twitter for small business

Well, by now you have all heard of twitter and may or may not be sold on its validity but are intrigued enough to give it a try.  Hopefully you have been able to get @yourcompanyname and through friends/google have established that you need:

• a picture of yourself or a logo;
• an interesting background image that incorporates your brand - a .jpg with resolution that works on most browsers (is there money to be made on custom twitter skins? - hmmmm);
• some tool to shorten url’s (like TinyURL) so that you can fit your website/blog promotions along with some reason as to why we should click through into the 140 characters;
• do you use a lot of images in your work? perhaps you should also consider TwitPic which lets you share photo’s;
• some tool to be able to reasonably handle and organize the feed load (e.g. TweetDeck).  Personally I’m using Twitterfox because I like a small footprint and I don’t follow that many people as of yet;
• some understanding of twitter acronyms (e.g. when to use RT (retweet));
• you’ve read the “47 Twitter Power Users’ Secrets To Getting Many Followers” and, so that I don’t bias you with my app selection, you have taken a peak at “99 Essential Twitter Tools and Applications“;
• you’ve discovered search, how to use hashtags, and are wondering if there is such a thing as twitter etiquette?

Right then.  Your twitter account looks great, you’ve got all the basic tools you need and you are now “following” your friends and a few interesting tech people (like @techcrunch) which amounts to about 20 all in.  You’ve been on for a week and the thousands that everyone says should be following you are not materializing.  Now what?

My first bit of advice is simple: you have to put in as much as you want to receive.  Twitter is a lot of work with trying to post 3-4 times per day something witty and insightful and keep on top of what everyone else is trying to say.  If you don’t put in the work then what do you expect to get out of it?

Right - ramp up the time investment and content.  Done.

So, that managed to get you a few more followers.  Or you would like to think.  Who are these people who just randomly follow you?  I think of them as new media whores.  They use sweeper tools that allow them to auto follow randomly (like Twubble) or they click “Everyone” and follow the first ten, every day.  Either way they are hoping that when they follow you, you will follow them - boosting both your numbers - content is an afterthought.  There is a whole paper here on societal pressure to conform, but I digress.

is the number of people following me a measure of success? Do I want to be a new media whore?

Patience, grasshopper.  I’ll let you struggle with that identity crisis over your next beverage.  For now, let’s work on quality.  I’m a firm believer in who you follow says as much about you as the content you write.  I choose to follow tech industry, small business, social media and companies/clients I have worked with (or potentially may work with) as these tie in with the Business Ready mission (although there are 1 or 2 personal ones - I’ll let you figure out which).  I assume those that follow us would be interested in small business solutions.  However, this does not mean I will automatically follow back (@ShopSaveShare is not for Business Ready).

I’ve found that when I choose to follow certain people, other people find Business Ready through trolling “following” and end up finding us interesting and choose to follow us.  So, there is something to be said for using search, looking at the following/follow of others and choosing to follow people who are interesting to you and like will follow.  So, let’s not take the new media whore route quite yet and instead have patience to grow this thing organically over a period of time.

why am I doing this at all?

Because you can’t deny that this is an interesting new medium to get your message out.  It further compliments your corporate website, blog, brand and messaging and provides a bit more personal in the usual PR (no longer considered public relations but personal relations).

Give your company a voice!  Use @replies!  Ask good questions!  and drive people back to your website and products.  All in a days work marketing your wares.

To follow Business Ready on twitter click here or click on the blue t at the top of the right hand navigation bar and here is the tweet for this blog post:

Oops, forgot TweetPaste - for embedding tweets. Very cool. And, also, don’t forget to add yourself to wefollow - a twitter user directory.