5 Common Mistakes Business Owners Should Avoid on Twitter

Twitter is an extremely powerful tool for telling your brand’s story, building relationships, staying in tune with important industry-related news, and driving traffic to your website.

Because of this, many small business owners have decided to launch their brands on Twitter to take advantage of all that it has to offer.

However, just because your business is on this popular social networking site doesn’t mean that you’re executing your strategy flawlessly.

We’ve seen a lot of small business Twitter marketing mistakes and it seems like many of them fall into the same categories.

To prevent you from butchering your own Twitter marketing strategy, here are 5 of the most common mistakes on this social media site that you will want to avoid:

1. Not promoting your Twitter.

You should view Twitter as a compliment to the rest of your online marketing strategy.

Make it as easy as possible for people to find and follow you.

Here are a few easy ways that you can accomplish this:

A simple solution is to include your Twitter account information on your website, other social media pages, blog, and email signature.

Twitter actually offers a follow button that you can easily add to your blog, website, and other digital marketing channels.

You can also take advantage of widgets that allow you to share a timeline of your Twitter messages on your website and blog.

By adding them, your website and blog visitors will be able to tune into these conversations even if they aren’t on Twitter.

Twitter for business is done especially well when a “Tweet This” button is added to the brand’s website and blog. The button invites your followers and visitors to tweet about your content and share it with their own social networks with the click of a button.

Tip: Use plugins like Sharaholic on your site to Twitter share buttons to your site and blog.

2. Not completing your Twitter profile in its entirety.

Too many businesses only provide the minimum amount of information required to create a Twitter profile; however, taking this shortcut can hurt your business from an SEO perspective and prevent you from best telling your brand’s story on Twitter.

Most importantly, you’ll want to make sure to include your location, your website address, and a bio.

Also, make good use of your Twitter header photo by including relevant call to actions and information about your business.

Tip: Be sure to read our post about 3 overlooked ways to ignite your Twitter page for leads for more tips for enhancing your Twitter profile.

3. Following the wrong people on Twitter.

These days it seems like everyone is on Twitter, so it can be tempting to go overboard with the number of people and brands that you choose to follow.

Remember that when you opt to follow someone on Twitter, though, you are subscribing to read everything that they share on the social media site. Therefore, it’s best to be more selective with who you follow.

As a Twitter marketing best practice, here is who you should be following:

  • Your current customers
  • Your potential customer
  • Your business partners
  • Any suppliers or vendors for your business
  • Your competition
  • Local businesses
  • Businesses run by people in your professional network

This allows you to stay engaged and aware of everyone that plays a role in the success of your business, from your target audience to your competition.

Tip: Easily find the right people to follow by using Twitter’s Advanced Search.

4. Not using Twitter to drive traffic to your website and blog.

You certainly don’t want every tweet to be a promotional one.

However, after you’ve taken the time to listen and share valuable content with your audience, you should occasionally tweet with the intent of driving traffic to your website and blog.

To do this most effectively, create a tweet with a link to your website or blog that is compelling enough to make your followers want to click on the link to learn more.

Tip: Talk about the benefits of your products and not your product directly.

5. Not interacting with your followers.

Part of the appeal of Twitter marketing is the smorgasbord of ideas and brief responses.

Most small business owners never take advantage of the one-on-one communication that Twitter allows. Communication builds trust and consumers are more likely to purchase from those they trust.

Tip:Want to make a conversation public? Add a “.” before the username of the person you are mentioning.

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