Twitter advice for a friend setting up a company account

#1...  Follow people on there - depends on your company launch, significant people in your industry, local area, you decide. Learn to use the search system on there to find people and accounts of interest (literally type phrases and words into the search box and play around).  As people follow you, you *don't* have to follow back.  Unlike a personal account (where there's an element of follow-me/follow-you), if as a business you follow every follower back, just the association of who the business follows might send out completely the *wrong* brand image that you're trying to project.

#2...  Post regularly but not asininely - "Woohoo! Preparing for #CompanyLaunch on X date, see: http://link.to/web.site" is good. Maybe do some sort of daily countdown.  You might want to offer a discount to people who follow you on there - and if they ReTweet (see in a moment) some advert thing to their followers maybe - if they do, you DM them some sort of code they quote to prove eligibility (DM = Direct Message, it's the private messaging side of Twitter - they have to follow you and you have to follow them for this to work).

#3...  Be careful with personal opinion - I love it for following news, politics, tech, IT, economics and stuff. But as a representation of your business brand identity, make sure it fits. But equally, don't be too staid on there - it is OK to mention sports fandom in a corporate/brand account.

#4...  Follow Stephen Fry. Everyone does. Don't arslikhan him. Everyone does that at first, it's pointless, the poor sod gets a bazillion "You're so right with that, Mr Fry" tweets to each post he puts out.

#5...  Do follow local chamber of commerce, councillors, coppers, radio station and local news and television accounts - find out which are the right ones to follow though: the account for the local Sally Traffic where she witters on about the contents of her cat's litter tray are not good; the news reporter who takes an interest in local businesses is a good follow.  Say hello and introduce your business on there to them - ask for an "RT" (a ReTweet - where they cross-post what you've written to their followers, so gaining you additional visibility and maybe new followers).

#6...  Make sure your Twitter "bio" reads something sensible, include a link to your business webpage and your business telephone number. Research on websites and telephone numbers or no, show up leads improve by impressive numbers if you give your potential customers a phone number (this may sounds stupid, but you'd be amazed that this mistake gets made).

#7...  Use lists. This is useful for twonks like me if you want to keep in touch but not stain your Twitter reputation by actually following me (see point #1 and in my specific case especially on a Thursday evening during Question Time and This Week). Decide if your list should be public (so other users can find it) - this is good for twitter feeds you really want to be associated with your brand, or private (for twonks like me).

#8...  Check your replies at least once a day - just in case you've had either a possible lead or a complaint left.  If a complaint, reply and ask them to DM you details.  If you start to get lots of complaints - which might be part of the plan as some businesses (parcel carriers, payday loan companies, satan/beelzebub etc...) generate a naturally higher level of complaints - so check more often.  It might feel personal - I try and view it as a game of "whack-a-mole" though in this case the "whack" is to find out and ameliorate or even resolve their complaint.  Remember you have to follow them for them to DM you - so follow them, at least temporarily, to do this - add them to a private list called something like: "followed to DM - unfollow later" to help administer the unfollow process.  They will follow you so you can reply to them, and when the stuff they've bought off you has been in use for a while they'll forget why they followed you and unfollow.  Again, you'd be amazed how some businesses have been slow to figure-out how to do customer support over Twitter.

#9a... Useful tools - monitoring unfollowers:
http://who.unfollowed.me
http://unfollower.name/

#9b... Useful tools - monitoring list additions/changes/deletions (when your account is added/moved/deleted on someone else's list):
http://twitter.com/listwatcher
- though I'm not sure if that is still working properly

#10... Maybe use a twitter client.  Tweetdeck and Hootsuite get mentioned in dispatches.  Beware that Tweetdeck is now owned by Twitter and they are moving it to an entirely web/browser/HTML5 based platform (so no local installed program). Personally I only use the simple Twitter web based interface, as I've found the "rate-limiting" detection in Twitter clients to be poor (Twitter check how many calls your client is making and will limit your access if you - or your client is making too many).  Plus the CPU usage of some clients is really excellent at turning the heat exhaust grille of your laptop into a handy marshmallow-toaster.

#11... If the site gets busy - this is now rare but does still happen and you want to check for replies or DMs, try the mobile version from your desktop PC:

http://mobile.twitter.com

you have to login again as it uses a different set of session cookies, and the interface doesn't automatically update you have to refresh. But the data payload is a lot smaller than the full site and as a result when the "Fail Whale" is about, the mobile version often carries on working.  Plus this works on all mobile devices with an internet browser.  Crucially on the eieioPhone you *don't* have to have an Apple account to use it.

There's probably a lot more in my head... anyway that's a starter for <strike>ten</strike> eleven.

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Also this from the British Medical Association (BMA):

    5 simple ways to stay professional on social media #ARMSoMe #ARMlive:
    https://twitter.com/TheBMA/status/481432109375320064

    5 simple rules

    1.  Do not use when drunk, angry, or emotional

    2.  Do not say anything on social media you
        would not be happy to see in a newspaper

    3.  Do not openly attack your employer without
        thinking about the repercussion

    4.  Act in a professional courteous manner

    5.  Make it clear your views are your own

which are worth considering if you have a personal account as well as a branded/corporate account, and this video clip (again medical oriented and more personal branding rather than corporate branding, but you're likely to have both a personal account as well as your corporate account):

    'Social Media Professionalism in the Medical Community'
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3N8A5LMlego  (4m 14s long)

- the section in the middle with pictures taken from inside an operating theatre ending-up on social media is a little jaw-dropping.

I digress... you can also re-write some of these to better suit the context, for instance:

    "Do not openly attack your employer without
    thinking about the repercussion"

becomes:

    "Do not openly attack your competitors or
    your industry regulator (or other 'big
    beasts' in your industry) without thinking
    about the repercussion"

though if you know you are on legal terra firma - see 2. as well - then 'PABD' - publish and be damned - might apply!

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#twitteraddict @cjjmccray
Original:  7th March 2013
Updated:  17th August 2014