Twitter Etiquette for Beginners: Part 2 – Build relationships

Part 1 focused on general Twitter rules, where rule 5 was build relationships. As stated in Part 1, this isn’t to be an all-inclusive guide on all things Twitter. Instead, this is intended to help you understand what it means to be polite and acceptable when using Twitter. While this is intended for businesses, I’m sure there are individuals who can also benefit from these Twitter tips.

The Next 5 Lessons: Building relationships & beyond

• Engage with you followers by using speaking to your followers using “@” mentions, sending a direct message, or even retweeting something they’ve posted. This is a great way to build relationships and say, “hey I’m interested in you too.”
• Respond to people who have given you a shout out, “@” mentioned you, have sent you a direct message, or retweeted one of your posts. If you don’t respond, this is almost as bad as not speaking back to someone who said hello to you – and frankly, that’s rude. (Of course, that doesn’t mean you have to respond to people who send you SPAM.) Hot Twitter tip: Using a smart phone app and setting up a notification should will greatly help monitor these interactions.
• Be a person. For some reason, organizations forget they are human. Instead, they become this brand or icon. While you need to be consistent with your brand, a simply random post lets your follower know you’re a person. Maybe you can talk about a remodel. Talk about what the environment in the office is like. Or just maybe even tweet what you’re having for lunch and how great it is. If you can tie it in with your brand, even better. This just lets people know, “Hey. I’m a person.” By the way, this means you can’t schedule everything  – you’ll actually need to be on Twitter (or a Twitter app) sometimes.
• Say something valuable. Many times on Twitter we like to businesses like to push their product or service. ROI is the final goal, right? It is. However, you have to balance pushing your offering with actually saying something your user wants to hear. In fact, I know one brand who doesn’t directly push their product often. Instead, they reinforce their brand using humor, thus, building brand equity. This along with the other tactics they’ve used to in a rebranding effort has made me consider making the purchase over other top names.
• Follow back. When people follow you on Twitter, it means they have interest in what you have to offer. Don’t be so rude to not follow back. I know that when you follow a lot of people, your Twitter timeline becomes hard to manage and follow. However, this gives you an opportunity to put the Twitter list function to use.