Here is a list of 7 common mistakes that I see from companies using Twitter. Don't try these at home...or at the office! Avoid these mistakes like the plague whether you are a mom & pop shop or a Fortune 500 company.
7. Branding: Your company twitter account should be an extension of your brand. Common branding mistakes on twitter include:
- Using a personal twitter account for business.
- Not using a your business logo as your avatar.
- Not customizing your twitter page.
- Not linking to your website.
6. Messaging: Twitter is much more useful when you choose to portray your message opposed to simply re-tweeting (RT) others in your industry:
- People want to hear something new and exciting, a RT is something that has been said already. Use them sparingly.
- Ask broad questions which can engage a large percentage of your followers.
5. Engaging: In order to engage and connect with potential customers and partners in your industry, you need to add value!
- Give people ideas or thoughts on your industry.
- Speak about things are YOUR users would care about.
- Offer best practices and advice.
4. Helping: Keep a dialogue by helping people. Try to connect without giving the hard sell.
- Do not be afraid to point people toward other users, companies and products.
- Determine the 'pain points' your business solves and seek out those who need help.
3. Over-Following: The amount of people you follow says something about you and your company. Understand these tips!
- Quality brands always have more followers than people they are following.
- Try to keep this ratio at least at 1:1 you should try to follow about 10% less than the amount of people you are following.
2. Timing: Space out your tweets, using an automated service is better than acting like you only have 5 minutes each day to tweet as much as possible.
- Use a tool such as Pluggio or Hootsuite to schedule your tweets, this will space them over time in a digestable format for your followers.
- Timing your tweets give you a larger reach and makes you look much more professional.
- Blasting out 5 or 10 tweets within a minute is the fastest way to get me to unfollow you -- and it looks
1. Have a Personality!
- People respond to personalities, show that there is a human behind those tweets!
- Have a good time and study those businesses who seem to be successful.
- There is a reason why some companies are truly connecting with their ambassadors and others are simply a sounding board for unhappy customers.