Spring is here! Have you done your #SpringTweening yet? SpringTweening: Cleaning up your Twitter account to make your time on Twitter more efficient and effective.

A few weeks back I was having a Twitter conversation with @Ann_Donnelly and she mentioned that she was cleaning up her Twitter account. That conversation sparked the idea for this post. Shout out to Ann –> Follow her, she’s great!

If you have been using Twitter to promote your business, then you know that the more time your spend on Twitter, the better your results are. With that being said, there are things that you can do to increase your productivity on Twitter. As a business owner, time is a critical resource and anything you can do to make better use of your time, is worth pursuing. Now, sometimes you have to spend time, to create time. What I mean by this is, by taking a few minutes to clean up your Twitter account every few months, you will be able to make better use of Twitter for business, which ultimately saves you time on an on-going basis and adds more value to your business. Things change so fast in the online world, and if we don’t take a second to make occasional updates to our social media profiles, we risk losing out on potential opportunities.

Here are a few things that you can consider when completing your #SpringTweening this year:

• Create lists and/or groups of key customers, competitors, other local merchants who you want to actively follow and engage
• Update your Profile Bio if anything needs a refresh. Are you using your keywords in your Twitter profile? You should be.
• Go through the list of people you’re following and remove anyone who isn’t active or doesn’t make sense for you to follow any longer
• Use tools like TweepSearch to find new relevant followers for your small business and begin following those folks – hopefully they will follow you back

By taking these steps every few months, you can be much more productive on Twitter. By creating lists or groups, you can easily follow a select set of individuals. At least one list should be comprised of high value customers, so that you can actively engage those folks. Updating your profile will allow more relevant people to find and follow you. Removing followers who no longer make sense for your business will remove some of the “noise” in your Twitter feed and allow you to focus on your most important connections. Finally, finding and using new Twitter tools like TweepSearch allow you to get more out of the time you spend on Twitter. TweepSearch allows you to search for, and connect with, your specific targets. Hopefully you can find the time to do your #SpringTweening in the next few weeks. If you do, you’ll make better use of Twitter for business.

Before jumping into using any online social tools for business, it’s imperative that you first create a Plan for how you will use each tool. Due to how easy it is to get started using so many of the free online tools out there today, some business owners jump right in with planning properly. Sometimes that works, but more times than not, it leaves business owners with more questions than answers. When you have a plan, you have a foundation, you have goals setup that you are working to accomplish, and you have time requirements in place for how long you’ll spend using each online tool. When constructing a building for your business, you create a solid foundation before you start designing the interior and putting products on the shelves. This same principle holds true when you do start to use online social tools for business.

For this post, I’d like to focus on Twitter, but the principles can be spread to other online social tools as well. Twitter for business is one of the best uses of your time, as Twitter helps you reach and connect with your target audience, share ideas and educational content, and drive traffic to your blog and/or website. With that said, sometimes business owners get so caught up in getting on Twitter and building a large QUANTITY of followers, that they forget to first setup a foundation that can support such a large following.

As I’m sure many of you know, when it comes to your home, foundation problems are the last thing you want to hear from a contractor. A strong foundation provides the stability for your home, and the same is true for your Twitter profile. You might be saying, well that sounds good in theory, but how do I build a “foundation” on an online platform like Twitter? Great question. When I say, build a foundation on Twitter, I mean, find your voice, determine what you want to tweet about, figure out what your goals for Twitter are, so that your future actions are a direct result of trying to accomplish those goals, build out your profile, add an image, and then, actually start tweeting. Notice I didn’t say, “start following people”. There’s a reason for that…

When it comes to following people on Twitter, there are a few key things that QUALITY followers look for in a Twitter profile before following someone. A few of those attributes are:

• Interesting and fully filled out Twitter Profiles – Use your profile to describe what business you’re in, what you will be tweeting about, and any other information that you think would be relevant to the type of followers you are trying to attract
• Profile picture – Here at Catalyst Marketers we like to put a face behind the name, so we Tweet from @RyanTaft and I have a picture of myself up there, instead of a company logo. Some people differ on this subject, but I like the effect a personal image has when it comes to attracting followers.
• A long list of quality tweets – people want to see what you’re tweeting about and who you are interacting with on Twitter.
• Number of followers you have versus the number of people you’re following

Your foundation on Twitter is your profile and your tweets. When you first start out on Twitter, most people search for others to follow and hope that some of those folks will start to follow them back. What they don’t realize is that when someone is checking out your profile after you’ve followed them, they are looking for the attributes listed above. Now, obviously you won’t fit the criteria of the last attribute because you are a new user, so you don’t have any followers. With that said, I think that the weight put on number of followers is much less than the weight put on a professional profile and your Twitter content or tweets.

Most of the time, people understand that you may be new to Twitter, so you don’t have a ton of followers, but if you also have a semi-filled out profile, with no profile picture (whether is a logo or personal image), AND hardly any tweets, then it’s likely that the majority will assume that you’re not an active Twitter user and move on without following you. NOW, if you’re just starting to use Twitter for business and you create a plan for what you’re hoping to achieve through Twitter, fill out your profile, upload an image, and start tweeting on a regular basis, then after 1 – 2 weeks, you’ll have 100+ tweets (hopefully), which is good for a new user. Now, as long as what your tweeting about appeals to your target followers (which is a post for another day), you’re more likely to attract those folks.

Once you’ve built out your profile and you’ve been tweeting for a few weeks, now it’s time to get out there and start searching for people to follow because you’ve successfully built your foundation. Follow industry leaders and follow your target customers. Follow anyone who makes sense for your business (keeping your goals in the back of your mind). When those folks see that you’re following them and they go to check out your profile, they are not going to see an empty lot, they are going to see a strong foundation and a commitment for building something great. You are more likely to attract those folks to follow you back because you took the time to tweet first, then follow.

Are you currently using Twitter for business? If so, congratulations! You’re doing the right thing. Twitter is a great tool for connecting with customers, prospects, and other individuals who share similar interests. It’s also a great way to promote your online content, events, products, and services.

For those of you who might be just getting started with Twitter, you may or may not know that Twitter only allows you to input 140 characters when creating a new tweet. This means your tweets have to be concise. You need to communicate your message in as few words as possible.

Retweeting is a process whereby another Twitter user takes what you have tweeted and tweets it out to his/her Twitter followers. You can tell when something has been retweeted when a tweet is prefaced by the capital letters RT. The “RT” is usually followed by the original author’s username. The image to the right shows that @KratzPR retweeted my original tweet.

Retweets can make a huge impact in your success on Twitter. If someone takes time to ReTweet what you have to say, they are endorsing you. They are also exposing you and your tweet to all of their Twitter followers. This means that you may acquire a few new Twitter followers. Now imagine if one or a few of these new followers likes your tweet and decides to ReTweet it as well…Now we are really cooking. Welcome to the power of viral marketing.

The biggest key to getting others to ReTweet your content is to tweet information that your followers will find relevant and valuable. The next biggest key to getting others to Retweet content is to make sure you don’t use all 140 characters in your tweet. For each tweet, try to leave at least 10 characters out of your tweet. This way, when I go to ReTweet you, and Twitter automatically populates the “RT” characters and your username, I won’t have to alter your tweet in any way. If you use all 140 characters and I try to ReTweet you, I’m going to max out on my 140 character limit. The easier you make it for others to ReTweet you, the more likely they are to do so.

Twitter is a great tool for small businesses. By learning little tricks like this, success with Twitter for business will be much more likely.