Twitter is, frankly, pretty amazing once you get the hang of it.
It allows for instant communication from pretty much anywhere to any number of people living pretty much anywhere.
Not only are you able to find and follow tons of interesting people but others can find and follow you.
As a small business owner the ability to communicate with a group of current and future customers is priceless.
Did I mention it's free as well? Like anything else there is a right way to use Twitter for small business and a wrong way.
And, also like anything else, it seems that the examples of people doing it wrong tend to stand out more than those doing it right.
Here are a couple examples of Twitter behavior that is best avoided.
Tweet Overload As a small business owner it can be an exciting prospect to let others know about a new product or special deal you have going on.
And there is nothing wrong with telling your Twitter followers all about it.
Just do it with care.
I once followed, for about 4 hours, a small business owner whose products I really liked and had purchased in the past.
The issue was this guy was tweeting his entire inventory all day long, as in every 4 minutes there'd be another Tweet about another product.
It got so annoying I stopped following him and I'm sure many others dropped out as well.
The idea was good, the execution was not.
A better way to go would be to tweet maybe a couple times a day about some products.
In that case I very likely would have both paid attention more to each of his Tweets and continued to follow him.
Don't overload your followers! Direct Message Invasion The ability to send a direct message (DM) to one of your followers is great.
It allows for some quick private communication and is a great way to chat out of the limelight.
That being said, for a small business owner, they should be used with extreme care and infrequency.
Another personal experience that lead to dropping a small business off my Follow list happened like this: A bar in town had just started up their Twitter account and they were doing a pretty good job at managing their Followers.
At some point they figured out about direct messaging and it went from a fun and useful account to Follow to annoying real quick.
Rather than Tweet about that nights specials and what band was playing they did a lot of it via DM.
Super annoying.
I dropped them quick as did most of my buddies that followed them as well.
Treat your followers just like customers because if they aren't one yet, they soon could be.
It allows for instant communication from pretty much anywhere to any number of people living pretty much anywhere.
Not only are you able to find and follow tons of interesting people but others can find and follow you.
As a small business owner the ability to communicate with a group of current and future customers is priceless.
Did I mention it's free as well? Like anything else there is a right way to use Twitter for small business and a wrong way.
And, also like anything else, it seems that the examples of people doing it wrong tend to stand out more than those doing it right.
Here are a couple examples of Twitter behavior that is best avoided.
Tweet Overload As a small business owner it can be an exciting prospect to let others know about a new product or special deal you have going on.
And there is nothing wrong with telling your Twitter followers all about it.
Just do it with care.
I once followed, for about 4 hours, a small business owner whose products I really liked and had purchased in the past.
The issue was this guy was tweeting his entire inventory all day long, as in every 4 minutes there'd be another Tweet about another product.
It got so annoying I stopped following him and I'm sure many others dropped out as well.
The idea was good, the execution was not.
A better way to go would be to tweet maybe a couple times a day about some products.
In that case I very likely would have both paid attention more to each of his Tweets and continued to follow him.
Don't overload your followers! Direct Message Invasion The ability to send a direct message (DM) to one of your followers is great.
It allows for some quick private communication and is a great way to chat out of the limelight.
That being said, for a small business owner, they should be used with extreme care and infrequency.
Another personal experience that lead to dropping a small business off my Follow list happened like this: A bar in town had just started up their Twitter account and they were doing a pretty good job at managing their Followers.
At some point they figured out about direct messaging and it went from a fun and useful account to Follow to annoying real quick.
Rather than Tweet about that nights specials and what band was playing they did a lot of it via DM.
Super annoying.
I dropped them quick as did most of my buddies that followed them as well.
Treat your followers just like customers because if they aren't one yet, they soon could be.
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