DO liven up your page with backgrounds, profile pictures and tweet-pics.

DO mirror your brand voice if you have a strong one, if you don’t – create one!

For example: Mamas & Papa’s brand focus is quality, style and attention to detail as well as customer service, so their tweets reflects this.

Twitter accounts that don’t mirror their brand’s focus or have distinct ‘voice’ – including those from the biggest brands, quickly become background noise.

DO use tweetdeck, hootsuite or any other software to plan your tweets in advance.

DO keep your disgruntled consumers happy by responding to consumer queries and mentions as promptly and helpfully as possible.

DO hold follower ‘drives’. If you have a strong presence elsewhere online e.g. on your blog or Facebook but are yet to receive the solid follower base you need on Twitter, don’t be afraid to ask.

Make like Boohoo.com and pull thousands of Facebook followers and website users to their Twitter by offering the chance to win £50 of vouchers just by clicking ‘Follow’. It worked, big time.

DON’T  use inappropriate levels of hash tags in the right places e.g. ‘we’re really #excited to see the new #twitterdesigns come out #tomorrow’, has far more tags than necessary (trust me, we do see it!)

DON’T join trending topics that aren’t relevant to your brandvoice or content plan. Followers of B&Q don’t want to hear about Beyoncé and Jay Z’s new baby, just as Beyonce followers don’t want to hear about the Bathroom Door sale at B&Q

DON’T tweet more than five times a day (max!) if you can help it. Excluding responses to consumer questions and mentions – which are unlimited, too many tweets will fill up your followers feed. It’s bad Twitter manners, convolutes your messages and is creates an information-overload (inevitably leading to consumers ‘switching off’)

Posted by eight&four on 23 Jan, 2012 at 9:30 am