Top tips for Twitter best practice

Have you ever taken the time to read Twitter: Best Practices?

Below is a list of 8 simple practices from the creators of Twitter to ensure you are getting the best out of your company Twitter account. I’ve added some additional points alongside so please feel free to add your own insights below.

1. Share. Share photos and behind the scenes info about your business. Even better, give a glimpse of developing projects and events. Users come to Twitter to get and share the latest, so give it to them! Don’t forget your followers are interested in your brand so share content with them regularly, give them more to talk about and engage them in discussion around new ideas, product lines and recent campaigns.
2. Listen. Regularly monitor the comments about your company, brand, and products. You can read more about social media listening in our previous post on the topic here.
3. Ask. Ask questions of your followers to glean valuable insights and show that you are listening. Be smart about which questions you ask, i.e. make sure you word them correctly, to ensure you gain useful responses which can in turn be used to better a product or improve your service. However don’t ask questions solely focussed on your brand or a product, Twitter is about developing customer relationships and engagement, so mention recent news within your industry, and ask for people’s opinions. Constant product referrals can become tedious.
4. Respond. Respond to compliments and feedback in real time where possible. This is of course not possible all of the time if you are a global brand which receives constant mentions/direct messages around the clock, but only monitors its online presence from one office. If however you have various offices around the globe, make sure someone in each has the ability to log into your brand’s Twitter account, so they can respond to people as and when needed. This can be particularly useful for crisis management, whereby one unfriendly tweet has the chance to grow/fester for some hours before it is picked up by you.
5. Reward. Tweet updates about special offers, discounts and time-sensitive deals. Give people an added reason to follow you, perhaps include exclusive promo codes for Twitter users. If you don’t offer products available for general sale, or within a niche market, perhaps include different rewards such as a real time web chat with an expert.
6. Demonstrate wider leadership and know-how. Reference articles and links about the bigger picture as it relates to your business. Act as an alternative source of information for your followers, make it so they come to your Twitter feed to gain insight.
7. Champion your stakeholders. Retweet and reply publicly to great tweets posted by your followers and customers. Compliment others on articles they have written, or information they have tweeted which might also be of interest to your online community.
8. Establish the right voice. Twitter users tend to prefer a direct, genuine, and of course, a likable tone from your business, but think about your voice as you Tweet. How do you want your business to appear to the Twitter community? Do you want to interact in a friendly manner, or a more formal authoritative tone? You may wish to respond differently to customer mentions than if you are tweeting some crucial insight.

Do you have any tips for best utilising Twitter? Please share below.