For many businesses today, creating a Twitter account is an imperative. According to Media Bistro.com, there are more than 300 million user accounts, so it’s not surprising that Twitter is an increasingly critical communication platform to drive sales, manage customer service and directly engage with consumers while presenting an open, authentic form of communication with your target audience.
However, establishing your brand and building an effective presence on Twitter takes more than setting up an account and posting a tweet here and there. Tweeting as a brand to build influence and create a community of followers requires strategy.
To help get brands on the right track, PRNewsire shares ten tips for tweeting as a brand.
- Find a Twitter mentor. If you follow people or businesses who you think get it right, learn from them. What do they tweet about? How often do they tweet or re-tweet? When and how do they reply to negative tweets?
- Keep it positive. As tempting as it might be, avoid being negative, sarcastic or snarky. No matter how funny you think it might be, always remember that you’re tweeting as your brand, not as you. (Even on a personal level, there is risk that you’ll offend someone and increasingly our personal and professional lives are blending.)
- Respond to negative feedback. If someone says something negative about your brand and you don’t respond, the tweet that lingers is the negative one. Given this, communicate back. However, there are two caveats: 1) Be thoughtful in your response. You don’t have to respond immediately. It’s better to take time to think your response through than fire off a tweet that you’ll later regret. 2) Beware of attempts to bait you. Weigh the pros and cons of responding as well as the credibility of the author. If you decide not to respond publicly, consider a direct message instead.
- Steer away from controversy. Controversial topics such as politics or religion are controversial for a reason – there are people who are vehemently on one side or the other. Why alienate either? Again, you’re tweeting as a brand, not as you.
- Humor is subjective. There will always be someone who thinks your joke is in poor taste or inappropriate, so while you shouldn’t censor yourself, stay away from topics or language that can be taken the wrong way.
- Get a second opinion. If there’s something you want to tweet but you aren’t sure whether it’s appropriate, ask for someone else’s opinion. And if you’re still not sure, follow the next rule.
- When in doubt, leave it out. This golden rule of writing also applies to tweets. If you have any doubts, don’t tweet it.
- Don’t get too personal. People are following the brand because they have an affinity with the company and its products and offerings. They don’t want to know about your personal life or what you’re doing later.
- Follow your followers. If you want to promote conversation with your followers, you have to follow them back. When people see someone whose following/follower ratio is pretty even, they find them to be more open, which makes them more likely interact with them.
- It’s not about @you. It’s the mother of all rules, the one from which all the other rules grow. Every tweet represents your company – whether it’s in a positive or negative way is up to you.
Need help identifying a Twitter mentor? Mashable shares 9 Lessons From Successful Brands on Twitter to help us learn from companies who seem to have mastered the Twittersphere and provides tips to help us emulate their success.
Have you found other useful tips and tricks to tweeting as a brand? Please comment and share your successes and lessons learned.