Twitter Best Practices for Companies

Be Transparent: Identify who you are and your position with the company when you engage someone on Twitter. Never pretend to be a customer or a casual “tweeter” because you will be found out and cause your company grief.

Set up a corporate account: Ideally it is best for you to be your own person, but by setting up a corporate account you are making sure someone else doesn’t “brand jack” you and pose as your company.

Show who is managing the corporate account: If you decide to use a corporate account to monitor and respond to Twitter activity, show who is managing that account. Salesforce has a customer success Twitter account and indicates who is managing it (see below) with Twitter accounts. This has made it easier for people to identify with them and can begin following them as well.

Don’t be too self-promoting: Talk about your space and not just your products. Make it a nice blend. People are listening, and the more versed you are in your space can lead to better things – panel discussions, speaking ops and inclusion in cover.

Syndicate: I know this sounds like it contradicts what was said before, but use Twitter to syndicate company news. Doing this can score you cover, especially if you are following editors and they are following you.

Follow people who matter to your business: This sounds like a given, but some don’t do this. If you aren’t sure who these people are, go to www.search.twitter.com and use keywords to find people that are talking about what matter to you.

Ratios: Try and keep a good following to followers to ratio. A red flag goes up quickly what someone follows you and they are following 1,000 compared their 23 followers. This doesn’t just appear spammy, it is spam, and people don’t tend to follow people with a discrepancy like this. There have been cases when a new user signs up for a Twitter and immediately starts following the world. Twitter monitors these accounts and suspends them.

Be Active: Don’t set up an account, tweet a few times and then never be heard of again. The most prominent tweeters are out their starting and adding to conversations. They share their thoughts and are open and get involved. Yeah, it sounds time consuming, but it’s a necessary evil if you want to make the most of your social media experience.