Many of our clients who are experimenting with Twitter, or who have already created Twitter accounts, quickly surmise they need a strategy to build a compelling audience in short order. Although there are numerous options available to jump start your audience development process, like virtually anything associated with social media, there are also many pitfalls to avoid. The following primer is the first in a series of Twitter How-To's and Best Practices that we will showcase in the ThoughtMatrix Newsletter in the coming months.

Why Use Twitter?

At first blush, you might be thinking (or are being asked by colleagues), "why should we use Twitter and what can we expect to gain from it?" These are important questions for any marketing initiative, and especially for social media.

The first answer is more obvious than you might think. Should you ever pass up an opportunity to enter a dialogue with your customers, partners and employees? In today's digital world, direct engagement is not only valued by your constituents, it's expected. Additionally, you can gain unprecedented insight by simply listening to the conversations and an opportunity to influence the discussions in real-time.

The answer to the second question is a bit more difficult to pinpoint, as social media is more of a "soft science", which has introduced different metrics for success than we marketers have traditionally used. You can, however, measure engagement and connect the engagement to customer loyalty, improved satisfaction, passionate advocates, enhancements to product features and, yes, even sales.

Setting Up Your Account

So, you're starting with a brand new Twitter account or rethinking your Twitter launch efforts. Where do you begin? Well, first things first: complete your Twitter account profile. A few areas you don't want to forget include:

1. Icon — Believe it or not, this is a big deal. Imagine entering a retail store without any signage. Because Twitter is a means to establish one-to-one communications, adding a discernible icon that relates to your product or service, or your company logo helps identify your company to people you want to have follow you.
2. Bio field — Leverage the bio field for you elevator pitch — a 160 character sentence or mission statement that succinctly describes your company. Otherwise, consider using this field to include the names (or @usernames) of the people twittering from your company account. It is also beneficial to consider including additional contact information, such as email addresses.
3. Company website — Don't forget to add your company website address, such that people can ensure they are following the correct company. With so many Twitter accounts, you don't want to chance it that people believe they are following you, when they are actually not.

Greasing the Wheels

Although you are technically ready to begin communicating with your target customers, we suggest that you consider "greasing the wheels" a bit first so your actual customers won't be one of your first few followers. One great way to get the ball rolling is to leverage a list of the top 237 users, who will follow you back. From Barack Obama to Judy Rey, this list will not only provide you with some base numbers for your account, but as JD Rucker from Social Media News Watch points out:

"The side-benefit of adding from this list is that once you follow them, your account will, for a short period of time, be at the top of their followers list. Many users build their Twitter followers by adding the followers of users such as these, so being at the top increases your account's exposure and the number of opportunities for other users to follow you."

Secondly, using following and follow-backs can be a great tool to build your audience. There are a number of software options, (some free and some paid). One tool to consider is Tweet Adder. They offer a free trial, and it's only a nominal fee for the paid version, which offers sufficient reporting for most marketing efforts.

Another effective method is to search within a given area for tags that would help define users that for which you are looking for. For example, if you are a coffee supplier based in California, searching for keywords java, roasted or beans (which are generally organized through hashtags — see sidebar for additional information) in tweets within 10 miles of San Francisco might turn up some good prospects. Your next step is to begin following those users.

The Art of Hashtags

Hashtags (represented by the "#" symbol) are used within Twitter to help organize information on specific topics. As you begin searching for specific types of followers, you have the ability to leverage keywords (which were entered as hashtags by those people) to find them.

In addition, as you begin making posts, you may consider incorporating relevant hashtags to help people find you in their searches.

As with everything related to Twitter and other social media, use everything in moderation. Don't dilute your conversation by including a hashtag with every post — make sure you give you hashtags some context for your followers and potential followers.

More information on how to best use hashtags will be provided in a future ThoughtMatrix Newsletter.

Show Restraint, Don't Be Annoying

Now that you have begun to gain some traction, there are a few things to remember to ensure you continue to build your audience and maintain a loyal following. Twitter is a tool for one-to-one communication, not mass marketing, and the site purposely puts in roadblocks to stop spammers. If you are flagged as a spammer, Twitter will cancel your account.

Twitter identifies spammers as follows:

• If you have followed a large amount of users in a short amount of time;
• If you have followed and un-followed people in a short time period, particularly by automated means (aggressive follower churn);
• If you repeatedly follow and un-follow people, whether to build followers or to garner more attention for your profile;
• If you have a small number of followers compared to the amount of people you are following.

A full list of Twitter's criteria for identifying spammers can be found online.

To build audience without using "spammer" tricks in a manner that does not require you to click on every link involves maintaining a balance. You'll need to spend about half an hour a day for a few weeks to build your relevant audience. Twitter does not publish its limits on following/follow backs or un-follows, which is likely purposeful. But a general rule is to stay within 250 per 24-hour period (not per calendar day). Keep follows/un-follows 72 hours apart so as to give other users time to respond to your follow request. This will keep you outside of spam warnings.

There are many guides available suggesting when you should tweet, how much to tweet and what time of the day is best to tweet, and each provides some good information. One that we like is by Kim Biscoe.

And most importantly, always remember that you are speaking to your target audience, so keep your posts relevant. Boring tweets, tweets tweeting too often, tweets that always link back to pictures of your dog, and tweets about what you had for lunch are annoying and may incent followers to "un-follow" you. If you have the slightest suspicion that what you're about to tweet might be annoying, it probably is. Don't tweet it. As with every marketing initiative determine what your goals are and how it integrates with the rest of your communications strategy. Continuously build your audience by keeping your focus and maintaining the checks and balances mentioned above.

For more information on how you can build a relevant audience in Twitter, or other social media marketing initiatives, contact us at . Stay tuned for future newsletters featuring additional best practices, how the Twitter ad platform will evolve and much more.