At this point Twitter is no longer the newest social media platform on the market. Most established companies have Twitter pages, and maintain them daily. However, in doing my social media audits I find it interesting how many of these companies don’t know how to use Twitter properly. Maintaining Twitter is quick, and easy, and can be a great tool for improving brand awareness or increasing traffic to your web site. Here are some of the things that every company should be doing on Twitter.

• Have a simple name. The first one is simple. If you expect others to interact with your company on Twitter you should have a handle that bears the company name, and is simple, and easy to identify with. A good example of this is Coca-Cola’s Twitter handle, @CocaCola. The handle is exactly what the user would expect it to be, and the first thing they are likely to enter when trying to look up Coca-Cola. Sometimes, you can’t get your brandname so consider an alternative. We use @DigitalFirely1 because DigitalFIrely was taken.
• Have a profile picture. Every company on Twitter should have a profile picture. In most cases, this would be the company logo. It is important that the logo is “clean”. In some examples I’ve noticed that the profile picture is blurred. This is because the company used a file that was too small for their profile image.
• Your company URL here You would be amazed how many companies are missing the boat on this one. There is no better way to drive traffic to your website than by featuring your company’s URL on your Twitter profile. If a user is on your Twitter page, there’s a good chance that they are interested in your company. Why not make it easy for them, and provide them with a link to your website? This way they don’t have to look for it on their own- because there is no guarantee that they will. Plus it’s another link back to your website for Google to index.
• Create a custom background. Twitter is equipped with several background options when creating a Twitter profile. These might be fine for the average user, but a company should always have their own background which is easy to create with Photoshop.
• Describe yourself. Who are you? Why should I check out your Twitter profile when there are millions of other profiles out there? Your description should briefly answer these questions and use @mentions of key people at the company and the #hashtag describing your industry.
• Reach out, and reach out often. Too many people, and companies simply spray out Twitter updates. Twitter is a global square where everyone can speak to anyone (using the @mention) about anything using the #hashtag for subject.

Don’t be shy.

There’s no better way for people to find you then by you attempting to find them first. Start retweeting, or mentioning others. Use hashtags in your tweets. Do whatever it takes for others to see you. And like other forms of advertising, you will need to exhibit patience, it takes awhile to build up an audience, but try and work Twitter once a day to keep your brand in front of people.