Invite your current audience to be part of the conversation
- Include social networking icons on website homepage – near top, above the fold
- Add to your e-mail signature, making sure it links to your twitter account
- Create a call to action to follow you on Twitter in e-mails and literature – make sure to have web address not just twitter and fb icons
- Add to your twitter name to your business cards
General Protocol
- Keep tweets to 110 characters or less, so that it’s easier for people to re-tweet you
- Put ulr’s in the middle of a tweet. When placed at the end, it won’t copy when cutting and pasting to RT
- @ mentions at the beginning of a tweet will only be seen by the person you mentioned and their followers and your followers. If you want a tweet to be 100% searchable
- Be your brand – Your tweets and group messages are the voice of your brand. Send a consistent message
- When linking to a picture or article, the tweet should be more of a teaser that will encourage people to click through
- —— > Using arrows to call attention to a tweet with a url increases click-throughs < ——
Build Relationships
- Follow back
- Remember the 80/20 rule
- Respond to @ messages and questions directed via an @message with an @message. It publicly acknowledges the person asking the question
- If some you follow as something relevant to say – RT them
- Thank people publicly for RTing you
- Don’t be afraid to answer the hard questions or complaints – Some of the best product improvements and ideas are generated by customer conversations (of course, if someone has a legally sensitive question or a product with lots of rules and regs, check with legal first)
- Make sure to answer questions directly
- Show up live
- Go to as many live events as you can. Meet people and then start a dialogue via twitter or FB
- Meet people online and then connect via events IRL
- Remember to give them a shout out after the event and follow if you don’t already