I recently completed three consecutive social media presentations for small business owners and one of the most burning questions from the audience always revolves around how to set up an effective Twitter account.
This blog post is not designed to give you step-by-step instructions; you can get them from a number of places, including Twitter Guide 101 for Business. But we wanted to share our “traction tips” on what we think are the most critical things to think about when setting up a Twitter account for your personal brand or small business.
Listed below are the 7 most important steps to gaining social traction for your Twitter account:
1. TWITTER MANAGEMENT. Make sure the Twitter handle you choose is memorable, serves you well, and is as short as possible. Keep in mind that people connect with other people, which ideally means we like to see Twitter handles with the person’s name. Often that becomes a challenge because your name may already be in use, it’s too long, or you prefer to use your company name, which we’ll get to in a bit. While we don’t recommend using all caps safely, we do recommend using initial caps where it makes obvious sense. For example, @guykawasaki can be (and is) @guykawasaki.
2. MULTIPLE ACCOUNTS: For those of you who have personal brands as well as business, you can (and should) set up two accounts: one in your personal name and one in your company name. That way, you get the benefit of both. Your personal account should provide value to your listeners based on your own knowledge and building one-on-one relationships with others, and can and should include some of your own personality and humor. Your business or company account can focus more on helping people strictly as it relates to the company and the value that the company brings to and shares with others. You don’t necessarily need both; Take a look at your own situation and find out which one is best. You can certainly have an account that has your company name as an identifier with your photo and name. Or vice versa. Weigh the pros and cons and find out what is best for your individual situation.
3. PHOTO CRITICISM. For your personal brand account, your photo or avatar must be a photo of yourself. For God’s sake, don’t use a photo of your dog or child, or a photo of yourself as a child, unless you really are a child (and then maybe Twitter should be used only with adult supervision). And it’s probably not a good idea to put any pictures of yourself. Your photo, whether on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook, is a reflection of you and your personal brand. Make it count. Invest in a decent photographer, pay attention to your wardrobe, and even hire an image consultant if you feel the need. People will see your Twitter photo every time you tweet or post, adding up to thousands of times. Think of tweets as your own branding campaign, like your target audience seeing TV commercials about you over and over again. If this is your business account, then your company logo, or a highly memorable graphic representation of your company, should be used. Traction Tip: Remember that Twitter (just like LinkedIn) only allows one square photo under 700kb in size. Make it bold and impactful in that small space.
4. FILL THE ORGANIC. Many people don’t take the time to write a good biography and so they rush out and just write something silly. Irrelevant. Without sense. Your Twitter bio, while short, says a lot about you. In fact, it says everything about you. In addition to your avatar, it is your image to the world. Pay attention. It’s like your resume, but short. Very short. But just like a tweet, you’d be surprised what you can say in just a few words. Or what your biography says about you. One of my favorite lines is one by Mark Twain or perhaps attributed to TS Eliot, who said, “If I had more time, I would write a shorter letter.” The point is, take the time. Write concise. Edit. Check. Edit again. Get to the heart not only of who you are but, more importantly, who you serve. Who do you add value to? Make sure they are mentioned. Business owners? Moms? Kids? Runners? When people read your biography, your “story,” they need to see a bit of themselves in it. They need to relate to you. While it doesn’t need to take up the entire character space, we don’t want it to sell too little, but we don’t want it to sell in this space either. Just keep it simple and don’t try to do too much – just take the person to the next step and the next step is to follow them or, if they are already following you, connect, chat or contact them.
5. RENT. So we have some pet peeves about this. People don’t realize how important it is to not only use the location field, but also use it correctly if you expect people to find and follow you. If someone leaves this field blank, it means they were lazy or they don’t want anyone to know where they’re from. I’d rather see something in this field than nothing. Heck, at least tell us what country or state you’re from. But some people use UberTwitter and then have their UberTwitter code in the field, which doesn’t make sense if I’m looking for a location to connect with the person. What’s worse, your Twitter handle won’t show up in Twitter directories like Twitterholic or Twellow. Which means that if I search to find people close to me, I will not find that person. So adding the right location is important if you want more people to find you, and particularly important for local businesses, sales professionals, or freelancers. Traction Tip: Use the major metro area closest to you. For example, I live in Chesterfield, VA but in the Richmond, VA area, so I use Richmond VA. Most people will not search every suburb to find people. And it’s better to use that format City, ST too.
6. FILL IN THE URL. Sometimes people leave the URL field blank, but don’t do it. If you don’t have a website, you can find a URL to put there. You can use the link to your LinkedIn or VisualCV media profile, especially if you’re looking for a job or building your personal brand. Or you can set up a PeoplePond page with your social profile and use it. Or a simple personal Google profile. Even your YouTube channel if you work with a lot of video. Traction tip: We want this URL to be an active and engaging place, whether it’s a blog or a site that not only has more contact information for you, but also has more content, content that’s relevant to what you do, who it is and, above all, important, who you help.
7. TWITTER BACKGROUND. Ideally, you want to design a custom background for yourself or your business that has your branding on it. Not a designer? It’s okay. You can use Twitter backgrounds and colors to match your brand at least temporarily, until you get started. There are also a number of free Twitter backup services that you can use. But just like your photo, your Twitter page is a reflection of who you are and your company, so don’t leave it to chance. Just like anything else, sometimes you only get one chance to make a big impression. So find a designer to create a Twitter background page for you; a budget of $100-$200 will usually be more than enough, depending on how many graphics you need to create. If you can’t find someone, give us a call and we’ll create one for you.
Those are what we think are the 7 most important setup steps to creating an impressive and effective Twitter account, one that will give you the most traction from a brand standpoint. If you still need help, don’t worry. Simply contact Traction Group, the social marketing agency for small business owners, and we’ll be happy to answer any questions you may have. Remember, WHAT YOU TWEET is just as important, if not more so. We’ll share some traction tips for that, too, in a future article.
