KickStarting your Startup’s New Twitter Account

The very first thing that many startups look to take care of after their website is their social media. With Twitter being an important aspect of establishing an audience, and keeping them up to date, how you start your account will have a huge impact on how quickly you become successful.

This article will help you use the right language, show you that you need to connect with the right people, and show you the right tools to use.

The language and social skills

How to refer to your company

When you start a Twitter account with your brand logo in the profile image section, you are no longer an ‘I’. You are a ‘we’. Your Twitter account is now representing everyone in your company, not just the one person sending out each tweet.

It’s possible that you’ve never thought of this before, but check out the correct way of doing it in this random tweet from a gaming company I follow:

Now think about how awkward that would read if it said “This week I’m launching a really awesome project off which I think you will like! Special thanks to @pycharm!” Your start up is a ‘we’, not and ‘I’!

There are exceptions to this. You can post as a mascot and use ‘I’ as this refers to one singular person or entity. If you must use ‘I’, use a mascot!

Twitter is on 24 hours a day, make a plan

Twitter is used by people from the moment they wake up until the moment they go to bed. “Ah ha! That leaves an 8 hour window where it’s not on,” you say? Well, there are more time zones in the world than just one!

You need to consider the location you’re targeting with your brand. Are you going worldwide? Then make sure you taking care of your fans in Manchester, UK the same as your fans in Long Beach, CA USA.

Are you focused more in one local area? Then plan to tweet at the optimum time for your audience. You can do this by using tools like:

• Tweriod

• BufferApp

• Hootsuite

They all feature tools for identifying when you have the most followers online and on Twitter.

Work on building a support account

People turn to Twitter for all sorts of reasons. One of the oddest is how they turn to it to make complaints rather than going directly to someone who can help. Regardless of this oddity, you need to include handling customer support as part of your Twitter for business plan.

There are two good reasons to do this:

1. It takes ugly issues off of your main Twitter account and put them somewhere else.

2. Your social media manager have an ‘out’ if they don’t know the answer to more technical questions.

Many brands have a support account already. Starting to build yours early will influence user behaviour later on, pushing more people to use your main account for positive interaction.

Use influencers to build your audience

Influencer marketing is becoming the big ‘not a secret anymore’ in social media marketing. These influencers are those in your industry who have a larger following than your start up account. You work with them to:

• Send out your message to their audience to grow your following

• Advertise an event

• Promote a product

Finding these people will do wonders for your social proof, and help your content quickly go viral. How valuable is it to find these people and work with them? A single tweet from basketball superstar Lebron James can be valued as highly as $140,000. That’s right, a tweet like this could have cost the TV show ‘Survivor’s Remorse’ $140,000:

But Lebron’s an executive producer on the show… But think about this: his Twitter account reaches 23 million people, plus retweets which can double that audience. See the value of influencers and social proof now?

Use the right Twitter tools to grow your start up’s account

Twitter is one giant conversation that you can participate in, and listen to. To help you listen to your audience, and your potential audience, try these four tools for these features:

1. TweetDeck: The official tool of Twitter, you can schedule posts for later, get analytics data, search for keywords, and organize streams of hashtags to follow your own and other’s conversations.

2. Hootsuite: One of the originals in the social management game, they feature a number of similarities to Tweetdeck. The big differences, that make them better in my opinion, are link shorteners with click tracking, best time tweet scheduling, and the ability to post to multiple social accounts from one dashboard.

3. Buffer: They built their name on helping people share interesting stories in a scheduled manner. If you’re the type of person who likes to share articles you find online, this can be perfect as there’s a browser extension with Buffer that allows you to schedule the article right there while you’re reading it. No need to open a new window to schedule it from!

4. Paper.Li: This takes great articles from your TimeLine and turns it into a sort of online newspaper. The Twitter users whose tweets you included are tweeted out when your Paper.Li is shared. This can earn you more retweets, and increase your familiarity with those in your industry. I know I’ve started talking to some account online after they tweeted out a Paper.Li one of my brands was assoiated with.

Take your pick of the tools above and make scheduling and responding to Twitter easier on your start up!

Summarizing your start ups approach to Twitter

Uses Twitter as a new brand is going to be different than when you used it as a single person. You’re going to have to:

• Stop using ‘I’ and start using ‘we’

• Plan for when you’re going to tweet

• Develop a support account

• Work with influencers

• Use Twitter tools to make life easier

With these tools and tactics in place you’ll be sure to grow your account quickly, and help your start up shake the ‘starting up’ feeling!