OK, I’m hitting the pause button on blogging for a little while while I focus on something exciting that’s going to take up all my time for the next few months.

Play nice, kids!

If you’ve decided that 2012 is the year that you take the plunge and get your business on Twitter, you may be wondering where to start. Worry not! Help is at hand. Start with these five top tips to ease yourself in gently.

1. Get The Basics In Place

Before you do anything to try attract followers, get the basics in place. Add a profile pic (or logo), a short bio and a website link. It might seem counter-intuitive, but get a bunch of tweets up there BEFORE seeking followers; it will seem like talking to an empty room, but when you start following people, many will look at what you’ve already posted - and “0 Tweets” isn’t going to make you interesting enough to follow back. Get a dozen or so tweets under your belt before you go on a follower acquisition spree.

2. Who To Follow

To find out who to follow, set up saved searches on your sector, company name, customers, competitors, suppliers and trade journals/blogs. Drill down into who other people follow. Watch out for the weekly #FollowFriday or #FF hashtag, where others suggest who to follow.

When someone follows you, look at their bio to see if they’ve worth following back. Don’t automatically follow back every follower - think quality not quantity. Better to have 100 followers that are really interested in what you’ve got to say than 1,000 who follow anything that moves!

3. How To Write For Twitter

Bear in mind the 140 character limit - your thoughts need to be concise! Hashtags, usernames (in replies or retweets) and links count towards your limit. If your comments are too complex for a tweet, put them in a blog post and link to it.

Tone of voice should be conversational - pretend your business is a person talking to a friend if that helps! You want to get over your brand values and personality in these snappy soundbites. It’s harder than it looks! Read other people’s tweets to get a feel for what works well.

4. What You Can Tweet About

Not sure what to tweet? You really want a good mix of original posts, retweets, useful links and @replies. Once you get a decent following, a great way to start a conversation is to ask an interesting question. With a bit of luck you’ll spark some debate! After a few weeks of posting useful and interesting content you should see an increase in (relevant) followers - and an amplification of awareness of your business.

5. How To Make The Most Of Twitter For Business

Maybe after a few weeks of tweeting, you’re thinking “this is fun, but how is it helping my business?” Well, if you’re a business-to-consumer company, use it to:

• drive people to your website (by linking to valuable blog posts)
• track mentions of your product by users
• provide rapid-response customer service
• run competitions or Twitter-only offers

If you’re business-to-business, use it for multi-directional networking:

• find prospects, suppliers, referrers, complementary companies
• recommend your suppliers to others (they’ll thank you)
• keep up to date on industry chatter, especially competitors
• raise awareness of your business - by being a valuable member of the community

Good luck! And follow me, I’m @Rob_Townsend! 

Happy New Year! I know it’s already the 9th, but it feels like this is the first day we can be fairly sure that everyone is back in the saddle and properly starting 2012 from a business point of view.

If your new year’s resolution for your business is to get started on social media then here’s five simple steps to get you going.

1. Be A User First

Try it out for personal use first, to get a feel for it. Set up a Twitter account and start tweeting. Get on Facebook and catch up with friends. And encourage your staff to do the same. Once you get your head round it, then start thinking about how you can use it for your business.

2. Find Your Audience

Find out where your audience hangs out. It might be Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or a more specialised network or community. Hang out and listen before you jump in. Get a feel for what kind of discussions take place and the dynamics of the community. Get on their wavelength and you’re more likely to be accepted, listened to and involved.

3. Know Your Objectives

Make sure you have objectives on what you want to achieve, and more importantly make sure they align with your overall business objectives. Integrate social media tools into your business’s holistic strategy on interacting with customers. Social networks don’t exist in isolation, and using them works best when it slots in alongside more traditional tools and techniques for a fully joined-up user experience. (ask Qantas!)

4. Establish Your Online Persona

Be consistent with your online ‘persona’. If you want to be known under your own name, use this as your username in the same format everywhere and use a smiling headshot for your profile pic; if you prefer to spread the word under your company brand, again make the username consistent and use your company logo. The consistent branding will help to amplify your presence across the various networks that you engage in.

5. Conversations, Not Monologues

Always, ALWAYS remember that one major difference between traditional forms of communication and social networking is that this is truly open and two-way - aconversation not a monologue. You must resist the natural urge to ‘sell’… focus instead on engaging with people in ways that only social networks can enable. Generate value - start or join conversations, offer advice, reward advocacy, create reasons for users to interact with you. Give more than you take!

Good luck!

Note: this post is a compilation of five short daily tips that I shared at the end of last year, all in one handy post… one of my new year’s resolutions is to recycle more! ;-)