Successful Tweets … From Bones to Embodied

Every studied cell biology? For a tiny thing, they are pretty complicated! The same is true of Tweets. They may be only 140 characters long, but they can speak volumes both within and between their lines. Today we break down what makes a good business Tweet, in terms of promoting your web marketing goals.

What type of Tweet is it?

Much like the cells in your body, having a single ‘type’ of Tweet just won’t work for your business. Every cells in your body needs most of the other cells in order to function … and in the same way, you need a well-rounded repertoire of Tweets in order to create a viable ‘organism’ of a business Twitter profile. Here are some of the types of Tweets you can, and should, be using:

• Retweets – If you come across something your followers might find interesting, you can re-tweet it
• Opinions and observations – Keep them professional, though. Be positive – don’t derogate anybody, especially your competitors or bad customers, tempting as it might be.
• What you are reading or watching: Share a link to interesting content you’ve found
• Events and plans – If you have an upcoming event for the public to attend, tweet about it often
• Content promotion – many blogs can be set to auto-tweet new posts. You may prefer to select Tweet-worthy content yourself.
• Replies: If somebody asks you a question via Twitter … answer them! (Refer to 4 Principles of Customer Service in Internet marketing)
• Quotes: I love quotes. Some people don’t love quotes. A small percentage is great to have as part of your Twitter ‘organism’.

The Control Centre

The link that you use is like the brain of many of your Tweets – the tweet itself would be useless without it. Twitter automatically uses bit.ly, but you may prefer another service. Is.gd uses slightly fewer characters, for example.

Watch out for…

These pathogens can ruin you’re the Twitter-creature you’ve created! Look out for:

• Naughty words. They make you seem angry, out of control, unprofessional, and like you have a limited vocabulary and no other way to express yourself.
• Abbreviations. Most people understand LOL and OMG, but if you’re using them more than once per tweet, you are trying to squeeze too much in! Another point here … I find that ‘WTF’ (pardon me!) is just as unprofessional  as the spelt-out version.
• An imbalance forming. Check over your profile page regularly and see if you have been favouring one type of Tweet heavily. Bring a bit of balance back into your profile.

Twitter is a great web marketing tool – but even within 140 characters there is a lot of room for wasted opportunities!