Twitter has added to the resources that it offers small businesses looking to use the service today with a 20-page guide. The guide offers a variety of Twitter techniques and instructions that are geared towards helping businesses harness the basics and then turn their account into something that they can use to build their business.
Unsurprisingly, there is also a section that tells businesses how to ‘put Twitter Promoted Products to work’ for them, pushing Twitter’s new small business advertising agenda. But, by and large, the document is filled with a good amount of common sense.
There are three main sections surrounding the topics Get Started, Engage Your Audience and Amplify Your Impact. They’re designed to help business users understand basic Twitter terminology, get that it’s a platform for listening as well as speaking and build it into a steady habit in order to improve the feel of your account being alive and responsive.
The doc is actually a pretty solid primer for any Twitter user who wants to make it one of their primary online presences. Almost every bit of advice in here would be just as good when given to an individual user who wants to be a ‘good’ Twitter denizen.
The 💜 of EU tech
The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!
One of the best sections is a timeline of a week on Twitter as a business, that details how a typical span might go for your official account.
Twitter also makes it a point to note that “we see the most retweeted content tends to contain links, photos, videos or quotes. When you Tweet something interesting, it has the potential to travel to many prospective customers.”
Twitter also seems to be pushing the promotion of your @Username in the physical world, just as we’ve seen many popular TV programs and corporations doing in recent months. American Idol prominently promotes the individual Twitter usernames of its contestants live on air, for instance, not just the account of the show.
Overall, the guide stands out as a well-produced document that should deliver good value for business owners interested in using Twitter to grow their business. It’s honestly a much clearer and more focused guide than I’ve ever seen Facebook or Google produce for businesses.
As Aptfolk’s Ash Ponders pointed out to me, it feels a lot like a business-oriented version of head of social innovation and executive leadership Claire Diaz Ortiz’s Twitter for Good book. If you’re interested in checking the guide out you can download it from the Small Business section of Twitter’s site here.
Get the TNW newsletter
Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.