about Twitter, your efforts will all be for naught if you try to be someone or something other than yourself. You will need to post multiple tweets a day to stay in touch with your feed, and it just won’t be very successful if you try to fake it. Find a way to communicate on Twitter that suits both you and the people you are trying to connect with, and your tweets will ring true and your following will grow.
