I’m giving a few presentations over coming weeks on how to use social media, and specifically twitter, for business. As I draft my presentations and seek out case studies – yes, using twitter – key themes are emerging. It’s a hard world out there, especially if you are a small business owner, and everyone is looking for that competitive edge. Knowing your clients and your market will give you that edge. Actually engaging with these people will add a greater dimension to the relationship they have with your brand. And in competitive times, people are more likely to spend money with someone they have a positive relationship with rather than someone they don’t.

If you want to successfully engage with your clients, customers, suppliers, broad market, and yes, even your competitors, you need to do at least some of the following – and preferably all of them:

1. be interesting. Don’t just tweet about yourself and your product – nobody likes an ego. Share interesting links, articles, and information that OTHER people have written.
2. use the retweet function. It’s NOT all about you! Retweeting other people’s tweets is also a great way to get more followers.
3. have conversations with other tweeps. And if someone tweets you directly, acknowledge that. Especially if they ask you a question or comment on something you’ve said. After all, no one likes to be ignored.
4. ask for help. Most people like to help others if asked. My tweets that generate a lot of chatter are those that ask for advice or help. Especially if it’s technical. And to do with computers. Lots of techie people are on twitter. Go figure
5. give referrals and recommendations. I am a big believer in the whole giver’s gain philosophy and I aim to give at least 1 referral a day. Twitter makes this easy as a lot of people are often asking for advice (see #4). I now get asked directly for a lot of recommendations, especially for food related advice.
6. ask people’s opinions. Asking for an opinion makes people feel valued, and really, who doesn’t like that feeling?
7. promote other people’s stuff. This may be through retweeting or it may be promoting people who are not on twitter. I especially try and promote other people’s stuff if it involves fundraisers or other charitable activity
8. DO NOT SEND AUTOMATIC DMs. This is one very quick way to seriously annoy other tweeps and one guaranteed way to be quickly unfollowed faster than you can say Auto DM Spam. Yes, acknowledge a new follower with a DM, but please make it personal. Along the lines of “Hi Mel, looking forward to reading your food tweets!”
9. say thank you. This is just basic good manners. Especially if people regularly retweet you or help you out.
10. give praise, acknowledgement and encouragement . You’ll know when the time is right for this. A tweep I follow FINALLY ditched her ghastly boyfriend. There was a lot of praise and encouragement flowing that day.
11. have empathy. My most amazing twitter experience was when my mum died last year. The outpouring of sympathy and empathy from hundreds of people I didn’t know in either real life OR on twitter was mind boggling. This support helped me (and my family, none of whom actually “get” twitter) through an incredibly difficult time. It symbolises why I love twitter.

OK so that was 11. Not 10. Yes I can count. And I even live with an accountant. Let’s thank GST for the bonus.

What are your top tips for using twitter for business? I’d love to hear them.

I have a lot of people ask me how to write a marketing plan that is simple to follow and cost effective to implement. The simple to follow I can help with, the cost effective to implement depends a bit on the tactics you decide on – and I’ll write about some low cost tactics in a future blog post.

As far as I am concerned, a marketing plan for a small business really doesn’t need to be more than a couple of pages in length.

Make sure you inlcude:

• Marketing goals or objectives
• Key industry trends – these should be based on a SWOT analysis that looks at your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, including a bit of info about your competitors
• Your target market – these are the people you want to sell your product to
• Key messages – what do you want your customers to know about you?
• Marketing strategies and tactics appropriate for your target market (such as brochures, website, media activity, twitter)
• Budget – how much can you afford to spend?
• Action plan – when are you doing to do this stuff?
• Evaluation – what has worked, what hasn’t? Why?

Just remember a marketing plan should be a working document that is used, revised, updated, evaluated. Again and again.

I would argue that the most important part of any marketing plan is the action plan. Schedule activities into your calendar, pin them on the wall next to your desk, just make sure you make marketing a priority, and be consistent. After all, the plan won’t work if you aren’t actually doing anything!

Download a simple marketing plan template and get cracking on your marketing today!