10 Ways to Build Your Brand on Twitter
Using Twitter is about more than posting updates—it’s about enhancing your company’s image online, about build your brand. By leveraging the power of this popular social network, you can showcase your business to an ever-expanding audience.
Here are 10 ways to build your brand on Twitter!
Brand Your Profile
Your username, your profile image, your description and your background are all aspects that come into play with your Twitter brand. You want to pick a username that either matches your brand name or is very relevant to it, and you want to do it before someone else can. In industries like the manufacturing of rolled steel angles, there may not be a ton of competition for certain brand names, but in a realm like hotels or travel, there definitely will be.
Tweet a Consistent Voice
It’s as true of Twitter as it is of blogging: in order to build your brand, you need to communicate a consistent voice. People should be able to easily connect your Twitter profile with your site, not just because of the way it looks but also because of how it sounds. What is your brand’s voice? Is it formal or funny, snarky or sweet? Whatever it is, be consistent about using it online.
Share Interesting Content
Building your brand is about more than self-promotion; it’s about sharing information that is genuinely helpful. Rather than answering the question “What am I doing?” try to think in terms of “What has my attention?” Distinguish yourself on Twitter as someone who’s always linking to interesting websites, blogs, articles and resources elsewhere on the Web, and you instantly become someone who’s more valuable to followers.
Follow Likeminded Professionals
If you want to be known as a social media blogger, become part of the social media blogger community. Follow other Twitter users related to your brand and tune in to their Tweets to gain information about what they’re saying.
Engage in Conversation
Twitter is about more than building your brand—it’s about building community. By regularly posting helpful, interesting content, you automatically help increase your followers. But how you engage with those followers is even more important. Work to interact with clients and customers and colleagues by taking part in their discussions, responding to what they say and retweeting their content.
But Don’t Overengage in Conversation
Nothing is more annoying than Twitter users who are constantly sharing personal back-and-forth dialogues that don’t relate to the other 99% of their audience. If you need to keep responding to one particular user, take the conversation off your feed through direct messages or emails. Keep in mind that building your brand on Twitter is about being helpful and interesting to all your audience.
Tweet Your Blog Posts
Use Twitter to increase your blog’s reach: there are plugins like WP to Twitter and third-party applications like Twitter Feed that will auto-post your new blog posts to Twitter, encouraging your followers to click through to your site, as would Google’s Feedburner. Plus, for WordPress-based blogs, using Tweet Old Posts allows you to promote past content on a rotating basis, according to the guidelines you set.
Use Twitter Search to Build Connections
There are people out there talking about your industry—don’t you want to find them? With Twitter’s search feature (http://search.twitter.com), you can punch in terms related to your specialty and see what’s being said. Imagine if the next time someone Tweeted, “Who knows of a good Chinese place in D.C.,” your restaurant responded, “check ours out!” Likewise, you can search for mentions of your brand and its products. Staying on top of these kinds of discussion not only promotes your company but also gives Web users the sense that you’re engaged in the social space.
Use Hashtags
Hashtags can help you organize your content as well as expand its exposure. Maybe your engineering company wants to tag its Tweets with the types of products you mention, such as #ASI decoder or #PCI card. Maybe your accounting firm tags Tweets by category, from #quote to #article to #statistics. Whatever the case, these identifiers will make it easier to find all similar Tweets just by clicking a tag, as well as bring your content to the eyes of other users typing in those terms.
Host a Twitter Chat
Twitter chats can be powerful ways to boost your influence to a given audience. Consider inviting all your clients to join you in a Twitter chat for a certain day and time, with all conversation tagged with the hashtag of your brand name. Then use the chat to respond to questions, gain information about your clientele and alert users to upcoming news or developments. Follow all the users who participate and be sure to thank them individually for joining.
