Our sister member site, Small-Business-How-To.com, is on Twitter and we follow a lot of Main Street businesses (florists, construction, hardware stores-you name it!).

One thing we’ve noticed is that most of these businesses aren’t very active on Twitter (or Facebook either). I suspect they set up the account and then don’t know what to do with it. I’ve got some suggestions on making the most of this social networking site.

First, make sure you have a custom Twitter background that predominantly includes your company’s web site address. If you need help setting up a Twitter background, contact us. A video is coming shortly! It isn’t hard, but it does take some “how to” info. Do a thorough profile with a thumbnail image as well.

Wondering who to follow? Do a search under “Find People” of a word and also in the search field under the main screen (let’s say you are a florist: search “wedding”, “funeral”, “married”, “fiance’”, “engagement” AND your city if applicable). You can also hop over to Twellow and do a search by tags or by location.

When you tweet, as often as possible if your business is location specific, put it in your tweets with a hashtag (#boston) so that users who search for activity in their city find you! This is crucial.

Do NOT just throw up advertising on your tweets! Twitter is a social community and those voices shouting out advertising are quickly ignored. It is all about interacting with potential customers, colleagues and peers. Give, give and give some more! How? Through promoting others, adding links to your blog posts, videos, specials and “retweeting” other people.

Be consistent. Twitter only works if you work it. There are great smartphone apps that make it easy to tweet when you are stuck with a few spare minutes (for iPhone, we like Twitterific). Better to tweet a few times each day than a lot on one day.

Join our site at a very affordable introductory price and get video guides on all things “Twitter” for small business owners!

Tagged as: main street business, relationship marketing, small business, small business owner, social media, twitter