Businesses everywhere are beginning to realize the potential value of a strong social media presence. In fact, some may argue that it is all but essential to stay in business today. While social media may not be a perfect fit for absolutely EVERY business, it’s impact on the success of most companies is undeniable. Consumers are now able to find businesses on Facebook, follow them on Twitter, and speak directly to owners and others within the company — in real time.

Consumers need this sort of personal interaction, and one of the easiest ways for them to get it is through Twitter. Now, your business is not Starbucks, Domino’s or any other HUGE corporation that everyone on Earth already knows about, so instead of giving you useless examples of how these mega-corps handle their social accounts, we’re going to give you some Twitter tips that will actually work for your business.

1. Get your hands dirty (Create a Twitter account)
Creating a Twitter account takes seconds and can instantly add credibility to your business. Use the “description” space in your profile to briefly explain your business. Try to make it as keyword-rich as possible so people can find you, even if they don’t know your business name. Another section allows you to add a link back to your own website for more information, which is a useful way to get relevant traffic to your business website. Customize your Twitter background to make it consistent with the other visual aspects of your business, which is great for branding purposes. Your profile is your foundation on Twitter, so take the extra time and make sure it’s as strong as possible.

2. Reach out to similar businesses
Twitter is one of those tools that will give back as much as you put into it. Creating an account is the easy part, obtaining quality followers will take time and effort. The best way to start building your following is to search within Twitter for other businesses that are similar to yours and follow them. Twitter is more about community than it is about competition, so most companies will jump at the opportunity to connect to a similar business (such as yours) and will usually follow you back. If you happen to find a local competitor, it’s a good idea to follow them just to keep tabs on what kind of content/specials they are putting out there. Twitter can be a very useful tool for competitive analysis.

3. Search for your business name
This one is usually a long shot but if you’re lucky, people on Twitter may already be talking about your business. This provides a great opportunity to reply to them, follow them, and let them know that you are present and listening on Twitter. For example, if you are the owner of Dan’s Subs and you search for your business name on Twitter, you may find a tweet (posting) like this: “Just destroyed a Turkey Ryder from Dan’s Subs, it was AWESOME!” This is a great way to find and connect with your customers and maybe even tap into their follower list.

4. Search for other local businesses in your city and follow them
If you can find other local businesses on Twitter they will almost always follow you back, and their followers (local consumers) may even discover you too. You may also get a re-tweet (a reposting of your message) from time to time just for being in the same city. People tend to pay attention to tweets that involve their local community, so connecting with these types of followers is pretty much a necessity.

5. Become a “Problem Solver”
If you are still having trouble building your following, try searching in Twitter for people who are already talking about services similar to the ones that you are offering. For example, if you are in the computer repair business, do a search for “broken computer.” People love to complain, so most of the time you will discover someone who is having problems that you might be able to help them with. Reply to them and offer up suggestions of ways to fix their issues and they may just reward you with a follow or a re-tweet every now and then. If you become a trusted source of knowledge, the followers will find you.

6. Quality » Quantity
Just remember that obtaining followers is not a numbers game.  While it may make you feel good to have 10,000 followers, you have to ask yourself, how many of those people have you actually interacted with or even remotely care about your business. I’d take a hundred living, breathing, potential customers over a thousand “robot” followers any day of the week.

If you have followers that are genuinely interested in your product and engage with you on a regular basis, your potential reach can grow exponentially. Just think, whenever you have an important message to deliver, these followers can quickly and easily tell their followers and so on and so forth. This is the beauty of social media, it’s like “word of mouth” turned up to 11. If you deliver compelling content or have a good product, people are going to want to tell their friends about it.

7. Tools of the Trade
If you’ve made it this far then you are probably starting to ask “How am I going to keep track of all this?”  Luckily, Twitter has more tools and utilities available for it than Batman and most of them are pretty handy. A couple of our favorites are Hootsuite and TweetDeck. These tools allow you to monitor search terms, categorize the users you follow and schedule your tweets to be posted in the future.

Commence Tweeting
Hopefully these tips have given you the confidence to bust through your cocoon and join the ranks of the social elite. Please feel free to comment and share some other tips that have (or haven’t) worked for your business. Lastly, here’s some great advice for managing your brand on Twitter.

Happy Tweeting!

PS Follow CityCliq on Twitter!