Twitter and Business: Personality And Interaction the Key

Other articles in this series:

• Twitter and Business: You Get Out What You Put In
• Twitter and Business: Write Good Content and the Rest Will Follow
  Related:
• Twitter The Best Social Media Platform for Internet Marketing

The reasons a business joins Twitter vary from business to business. But whether they want simply to drive traffic to their website, get free product reviews, or simply have an audience to bounce ideas around with and get ideas from, they need to build a big and receptive audience.

By receptive I mean followers that actually read your Tweets and click your links. This is something that many will never get, let me explain why:

The Wrong Way: Reciprocity is Great, but...

Reciprocity is a big thing in Twitter, with the belief being: with the ability to filter Tweets so the people you want to read don't get buried, why not follow everyone who follows you -- provided their not spammers, surely it's just common decency.

Reciprocity has become so common that many businesses are and have relied on it to build their following. What they fail to see is that: they are seeking out people to follow, not because they are interested in what they are tweeting, plan to keep up to date with their Tweets, or even read them most of the time, but purely in the hope it will be reciprocated.

This is an excellent way of building a receptive audience, if when the person comes to your profile they are wowed by your tweets, and follow you because they want to hear what you have to say. But often this is not the case; the Tweets are business like and there is no personality for people to warm to. They mostly follow back in the way it was intended; purely to reciprocate -- it's the Twitter way.

How to Make Reciprocity Work AND Keep it Business Like:

Some business tweeters will be thinking: but I need to keep my Tweets professional, I am representing the brand that I worked hard to build up, long before Twitter was even a concept. You guys can still build a receptive audience, though it may take longer, here's how:Interaction, Interaction, Interaction:

So you follow a few dozen new Tweeters everyday and keep your Tweets business like so they follow just to reciprocate. Your tweets are buried at the bottom of their pile with all the rest of the people they follow to reciprocate only, as before.

The difference is, you read their tweets and when you see something that interests you or that you have an opinion on message them with "@username - I agree" and tell them why. If you do this often enough and your opinions are knowledgeable and/or informative they will start paying attention to your tweets, if only to reciprocate your interaction -- it's the Twitter way. This is why it pays to follow people who's Tweets interest you. Also because they probably have something in common with you and may like your Tweets in the first place.

I said this way will likely take longer because, you will only be able to monitor and reply to one maybe two Tweeters at a time.

The Best Way: Give Yourself a Twitter Personality

: Just because you are on Twitter for business reasons, doesn't mean you need to be just another business on Twitter. Be yourself under the company branding. Just like schmoosing at a company function; you don't just talk about work.

Sure you still Tweet about work and post links to your site, but you also Tweet funny things that happen in your daily life: talk about TV shows, Tweet anecdotes, anything that differentiates you from the crowd and makes people want to see what you are going to Tweet next.

When you do this followers will come to you. To speed up building a receptive audience you can still go looking for them, but follow people who's Tweets you find interesting, that way you will have plenty to talk about.

Before you know it you'll have a large receptive audience to do any of the things mentioned above, or whatever you deem beneficial to your business.