Twitter for Business

I've recently joined The Marketing Eye as a Trainee Marketing Executive, meaning I indulge in a little bit of everything that marketing has to offer. As a starter task I was given the responsibility of writing social media updates for an event, opening my eyes to the world of social media from a company's perspective.

Through this I've compiled a list of Do's and Don'ts when it comes to using social media to promote business matters and not just for tweeting random thoughts of the day!

DO'S

• Tag appropriate people/companies using the ‘@' symbol to spread awareness of your tweet. This will alert the company in question and increase the chances of gaining a ‘retweet' or a ‘favourite', thus spreading your tweets across Twitter.
• Attach photographs that are relevant to the message your tweet contains. The average attention span of an adult is as low as 8 seconds, a photograph will either intrigue your audience or sum up you tweet in less time.
• Double check all spelling and grammar BEFORE you publish your tweet to the whole world, some mistakes are painful to witness and being limited to 140 characters is NO excuse!
• Make it personal. ‘Hi I'm *name* and I'm here to answer any questions you may have today'
• Look for connections. See who has been ‘recommended' for you to follow, see who they follow and so on.

DON'TS

• Don't use slang or shortened down words. I understand you're limited to 140 characters but slang words will make you look unprofessional.
• Don't follow everyone and anyone, to look successful on twitter you should be following LESS people than you have following you.
• Never use twitter to slate your competition. Customers may appreciate a friendly conversation between rivals but nothing that will result in you looking petty.
• Don't overuse hashtags ‘#'. One hashtag with the potential to trend is all you need.
• Don't waste time tweeting information that has no link to your company, it will only confuse readers and could lead to an ‘unfollow'.

I could go on for ages but those are the essentials and remember, you are what you tweet!