Sometimes business users are at a loss as to what to post to their Twitter pages. Twitter used to prompt you with the question, “What are you doing?”, but that led to people posting such statements as, “I am eating a grilled cheese sandwich.” Hardly riveting information.
Recently Twitter switched its prompt question to “What’s happening?” perhaps in an attempt to guide users to broader posts. Below are my guidelines to the four main topic areas I recommend to my business clients who use Twitter.
1. Quotes and inspiring thoughts – Because of its limit to 140 characters, Twitter is the perfect place to post memes, or short ideas that transmit easily from one person to another. It can be a good practice to boil an idea down to its essence, and share the main point without any fluff.
2. Retweets and links to helpful resources – One of Twitter’s main applications is as a resource for all sorts of useful information you would not come across any other way. When you retweet other users’ posts, you validate them and help pass along good information. When people retweet your posts it showcases you to all of their followers, which in turn attracts more people to follow you. If you do nothing else but post relevant, useful information to your Twitter page you will be adding value to Twitter, your followers and your brand as well.
3. Messages to other users – Twitter is a social media, and as such it tends to attract people who are interested and open to other people. Answering questions, posting direct comments and interacting with other users is a wonderful way to build relationships and get the most out of Twitter.
4. Self-promotion and news about what you’re doing – If you’re using Twitter for business reasons, you definitely should be letting people know more about you. Just make sure it isn’t more than around 20% of your content. Too much is a turn-off because Twitter is not an advertising vehicle, it’s a community. Be on the lookout for third-party information that supports your brand – so instead of you posting, “Hey we are a great company,” you can post a link to an online testimonial one of your customers provided, letting him or her tell everyone how great you are.
This article may be reprinted when the copyright and author bio are included.
©2010 Barbara Wayman, BlueTree Media, LLC.
