Alex of Brand It Signs did a great blog on Has the internet made traditional Advertising obsolete? for our sister site www.northwestbusinesslife.co.uk
He get’s around 25% of his business from Twitter so wanted to share some tips for local business’s in Altrincham to make more of twitter
Here’s his Top 10 Twitter Tips for Small Business
1 – Do not swear on any tweets. It makes your company look unprofessional and will put some people off ever wanting to call.
2 – Get involved. Ask people questions and reply when you know an answer to someone else’s,comment on pictures and local stories. Sometimes you won’t even get a response, but when you do other people will want to get in on the conversation. When this happens you can get great exposure and inevitably more followers as people notice you and think you are someone worth following.
3 – Balance business with pleasure. If you are too cold and corporate you won’t engage with anyone, but if you are too friendly and familiar then you just look unprofessional. Tread the line with caution.
4 – Don’t be annoying. Try not to get involved in petty arguments, don’t retweet everything you see, don’t jump into other peoples conversations trying to sell them your sevices and don’t tweet a hundred tweets an hour. Being annoying gets you unfollowed.
5 – Stay local. You will probably want to sell your services as close to home as possible, so don’t waste time following a high school in California and trying to be their new best friends. They won’t hire you.
6 – Ask customers to tweet about you. If a customer you have just done work for is following you on twitter, ask them to tweet pictures and a short testimonial about the job you have just done. A happy customer will sing your praises and when other people see your satisfied customers on twitter, you couldn’t have more effective advertising. A long list of twitter testimonials also looks great on your website.
7 – Tweet everyday. Although it is important not to tweet too much and annoy people, don’t leave it a month in between tweets. You have to stay in people’s minds so when they need someone in your industry, they think of you.
8 – Buy or hire other twitter users. If you can buy or hire someone else off twitter instead of the yellow pages, you can be sure they will recommend you on twitter one day.
9 – Have a picture. Don’t keep that default egg as your picture. I don’t follow people without a picture. They look like spammers.
10 – Don’t just post adverts for your business. I cannot understand why a company would just tweet constant ads. I see companies who post one tweet over and over like “Manchester Gardening Services – 20% discount for twitter followers”. It isn’t in the spirit of twitter. Twitter is an instant way to interact with potential customers, and this type of constant, boring auto-tweets won’t work and will lose you followers.
And a cheeky one…
11 – Follow @BrandItSigns
Alex Strath is the Owner and Lead Project Manager of Brand It Sign and Design Manchester based sign makers.
www.branditsignanddesign.com
