1. Be Consistent

After deciding to use Twitter to help grow your small business make sure that you take the time to find “your voice” for your tweets.  It helps to have only one person manage the twitter account.  That way it doesn’t feel like the tweets are sporadic and coming from all over the place.  If you do decide to have multiple people use the same twitter account one thing you can do is have the person tweeting let everyone know who it is that just tweeted.

2. Engage Your Audience 

One of the biggest benefits of Twitter for a small business is being able to get access to what people think of you, your products, or your services.  Engage people, ask them questions, and get feedback.  Be careful not to get discouraged from negative feedback because the reality is no matter what you’re doing there will always be some people who disagree.  Some will, some won’t, so what, someones waiting!  On the flip side when you get positive feedback from customers start doing more of whatever it is they liked!

3. Have Fun Contests

A great way to promote more activity on your twitter is to have fun contests.  They are a great way to drive traffic to your website, an event, and to make people like your business more.  There are however some guidelines that you need to adhere to when having a contest.  In order to make sure you don’t violate any twitter guidelines check out this brief article on how to properly host a contest for your small business. 

4. Promote It

Make sure to have your twitter handle on all your marketing materials, website, and business locations.  Your goal should be to make it easy for customers to be able to connect and engage with you.  Another great way to promote your twitter is to just constantly be delivering good content.  Figure out what your potential customer likes to talk about, stay up to date on whats trending, and follow people who could get value from what you have to offer.  Be cautious to not just sell people stuff on twitter or talk about how great you are.  Most small businesses need to stop thinking about themselves and start thinking about how to offer value to peoples lives who they one day want to serve.