I am working on a Twitter Basics presentation for small businesses, and want to know what you think is essential for a small business owner to do on Twitter, especially when they are just getting used to it.

Some of you always have those great extras that aren’t too complex but really  make a difference!

Thanks!

@joanmuschampfagnani I would recommend that they check out their competitors or industry Twitter account and follow some of their followers. Many people will follow back. Also follow community resources such as local government, chambers, civic associations, HOAs, etc. which will help them stay abreast of local news as well as gain followers.

Also, have a mix of original and curated content. For example, a coffee shop could talk about community activities, coffee & food topics and their specials to build an active community.

Did I ever send you the two-page intro to Twitter for businesses? If not, I can do it over the weekend!

I used to retweet a lot and now I seem to be one of those people feeding twitter from the tweet meme button

@joanmuschampfagnani I think it’s really important to participate in the conversation. When people I’m following ask a question, I give them an answer. That way my name gets known. I also use # to follow specific conversations. So when I do answer I occur as an expert in my field.

@amyhallbiz – The conversation aspect is often overlooked and is an important part. I can see you know this already.

See, if you make it ALL about business, you are not interacting as a PERSON. You can tweet some of your activities to attract followers who then may be in a position to spread the word about you and your services.

For instance: I am a web developer however, I tweet recipes from time to time as I also run a blog for Prairieland Food.  I love sewing and stitching crafts and am also a beading hobbyist so sometimes tweet about some items in those genres. I have authors in my family (I also do copywriting) so follow and am followed by literally hundreds of authors so I help those folks out by re-tweeting and noting the books I like.

It’s a MIX of information.  If you keep it strictly business, your audience will not know YOU – and that’s what makes it “conversational.”

Most important thing to learn I believe is how to use hashtags from both ends. In your tweets and to find information in search.  Once you see the power of hashtags you’ll have one of the best twitter functions figured out.

.02

Eileen

Monitor mentions with Twilert and thank people for tweeting my stuff. I also use Twitter as a way of reaching out to other people with more influence than me (just replying to them, retweeting their stuff etc). It’s the best platform for that sort of thing. 

I also did some experiments with a Twitter auto follow / DM strategy recently which had surprisingly good results (the best converting traffic strategy out of 12 tested). Here is the full case study http://thinktraffic.net/best-source-web-traffic. It’s probably what you might consider ‘grey hat’.