Twitter provides a great potential outlet for any business. It’s popularity is growing and users all over the world are using the service to communicate in brands in a way never before.
But before you put your brand or small business on Twitter, there are some questions you need to ask:
- What do you want to achieve? This might be a simple answer, but it’s worth thinking about. For most businesses, the answer is probably ‘increase sales’. But think more strategically; are you looking for greater brand awareness, do you want to engage with customers or get in front of new prospects? There might be more than one answer here of course
- What is the purpose of your account? Twitter accounts can be used in a vast array of different ways, from customer services and special offers to customer engagement and blog pimping. What will be your main purpose on Twitter?
- Who are you trying to reach? Try to think about your target audience. Are you after customers, prospects or maybe influencers (journalists, bloggers, trend setters?)
- Are these targets already even using Twitter? Is Twitter the right channel for your particular audience? The social network is increasingly popular, but it is still used more by certain niches. Do your research
- Who will use the account? For the one-person business, this will be easy, but if you have several employees that might qualify for access then think carefully about who is best suited, especially given your answers to questions 1 and 2 (of course you can have more than one user and/or more than one account)
- How will you manage replies? How will you manage negative comments? Once you are on Twitter, users will start communicating with you. This might sound obvious, but it can still be a bit of a surprise. Managing these replies – good and bad – quickly and efficiently is important, so make sure you have thought about what you will say and how you will handle these comments
- How will you measure the effectiveness of Twitter on your business? This is the million dollar question and there are no easy answers. To start off with, put in place some simple success metrics so you can gauge how you are doing. You can always adjust or change these at a future time
What else should you ask? What have we missed? Any ideas about the answers? Follow SocialSmallBiz on Twitter and let us know…
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