Most common mistakes businesses are making on Twitter

Twitter. Everyone’s tweeting about it. Previously I did a blog post about the ‘Most common mistakes businesses are making on Facebook’, the business use of Twitter and now have taken the challenge of finding out the mistakes businesses are making on Twitter.

Ways to use Twitter for Business

Most of you who use Facebook know about Twitter through the news feed by others integrating their tweets onto Facebook. For those of you who have not heard about Twitter, Twitter can be used for a number of things from announcing what you had for breakfast, your daily activities and getting involved with the trending topics. It has the capability of networking fans, consumers, and businesses altogether by simply following one another. Businesses are now using Twitter as a strategic tool to communicate messages across by having personnel updating their tweets regularly. It is one way of interacting key aspects of your business to people around you without having to send e-mails or phone calls with a simple tweet or 140 characters or less. So here are the number of ways to use Twitter for business.

What’s the issue of wearing the Poppy in Football?

As we all know, 11^th November 2011 is the day for Remembrance Day also known as Poppy Day, Armistice Day or Veterans Day. This is a memorial day observed in Commonwealth countries to remember the members of the armed forces who have died in the line of duty since the World War I. The day is significant to all as it marks the end of the First World War. In the past week, in the football world, the issue of the England team wearing poppies sparked some interest especially with FIFA.

Ways to use Facebook for Business

The increase of Facebook’s popularity has risen over the past few years with businesses starting to integrate social media as a platform to communicate messages across to key stakeholders and consumers. Although, people have thought to use to as a way to interact with friends and family, it has now become a highly effective business tool to market a brand/product/business in the internet spectrum. So here are the number of ways to use Facebook for business.

Managing your profile

1. Fill out your profile completely to gain a sense of trust.
2. Establish a business account if you don’t already have one.
3. Converge other applications to feed other social media tools (Twitter, Blog, Youtube, etc) into your Facebook profile. Although be aware of over posting with Twitter feed being shown on feeds.
4. Keep any personal details of your profile privacy through Settings.
5. Create friends lists such as ‘Family’, ‘Friends’, ‘Work’ and ’Limited profile’ to gain more control of your profile privacy. It is to avoid sharing your personal life to others and vice versa. If you have business contacts, limit them from seeing personal photos.
6. Posting professional or business casual photos of yourself to reinforce the brand. A photo can be more appealing then status updates.
7. Post your newsletter subcription information on your profile. Allow people to know there are newsletters and other information sent directly to key personnel.

Connecting and sharing

8. Obtain a Facebook URL for people to find you easily.
9. Add your Facebook URL to your e-mail signature and any marketing material (Business cards, etc). An addition contact detail for further information about how people can contact you.
10. Post business updates on your wall, promote the business activities you are doing and who with.
11. Share useful and relevant articles associated with your business brand/values to gain credibility in what you are doing.
12. Combine Facebook with other social media tools to gather thoughts on questions and queries from consumers and other partners. For example, if someone asks a question on Twitter, use Facebook to put across your blog post to accumulate your thoughts.
13. Find experts in your field and invite them for their thoughts to allow people to get involved with expertise advice on issues surrounding changes in activities/legal changes/social changes.
14. Market your products by posting discounts, offers, deals, and details about new products coming soon.

Using Fan pages and Groups

15. Start a group or fan page for product, brand or business. Create either one, it can allow you to feed information to a wider audience without having to add them as a friends. Relax the settings on who can join these groups or fan pages to gain more followers.
16. Add basic information to the group or fan page such as links to company website, case studies and other information.
17. Posting updates on latest news about the business/product/brand, press conference and events so people can see and attend these activites.
18. Always answer people’s questions. Do not leave them alone as they might think you do not care.
19. Put rules of engagement on what people can post on the group/fan page.
20. Do not over post and limit yourself to a maximum of 2-3 posts a day as people may find it annoying when receiving a lot of updates. Even so, restrict from posting on people’s walls as they would come to your profile/group/fan page.