25 Awesome Twitter Tips

Last week Shanna Mallon of Straight North, a leader among Chicago Web design agencies, shared 25 Awesome B2B Blogging Tips. This week she takes on Twitter. Enjoy, Jeremy.

For many B2Bs, Twitter is a mystery. Sure, it makes sense for restaurants and retail shops, but where is the value for makers of safety hand gloves or fire resistant clothing? When you primarily market to businesses, is Twitter really a valuable asset?

The truth is, Twitter can be a powerful marketing tool for B2Bs—at least when it’s done right. All it takes is a little creativity.

Here are 25 ideas to help you get the most out of your B2B Twitter presence!

OVERALL STRATEGY & PLANNING

1. Establish goals: What is your reason for using Twitter? To promote your business as a leader in the industry? To ask questions? To generate new leads? Knowing why you’re on Twitter will help you establish an actionable plan for meeting those goals.
2. Dedicate resources: Twitter thrives on regular updates and constant communication, so it’s important that you have the time and resources to devote to its regular upkeep. If you’re going to enter this network, plan to put at least part of each day into reading and posting Tweets.
3. Have a plan: Decide on how frequently you want to update. Some accounts are posting constantly; others a few times a week. Whatever you decide, aim to be posting at least a few times a day, even if that means pre-scheduling your Tweets through an online service.
4. Share responsibility: One way to lighten the burden of keeping up with your Twitter account is to spread responsibility among several employees. Make multiple employees users of the account and you’ll expand your content, style and amount of conversations.
5. Encourage employees to Tweet: Strengthen the power of your Twitter account by encouraging employees to share news about the company from their personal Twitter accounts as well. This will expand your reach and enhance your brand messaging.

YOUR TWITTER ACCOUNT

1. Use a relevant handle: Whether you make your handle your business name or a variation on it, be sure to choose something that will strengthen your brand and make it easy for followers to identify your company.
2. Work keywords into your Twitter bio: Make it easy for other Twitter users to find you by working up to three keywords specific to your industry in your bio.
3. Be willing to learn: Twitter is about more than promoting your business—it’s also a great place to learn from experts in marketing, social media and your specific industry.
4. Find and follow industry leaders: Through directories, lists, other users, etc., follow major players in your industry and interact with them.
5. Find and follow key news sources: Whatever your industry’s news sources, publications and associations, find them on Twitter to stay up-to-date on the latest info, as well as to have quality information to share with your followers.
6. Use lists: Organize your followers through Twitter lists so it’s easier to keep track of what’s being said. This essentially gives you multiple streams you can access from your account.

CONTENT

1. Have a consistent voice: Whether you have one employee posting Tweets or several, be sure to employ one consistent voice across all posts.
2. Provide interesting content: Post information your audience will find helpful, from statistics to news to stories.
3. Filter yourself: Before posting anything on Twitter, ask yourself why anyone would care to know about it, and filter out what is empty, filler content.
4. Promote others: Share content from people and blogs that will provide real value to your audience and build relationships with those you promote.
5. Add commentary: Retweets are good, but rewteets with your added commentary are even better because then you’re adding to the conversation.
6. Ask questions: Look for ways to build engagement and interaction through Tweets that promote conversation—such as direct questions that ask for responses from followers.
7. Post links to company blog posts: Help your followers stay updated with your blog by posting links to new entries.
8. Tweet special offers: It’s important that followers see you as more than self-promoting, which is why you should share interesting info and promote other users, but that doesn’t mean you can never promote your company. Tweeting special offers will give users another reason to follow you and bring in new leads for your business.
9. Focus on quality over quantity: Don’t worry about reading every single post in your Twitter stream or about posting hundreds of times a day—when using Twitter for business, it’s more important to focus on quality over quantity. Post when you have something to say and read the posts you can, responding to what interests you.

TECHNICALITIES

1. Monitor your brand through Twitter search: Through Twitter search, you can monitor conversations about your brand, as well as mentions of important keywords.
2. Use URL shorteners: URL shorteners give you more back for your buck in the Twittersphere, shortening links to leave more space for content in your 140 characters.
3. Use analytics: Experiment with the timing of your Tweets so you can know if certain times of day bring in more clicks, retweets and responses. Analytics may indicate your company should share early in the day or late in the week to pull in the most users.
4. Don’t overuse hashtags: Hashtags are designed to organize Tweets in a way that makes it simple for users to find what’s been posted about a given topic—giving you a way to expand your influence beyond your followers. But don’t go overboard or you could lose the followers you do have—instead, be intentional about your hashtags and use them purposefully.
5. Set up landing pages: A great way to track your links is through landing pages, set up specifically for users who come to your site through Twitter.