Twitter 101 Chapter 5 MORE THINGS YOU SHOULD TWEET

As we promised here are a few more ways to effectively use Twitter for your business.

1.      Use a personality to indirectly represent your company.

Twitter, as well as pretty much any social media, is a casual and informal community. Because of this you don’t always need to make everything you tweet sound like a press release. People like companies with a personality. In order to appeal to casual spontaneous side of Twitter users, consider having a person tweet for your company. Set it up so everyone knows the person is affiliated with your company but it’s the person tweeting not the company. A good example of this type of tweeting is Tony Hsieh, CEO of www.Zappos.com. Find him on Twitter (http://twitter.com/#!/zappos) to see a good example of this type of tweeting. You’ll notice that sometimes he tweets about Zappos or things related to Zappos, but other times he simply posts things he finds interesting or funny (the internet loves funny). For example, one of his posts recently was, “In Austria, landed at wrong airport. First thing I thought was ‘Doh!’... Second thing I thought was ‘A deer, a female deer.’” This tweet obviously has nothing to do with Zappos but his followers find it interesting to see what random thoughts occur to the CEO of Zappos. Personal tweeting is a good way to give your company a personality.

2.      Suggestion Box

This is probably the most self-explanatory method of using Twitter because it’s inherently simply. Use Twitter to ask your customers and employees what you could be doing better. Everyone has ideas and giving your customers and employees a place to share them makes them feel like they are participating with your company in a more interactive way. And who knows, you might get some really good ideas out of it. If you want to see someone who already does this, check out Starbucks on Twitter. (http://twitter.com/#!/MyStarbucksIdea)

While these four ways to use Twitter are tried and true there are undoubtedly numerous other ways to effect on Twitter. In social media creativity and ingenuity are highly valued so feel free to use these ideas but don’t get stuck in a rut. Keep everything interesting, new, and exciting, that’s how you’ll get and keep followers on Twitter.