3 Twitter Strategies for Solopreneurs to Avoid

There’s a few things that are unique to solopreneur businesses, and one of them is that we need to be super-efficient with time, money and energy.  Every activity we choose to do has to pull it’s own weight in terms of results.  This applies to social media as well, and Twitter is no exception.

Twitter is a great platform for your business and I use it a lot (@themichelec).  I would encourage many solopreneur business owners to consider jumping in, but note that it may not be effective for every business.  That’s where strategy comes in.  Before you start tweeting, you’ll need to know what you hope to accomplish by being on Twitter.  When I post this question to people who are new to strategic thinking and social media strategy, the answer is almost always something like “more sales,” “more customers,” “more contracts,” etc, and while of course that’s almost always the end goal of any business strategy there are steps in between that lead from tweet to customer.  Twitter strategies for solopreneurs might include things like branding, education, establishing expertise, building the “know-like-trust” factor and enticing people do something like click a link.

Twitter strategy is a huge topic, and there’s no way to cover it in one article.  To get you started, here’s a list of 3 strategies to avoid at all cost:

1. Not having a plan at all.  You’ll end up wasting time and not seeing results.  Your strategy will evolve as you learn the ropes, but have at least some ideas going in of what you want to accomplish.  Make sure your goals can be measured so you know if your efforts are paying off.
2. Tweet nothing but things for sale. Twitter is a social platform, not a classifieds listing.  The only time this might be appropriate is for businesses whose main function is deals, discounts, coupons, etc.  It’s fine to offer things for sale in some tweets, but generally most of your tweets should not be just about sales.  I’ve heard figures of 10% to 20% as a good target for the percentage of tweets that are just sales related.
3. Ignore the social aspect of Twitter and just broadcast your messages. Twitter is a platform that lets people interact and that’s an important activity to include to have any degree of success.  Make it a point to respond to someone, retweet them, answer a question, mention someone at least a few times a day.

If you see yourself in this list, don’t panic just change course!  The Twitterverse is huge, so even if you’ve blown it with your current followers there’s plenty more people to connect with.

If you’re unsure of what your strategy should be or you don’t have one at all, let me help!  Click here to schedule a call and let’s get your Tweets up to par.