by Rachel Alessi

Created on: November 20, 2010

Twitter is a powerful business communications tool. There are a myriad of ways that you can harness the power of Twitter for successful social media marketing campaigns but it has to be done right, otherwise you will alienate your followers and go into social media meltdown, so avoid the following mistakes.

Having a poor company profile is a sure fire way to turn followers and potential customers off. Make sure you have your profile set up correctly and that it includes some searchable keywords that are relevant to your company so people can find you easily. You need to have a strong visual presence and that includes branding. You need to create a strong link between your brand and the Twitter experience so that your customers don’t get confused; use your Twitter page background to show an image that reflects your brand positioning.  Your profile on Twitter is where people will go to find out how you are using the site and find out more about your business – don’t waste a golden opportunity.

Failing to engage and interact with your followers is suicide. Twitter is a social media site therefore it stands to reason that you have to be sociable. People are voluntarily choosing to follow your company and they are going to expect some sort of response to that commitment. Failure to respond will have negative consequences and consumers are unlikely to give you a second chance to redeem yourself.

Once you’ve built up a good base then the worst thing you can do is to continuously bombard your followers with ‘spam’ and advertising. Doing this will almost certainly reduce your fan base and, even worse, they will tell their friends that you ‘spam’ your customers. That’s social media suicide so don’t do it! Focus on adding value. Find out what your followers want and make sure you give it to them. Use your channel as a way to communicate things that are valuable to your audience such as industry news and trends.

You must also not forget to tell followers exactly how you are going to use the site. The last thing you want is people ‘unfollowing’ you in droves because you have failed to manage their expectations. So, if your Twitter account is going to be used only for promoting your goods and services via RSS feeds and links, and there is not going to be any opportunity for two-way interaction then you must tell people that so there is no confusion. Some companies have multiple Twitter channels each specifically designed to deliver a particular type of content to a tightly targeted audience.

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