Small businesses really need a social media marketing strategy as much as large corporations need one.  It may even be more important for a small business owner to take the time to get their name known on a large forum such as Twitter.  This can seem like a huge undertaking but actually once you get going it’s quite easy to keep up with.  There are a great many mistakes that small businesses can make to undo all the good their social media campaign offered the business.  If you follow the tips below, you won’t make any mistakes and your Twitter will become a favorite with your followers.

Twitter might help your small business to find new clients – source

Keep it Real

You never want to lie or to offer anything that is not true on your Twitter feed because this produces a lack of trust between you and your followers.  Just keep it real and tell it like it is to a certain degree.  This doesn’t mean that you should use your business account as a platform for your personal opinions, you have a personal account for that, but when it comes to your company be honest.  If you are asked for something that you cannot provide, rather than saying you can do it and then outsourcing the project for a profit, send your follower a link so they can do it on their own.  This saves your customers’ money and they are more inclined to purchase from you at a later time.

Build Lasting Relationships with Customers

It is important to build lasting relationships with your customers so they want to continue following your business feed.  For instance, if you own a restaurant and a customer tweets about how great the food was, retweet their post and thank them for it.  You could go as far as to engage them in a conversation about what their meal was and what about it they liked the best.  Offer them a small discount for posting about your company.  You can also do this in the brick and mortar building.  Any diner who tweets about your food automatically gets ten percent off their meal.  This tactic works in any industry and builds a lasting rapport with your followers.

Never Spam Your Followers

Once of the gravest sins that a business can make is spamming their followers with a plethora of tweets intending to drive traffic to a website or brick and mortar store.  Twitter should be a fun place where you customers and followers can find something of value out of your tweets.  Even if they only get a laugh out of a tweet you made you are engaging, not spamming them.  While you can certainly use Twitter to promote your company, there is a huge line drawn between what is considered spam and what is considered a good tweet.  Learn it and know it if you want to keep your followers.

Small businesses everywhere are learning the benefits of having a good Twitter account where they can get real with their customers and build lasting relationships with them too.  Just remember to keep the spam posts to a minimum or you may find your company no longer has a Twitter account because you’ve been reported.  Nobody has time to fight a spam claim so just make sure that all your communications are top notch and you’ll do fine.

Samantha Murphy is a huge Twitter fan. When she’s not sharing her day with the Twitterverse, she also likes telling others how they can get more from Twitter via her articles.