Monday, February 16, 2009

10 Ways to Start Your Twitter Business

At the start I was rather skeptical as to the value the medium brought especially from a business perspective: most of the "Tweets" (noun used to describe the statements people make on Twitter) were narcissistic comments made under the assumption that people were actually interested in hearing what others had for breakfast (for example).

I have watched Twitter usage evolve and today it's much more sophisticated. Here's a few tips for you to use to tweak your Tweets and get more out of your Twitter presence:

1. Add value - don't just spout off about boring stuff. Nobody is interested in what color shoes you are wearing (maybe your underwear but definitely not your shoes!).

2. Share interesting stuff you've found on the web that relates to your business or area of interest.

3. Use TinyURL or a similar url abbreviation tool to shorten the length of url links in your Twitter posts so they fit in the 140 character limit.

4. Look at Twitter as a forum to let followers know what it is you do for a living - you never know who might read and say I need someone to do just that for me.

5. Don't spam or sell.

6. If someone starts following you don't automatically add them and follow (don't be a sheeple) - take a look at the number of followers they have compared to their following. If they are following way more people than they have followers then it might be best to avoid them - chances are they are only looking to follow so that they can in turn spam you.

7. Don't let Twitter suck up too much of your time - it can be very distracting.

8. Limit the number of people you follow to avoid Twitter overload.

9. Use Twitterfeed to feed your blog to Twitter.

10. Use Tweetscan to monitor whats being said about you or your company on Twitter.