Are You Following These Tips to Building a Successful Twitter Community?

Twitter has rapidly become the ‘go-to’ platform for sharing and exchanging information, including link content. For both bloggers and brands, Twitter, now in its ninth year, is rivaled by only Facebook as the most effective way to build website traffic for your marketing campaign.

So what are the best ways to build an engaged and relevant Twitter community for your business? Consider these 7 best tips (note I am currently doing some twitter work for a Finger Lakes Tourism client … so I will use some examples from this work):

Think like your target community.

Make your tweets relevant and interesting to this specific community. You should do minimal to no selling. For the Finger Lakes client, he is sharing facts on the history of the Finger Lakes, the most popular State Parks, and the regional wineries and wines.

Start conversations by asking insightful questions.

Participate in relevant conversations. In the case of the Finger Lakes client, he has prepared many questions on wine production, types of Finger Lakes grapes, and details on the Finger Lakes themselves.

Add value with every tweet.

Remember there is a very fine line between tweeting frequently and spamming. We recommend 1–2 new tweets (not counting responses) per hour in non-peak times and 3–5 tweets per hour in peak hours. Note that tweets and tweet subject material should be semi-prepared ahead of time.

Craft a distinct voice and personality for your brand.

Use it consistently. Show your emotion, enthusiasm, and passion.

Useful tools: Favorite Twitter Tools to Enhance Performance and Enhance Engagement

Be a member of the community you are building.

Be an active listener and dialog participant. Don’t become a one-way broadcaster.

There are many aspects to your company .

Use ideas from all of them. For example, use some of the social charities and issues that your business supports and highlight your efforts.

Be consistent …

in your value add and dialog to discriminate your voice from the crowd.

In summary, find ways to have fun … and let it show in your tweets. People will certainly notice!

Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.