10 top tips for using Twitter for business

15th April 2009

I was going to write a piece on the recent phenomenon of businesses utilising Twitter as part of their communications strategy for my first serious post on the blog. A sort of do's and don't type piece.

Decided to see what others were saying and came across these 10 tips on the PC World website of all places. I read it and it pretty much echoed the advice we have been offering our clients here for the last couple of years regarding the use of social media.

In brief the top ten tips covered are:

1. Identify a business problem you are trying to solve.
2. Get buy-in from management.
3. Start small and grow your social media efforts gradually.
4. Keep it simple.
5. Make sure the data you make available on social media applications is relevant.
6. Set aside enough resources for social media efforts.
7. Set expectations.
8. Don't be afraid to replace a legacy media process with a new social media process.
9. Establish metrics to measure whether your new media approaches are working.
10. Don't forget security.

I don’t necessarily agree with everything written and a lot of the tips in my view are not just Twitter specific. A lot of what is covered in my view applies to the use of social media by businesses in general and would advise anyone to use them as a check list if you are thinking of using social media or to sanity check that you are doing mostly the right things for the right reasons if you are already using social media.

Would be interested to hear what others have to say on this matter. How is the use of social media working for your business?