Should you use Twitter for your business?

Yes if you know how. No if you don’t.
Twitter is a short message service for the web. Its like a small broadcasting station on the web that allows you to publish small messages that could make a lot of sense, but are usually garbled by strange symbols and odd collections of letters, numbers, dashes and slashes. However, used in its simplest form – as a short messaging service – it can be a powerful marketing tool. I am assuming here that you at least have created a twitter account and know how to send out an occasional message.

So what do you do need to use it for business?

1. Having something unique to say.
   
   As a business most likely you do have something unique to say. Even though you may not be in a unique business, for those who listen to you, you may be the only person they know in your business. So what you have to say is most likely something that they are not likely to hear from anyone else – or atleast from very few others.
   
   
2. Say something that is useful to people listening to you.
   
   Sure you can use Twitter to let people know what you are doing and how great your new store is. But if that’s the only thing you have to say and you don’t have something of value to your listener, why should they listen to you?
   
   
3. Make sure you say it regularly.
   
   Like any good branding effort, consistency and routine work in Twitter as well. Identify a schedule for your messages and stick to it. If your users can expect to hear from you with a certain regularity, they begin to trust that you are there for keeps and not just a flash in the pan.
   
   
4. Link your messages back to your services or business.
   
   This is a tricky one. Obviously you are going to be tweeting about your business – so what does linking it back mean? Well, try to match every blog post, tweet or forum post to a service offering that we have. That way we can establish interest in a particular service and know whom to approach to make our offers to.
   
   
5. Have content to back up your tweets.
   
   Make sure that you have content on your website or some other source that can expand on what you tweet about. A tweet is only 140 characters. Just not enough to get a full idea across. At best it’s a reminder to your followers that you have something to say. It’s the content that ultimately matters.

If you can do the above five things, you can work out an effective Twitter strategy.