I love my Twitter feed. My dad doesn’t get it, though. He once told me that he wasn’t on Twitter because he’s not interested in hearing what so-and-so had for breakfast today. Fair enough—I’m not particularly keen on hearing that kind of thing, either. But my solution isn’t to avoid Twitter; it’s to only follow people with interesting or insightful Twitter accounts—be they musicians, politicians, comedians, pastors, artists, bloggers, or what have you.
That’s the thing that non-Twitter users are missing out on. Twitter is what you make of it. I’m sure it’s possible to have a Twitter experience that’s an absolute bore—but if that’s the boat you’re in, it’s probably the result of how you’ve chosen to use Twitter, not something that’s inherent to the social networking site itself. And if that’s true in personal Twitter use, I’m inclined to say it’s equally true in professional Twitter use. If you create a Twitter account for your business and assume it’s not going to amount to anything lucrative, well, it probably won’t. But an open mind and an enterprising, imaginative spirit can turn Twitter into an excellent tool for generating and cultivating business.
One of the best ways to use a corporate Twitter account is to utilize hashtags. Even a novice Twitterer knows about hashtags, but for the uninitiated, here’s a crash course. A hashtag is created when you attach a hash symbol (#) to the front of a word—for example, a hashtag for the topic of my home state would be #Tennessee, and my favorite minor league baseball team would be #CharlotteKnights. Grammar Chic tweets might come adorned with #CharlotteWriting or #EditingService. Using a hashtag creates a sort of searchable database, a catalog of posts that all address the same topic. It makes it easy for Twitter users to locate tweets that are about the same thing.
You can employ existing hashtags to help make your business Twitter account an effective brand management tool—in fact, you’d be foolish not to. For one thing, hashtags tend to spread pretty quickly; at any given moment, several of the “trending topics” on Twitter are bound to be hashtag phrases. Moreover, a lot of users will use hashtags to search for information. Using hashtags to your advantage is a great way to extend your reach and get your name or brand in front of people.
So which hashtags should you use? Well, obviously, that depends on exactly what your business is. You want to make sure to pick hashtags that are relevant; a #JustinBieber hashtag is probably not a great option for, say, a law firm. (Unless the Beib is one of your clients, I suppose.) But then, one of the most enduringly popular hashtags is #tastytuesday, where folks tweet all about food. If you own a restaurant or a food service company, you ought to jump on that one. Search for the hashtags that might relate to your business and try to get your name out there into the fray.
You might think in particular about using a site that gauges the most popular and effective hashtags. One of them is twubs.com, a full directory of useful and effective hashtags. Another is whatthetrend.com, which evaluates the effectiveness of “trending” hashtags. Both of these references are indispensable for business-grade Twitterers seeking to use social networking as a means for brand management.
Let me give one word of caution, though: Make sure you don’t turn your company Twitter account into a spam generator. Following the proper Twitter etiquette is essential for ensuring that you maintain followers—and if you don’t have followers, the whole thing is moot. So don’t ever attach “trending” hashtags to tweets that are totally off-topic, and don’t attach random hashtags to tweets in which the content is unrelated.
Of course, if you can’t find an existing hashtag that meets your business needs, you can always create your own—but that’s a whole different topic for a whole different blog post. Tune in next week for a discussion of how you might create a perfect, brand new hashtag to suit your business needs. For now: It warrants a mention that Grammar Chic, Inc. offers professional service in brand management and social media integration—which means, in essence, that we can help do remarkable things with your Twitter account, helping you use it to truly grow and cultivate your business.
Amanda E. Clark founded Grammar Chic in 2008. She is a graduate of Eastern Michigan University and holds degrees in Journalism, Political Science, and English. She launched Grammar Chic after freelancing for several years while simultaneously leading marketing and advertising initiatives for several Fortune 500 companies.