A few weeks ago, I was interviewed by Alysha Schertz stemming from a kind recommendation from Laura Monagle. Alysha is a reporter from Milwaukee’s BizTimes and she was working on a feature story covering social media and social networking. She learned pretty quickly that it is a very big topic and I think she learned a lot. You can read the whole story here.

twitter-birdWell, for her story she asked if I could pull together a list of Twitter tips for business. Sara Meaney, my new partner helped with the list too, which was cool. So, take a look below and let me know your thoughts. Oh, and I have to admit, it’s a little weird being called a guru.

“Twitter-Tips from Milwaukee Twitter guru Al Krueger, founder of Comet Branding“

- When picking a Twitter “handle,” use your real name or brand name instead of a concocted screen name. An easy to find and recall name can increase your number of followers and level of interaction.

- Fully utilize the Twitter biography space. The more complete your bio is the more likely people will be to follow you and interact. A blank bio is a no-no.

- Upload a photo. People like having a face to look at along with a name.

- People like connecting with other people – so be yourself, be real and be authentic.

- Listen before you tweet – take some time to get an idea of what people are talking about and how.

- Use Twitter tools to enhance your user experience:

- Search.Twitter.com: a keyword search tool for finding who is tweeting about subjects of interest to you.

- Twellow.com: Yellow pages for Twitter. Find the people you want to connect with based on bio information, location and business categories.

- Tweetdeck.com can help you organize your Twitter page into categories, which allows for easier management.

- Use a URL shortening tool: A great aspect of Twitter is sharing URLs. However, 140 characters gets used up pretty quickly. Use a URL shortener like budurl.com. This tool also lets you track click-throughs, referrers and other useful ROI stats in real-time.

- Share photos on Twitter: use a tool like Twitpic.com to include photos in your tweets and make sure to include descriptions as an added bonus. Share photos of events, products and other interesting happenings.

- For a businessperson using Twitter, it’s good to tweet about business, but sprinkle in a little personal stuff too. It helps humanize you and your brand.

- If you like what someone else’s tweets, share them with other people by “re-tweeting” them.

- Don’t be “salesy” or too “self-promoty” – people on Twitter don’t respond well to the hard sell and are interested in what you say as long as you don’t brag about how great you are too much.