Building your Brand through Twitter

I recently taught a social media campaigns course and the class was pretty lukewarm on Twitter and the benefits of why and how to use Twitter.  The perception was that it was a way to follow celebrities, athletes, etc., but were trying to find the real VALUE behind it for business.  After several discussions, they did come away understanding and embracing the business value of Twitter.  Here's what we discussed as it related to building your brand on Twitter:

Twitter helps to build your brand and can generate leads.  It's an easy way to keep a brand top of mind to your consumers.  Remind your followers of your brand everyday in 140 characters or less.  It might not even have anything to do with what you sell or do as a business, but maybe you're just putting a message out there like, Hey, who's going to win the Super Bowl?  You've now posted a tweet with an open ended question, allowing people to converse back and forth, all stemming from your BRAND, when you might be a floral shop and have nothing to do with football!  But, you still got the brand exposed.  Do you see the power?  And, what did it cost you?  About 30 seconds of your time?

Of course, you want to promote your brand through Twitter, but how?  You need to optimize your Twitter profile.  By optimizing your Twitter profile, consider doing the following:

• Use your logo as your profile photo
• Be sure to use your brand/company name as your Twitter handle and Twitter username
• Create an exciting and relevant Twitter bio, use your brand name, and add a link to your company's URL/Website.
• Be sure to use your brand name as your hashtag and no, you can never "over" hashtag your brand in your tweets--so use it in all of your tweets!