Starting a Business Twitter Account (suggested guidelines)

Our business twitter name is @BPcUK, we follow twitter accounts that relate to clients, local businesses, similar small businesses and informative service sites, e.g. twitter, google, etc. You may want two twitter accounts - register another twitter account for personal use, to follow people with similar interests, perhaps the news and a few celebs. Each account can follow the other one, too.

The way people use twitter varies greatly. Some are in the numbers game - honestly, how can anyone following 1,000+ people read all their tweets?! If you opt for quality rather than quantity, you will be entertained or educated with the majority of tweets. In return, try to offer the same to those who elect to follow you.

Suggested Business Twitter Guidelines for Beginners

• Starting out, follow as many people as you find who may be interested in your business and follow them, giving them the opportunity to discover you and follow you back
• Be polite and follow back your followers - but don't be lazy, take a look at their accounts first and make a judgement call
• Set up links from the company blog or facebook page to automatically tweet, to save your time for supplementary tweets
• Try not to tweet too much all at once - 7 or 8 in quick succession tends to be irritating
• Don't 'hard sell' by just advertising your product/service
• Remember to add links to drive people to your website, as appropriate
• RT (retweet) if you think your followers would appreciate it
• Don't just retweet all the time - your followers want original content from you
• Keep replies @ to a minimum because it can be annoying for others who only see part of a conversation; however, do interact with your followers when you can
• Refine your 'following' list occasionally, perhaps monthly, adding more and perhaps dropping a few

There are extras, such as hashtags, follow-fridays, messages, lists, etc. once you've got to grips with the basics of Twitter.