As studies have suggested, 80% of us use Twitter for business purposes and 20% of our tweets contain a brand name.
The prominence of businesses on Twitter is also confirmed by Co-founder, Biz Stone, when he announced the end of the year launch of paid-account statistic data for businesses.
With more and more people riding the Twitter wave, this post is dedicated to help you improve your Twitter marketing effort.
Accompanied by my 2 cents worth, I have reflected upon what was done by some great business on Twitter. Here’s what I have gathered:
1. Your tweets
Tweets are the communication backbone of Twitter. So choose your words carefully before sending out one. Have a balance between work tweets and casual tweets. Casual tweets help you to connect while business tweets help you to promote. The balancing point varies with the strategy that you’ve adopted.
Zappos CEO, Tony Hsieh is a good example of a casual twitter. He doesn’t tweet about shoes or business. With more than 1.4 million followers, it is certainly working great for him.
100% business tweeting is definitely a no no. It just shows that you’re a self centered person. Most importantly, make sure they’re of retweet value.
2. Your background
A good background is equivalent to a good impression. Make sure your background suits your corporate image and your tweeting style.
I particularly like Mailchimp’s background because its color and gigantic chimpanzee really bring across the experience I enjoy when using its email services. It is important to maintain consistency in offline marketing, but being able to bring across the same feeling, style and branding impact is equally important in the online marketing realm.
More about image below.
3. Your Avatar
Whether it is a logo or the face of the company, have the same avatar across all profiles and avoid changing it for easy recognition.
Having an avatar that gives followers an inkling of what your company is about would help as well. Take Southwest Airlines for example, just by looking at its avatar tells you that it is in the airline industry.
4. Don’t use auto tweet
Auto tweet simply shows that you don’t care. It saves time but followers will sooner or later find out that you’re just a tweet bot that is overly obsessed by your own gain.
Oh and none of our great business on Twitter uses that.
It’s part and parcel of being personal.
5. Be Personal
No matter what image you’re trying to portray, communication has to be personal. This is probably one of the more important points. Avoid tweeting in a corporate top down tone, or worse, in a robotic manner.
Use words and smileys like “heh, nah, yeap, hey, 
, 
” whenever appropriate. Learn the Internet lingo that is part of the online culture.
6. Say Thank You
If someone RT or commented on your tweet, say thank you and try to spark a conversation. Being polite and appreciative is going to bring you far.
Be responsive to tweets even if someone is saying something negative about you. If you have been following our tweets, you will notice that we have never failed to thank you for retweeting our post.
7. Overall Image
Disregard any of the points mentioned above if you think it doesn’t suit your overall corporate image.
You can’t simply combine all the points above without adjustment and achieve success on Twitter. It requires some customization.
If you are a chimpanzee, then act like one (like MailChimp). If you’re selling coffee, use words like “brewing” and “aroma” in your tweets to bring your overall image live on Twitter.
