Twitter is a great tool that can help get your business move into the world of online and real time. However it’s not all sunshine and lolly pops when entering into the world of Twitter. There are a few things as a small to medium business user that you should be aware of.
For the time being I’m going to forget the do’s and really concentrate on the don’ts of using twitter:
- If you do get some negative feedback (which inevitably you will) do not react emotively. Remove your personal feelings from the comment, be patient and reply in a professional manner. You need to mitigate as much negative PR as possible so take your time and respond accordingly as you never know where it could go or who could see it.
- I mentioned it in my last post about twitter and its a bit of a tricky one but you have to be careful not to spam people with loads of offers or rss feeds. You should be informative, personable and provide offers only when its really necessary.
- Don’t tweet anything you would not want to be quoted on in the media. Remember Twitter is a public site with millions of users and potential customers.
- Don’t tweet anything about your clients unless its been explicitly agreed. You may think you are doing them a favour but this could get you into trouble.
- Do not lie, it’s simple. If you cannot back up your claims, offers or experience then do not tweet about. Trust is important in every facet of your business.
- Do not try and follow hundreds if not thousands of people in the vain attempt to attract people to your tweets. You want quality not quantity so try and keep that balance in the people that you follow and who follow you. For instance Soup follows business_govtNZ because we are interested in what they have to say with regards to small and medium businesses.
- This relates to point 2 but don’t be all about your business or “me,me,me”. Tweet information that you think your followers might find useful or informative and could stimulate a conversation….that’s what its all about.
- Don’t ignore people’s replies. They took the time to reply to you so make the effort to reply to them even if it is just to say “thanks”.
I reckon people should treat Twitter like any normal conversation e.g. if there is nothing worth saying then don’t say anything. My twitter account gets clogged up with some pretty stupid tweets from the same people….pretty sure they don’t have jobs.
This something that should be considered as people follow you for a reason so bombarding them with useless infromation can be considered SPAM. Unless you are a celebrity with obessive fans then stick to what you know and get the balance right between informing, replying and personality.