In developing your company’s Twitter strategy, there are a few things to keep in mind that will help your brand come across effectively. Here is a list of five simple Twitter account recommendations:
1. Avoid Excessive Over/Under Tweeting.
When I scan the tweets of my friends, I gaze over them quickly, pulling the notable ones and ignoring the rest. Items I look for include recognizable faces, those that frequently tweet catchy or humorous quips, and random items that stand out. However, when there’s a string of five or ten consecutive tweets from a single individual, I tend to ignore the entire thing. Even if it is someone I otherwise adore. Beware of excessive tweeting; it may adversely affect your quality followers. Likewise, on the opposite side, who will follow you if you do not tweet?
2. Refrain From Over Linking.
SEO 2.0 recently posted a blog entry titled Hey Marketers On Twitter: It’s Not A Link List. He has an excellent point. Dropping too many links can cause disinterest. Include a link-less tweet or two between link tweets. I could, for example, tweet each time a new post goes up on FensePost, my music blog, which would mean two links per weekday and occasional links on weekends, but I only tweet the ones about which I feel very strongly. Along the same lines, refrain from excessive RT (re-tweeting someone else’s tweet), #hashing (twitter-based topic groupings), etc.
3. Don’t Be Faceless.
When I blogged about Business Via Twitter, I mentioned a few companies that base their tweeting on a strictly defined strategy. Visiting Comcast Cares in retrospect, I’ve noticed a few changes. The first and foremost is this: a person named Frank Eliason. Give your Twitter a face by putting a real live person in charge of it. While this doesn’t necessarily mean putting a “face” in the icon, doing so gives your company twitter account a more personal connection with followers.
4. Expand Your Focus.
Strategies like focusing on promotions and incentives can work well for large companies like Dell, but smaller companies may run the risk of succumbing to the aforementioned linking issue if all they do is tweet promotions. Include tweets that are industry specific, or that your followers will appreciate. In other words, if you have a defined strategy, stick to it for the most part but include some more personalized elements.
5. Enhance Your Page
Along the lines of “adding a person” to your twitter account, there’s one item all the companies mentioned “Business Via Twitter” have in common: they do not have standard Twitter templates. They’ve all added their own uniquely branded backgrounds. They have a recognizable icon that appears aside their tweets — often an individual or photograph that relates to the brand.
To back our words, we enhanced our Twitter page with a fresh new look a few weeks back. The background image was taken in our office and the user icon is the famed BrandQuery cell developed during our time as BMR Design+Advertising. If you’re on Twitter, feel free to follow us!
