I often come across business Twitter accounts with what I believe to be vital information missing.  These five things are the very first things you should do when you set up your business Twitter account.

1. Profile picture

This is so important.  It can be a photo of you, a business logo or even a proud image of an award.  It looks so much better than the Twitter egg you are first supplied with. 

My newsfeed is huge and when I have five minutes to scan through it, I will often only stop and read the tweets from the accounts where I recognise the profile picture or sometimes a logo just jumps out at me. 

I don’t like the eggs and I don’t follow anyone back using them.

2. Location

Pop your location on your profile, especially if you are a business!  At least put your country.  It will help people to find your services if they are looking locally only.  It can also stop you getting queries or disappointed customers, for example if you don’t ship to a certain country.  If you are a blogger then someone might be searching for bloggers in a certain region.   

It’s also just nice to know where in the world people are who you are interacting with.  You could even meet someone just around the corner from you!  Some local networking # hours will only retweet you if they can see you really are local, so it’s worth popping it on if you join in with these.

I can only ship within the EU and my blogging services are predominantly relevant for the UK only, so I want to network with others in these locations.  I’ll always look at the location before following an account.

3. Name

I never used to do this and for a long time I just had ‘Lylia Rose @lyliarose’ as my profile name, but now I have put Victoria as I believe it makes it more personal.  It’s nice to know who you are talking to.  I also had lots of people assume my name was actually Lylia, rather than it just being my business name. 

I understand why some businesses may just want their business name, especially if they have lots of staff and the account represents the company only.  But, you could also put something like ‘Tweets by Jack’ in your bio or introduce yourself by name when a conversation starts.  It definitely makes me feel more like I’m talking to a person if I know their name. 

For small businesses it’s one of the benefits we can have over larger companies – we can make the whole experience more real and personal.

4. Bio

Let your followers and more importantly, potential followers, know what you do.  I see some accounts with a website link but no description and no obvious tweets or profile images about what they do.  Sadly I don’t have time to click on every link to see if it’s something I could be interested in, so a bio is really helpful here!

It’s the best way to let everyone know what you do, what interests you, which communities you are a part of and to shout about any of the amazing awards you’ve won.  It could be the difference between someone deciding they want to follow you or not, as they may not want to tweet to ask.

5. Website link

For the tweeters who do want to see more about you, search your products or require your services, make sure you provide a working website link.  I’ve clicked on some before and the website doesn’t even exist.  Bizarre! 

If your website is undergoing maintenance or isn’t yet live, perhaps mention this in your bio rather than provide a defunct link.

 

 

Save