I was reading Shaun Anderson's blog the other day (which I highly recommend, you can find it here) where he pointed out how to quickly get yourself "unfollowed". It seems there's a fine line between providing useful information and just Tweeting to Tweet. As we use Twitter more and more as a general communication and promotional tool here at Netvantage, I've come up with two general heuristics for how we use Twitter that I think other small businesses may want to keep in mind as well.
- Remember your audience. If you Tweet from a personal account, and your followers are friends and family, they certainly won't mind hearing that you found a great deal on gas at your local gas station. However, if you are a small business/freelancer who has a large number of people following you because of who you are professionally, this is not valuable information to them. Think hard about why people are following you, and then plan your Tweeting appropriately.
- Accurately represent your brand. This falls in line a little bit with the above, but if you have some brand attributes that you can communicate, then keep them in mind with each post. Our followers are a mix of professional types and business colleagues, so we try to keep things business focused. However, our brand is built a little bit on being, as Joe would call it, "folksy". We like to communicate that we're normal people, so we will throw in something humorous or silly on occasion to lighten the mood. When you work with us, you'll realize that a little bit of that comes with our services. So when you see a Tweet about me wandering around the office in strength shoes, it serves two purposes. One, it lets you know that we're having fun around the office. Two, that I'm wearing strength shoes while I work. I'm apparently still making an effort to be the SEO with the highest vertical leap.
If you find yourself crossing over between personal and professional Tweeting too often, maybe it's time to set up two accounts. While it might not seem convenient, it definitely allows you to apply a consistent message and maintain a professional appearance to your followers. I would hate to think that I lost a potential customer or business partnership because we innundated our followers with too much meaningless information.
Two Twitterers I enjoy following include:
Chris Hooley - @ChrisHooley
I enjoy Chris' input on Twitter a lot because he has a great sense of humor, and he stays pretty on topic with his business and other worthwhile industry talk. His Twittering follows his blogging approach, where he's pretty nonchalant. Most people couldn't get away with being this casual, but it works for him.
Rob Frankel - @brandingexpert
Rob is a serious brand marketing guru, and since hopping on Twitter last Fall he's been one of my reasons for coming back as often as I do. Particularly as a marketing company ourselves, he does an excellent job of providing little snippets of insight and observation throughout the day to keep your own branding and marketing top of mind.
Anyhow, thanks to Shaun at Hobo for the inspiration. If anyone has any other good Twitterers to suggest, we're all ears. If you want to follow us, please do.
