Everyone is jumping on the Twitter bandwagon.  Some for good, but most are lost or have no battle plan on how to capitalize on Twitter without becoming a spammer that everyone hates.  Here are the top ten ways to responsibly capitalize on Twitter without annoying everyone.

1 – Feedback & Reviews

One of the great things about Twitter is that you don’t have to wait for someone to find your business to give it feedback.  If you have a Twitter account for your business, people can comment at any time on your site without creating an account on your site.

People are comfortable making comments on others via Twitter.  This can be as good or bad as you make it.  They will comment on you even if you are not on Twitter.  It’s better for you to be there and active than to sit back and ignore them.

As a business, you can benefit from good and bad feedback by promptly responding to critiques.  If people have a negative comment, listen to what they are saying.  Respond to them with ways to resolve problems.

When someone gives you a compliment or good review, thank them by retweeting their comment.

2 – Special Deals

Hardly anyone is going to “follow” you on twitter if you are just a business posting business news.  People obviously follow news and large corporations, but most small businesses would just annoy people.  However, if you offer exclusive Twitter deals, you are likely to get many people retweeting your ads.

I follow people who run businesses.  They tweet news and blog postings and occasionally post a special Twitter only ad.

These people mix business with pleasure and their business benefits from it, because I like their other content enough to put up with a couple ad posts now and then.

I retweet these ads if they sound good to me and I think other’s would be interested.  This is free advertising! Give those special deals, even if you are losing money on the deal, and count the losses as advertising costs.

3 – Build Relationships

On Twitter, you will notice that some people are big fans of your business and products.  Build relationships with these people.  Engage them to give you suggestions for improving your business.  Use Twitter as a free market research tool.

If you want to try something, tweet about it and gather the feedback.  Do customers like your shipping options?  Do they like your response times?  Are there days they’d like extended phone support hours?

4 – Competition

You may not want to “follow” your competition with your professional account, but you may want to create an anonymous account and follow the streams of your competition.  You can watch their deals and responses to their customers, and adjust your business strategy accordingly.

Respond to competitor deals with your own.  Directly respond if another business presents something negative about you.  Avoid getting into a “flame war” with anyone, be it a customer or business.  Online arguments are all public.  But make sure you stand up for yourself, or people will only hear one side.

5 – News

Use your professional account to retweet and comment on news items that relate to your business.  Remember, though, that this is a public feed.  For instance, if you are a baby items eBay seller, retweet baby item recall news and explain what steps you have taken to safeguard your customers.

If there are news items in your area, you can be a news outlet to your customers.  If there is a large fire near your store, tell your customers to avoid routes to your business that would take them near danger. Let your customers know if you are open or closed on holidays and snow days.

This will show your customers that you care more about them than just their money.

6 – Collaboration

Find businesses in the area that you work with and use Twitter to help promote each other.  Maybe you repair computers and another business sells Internet access or web hosting.  You can tweet for their services, and they can tweet for yours.

Collaboration of related businesses can overlap common services and products, but overall will benefit you both. Collaboration creates buzz.

7 – Direct Sales

Do you have an established customer base?  Do you have a customer who messages you on Twitter?  Conduct direct sales!  If you are a plumber and a customer messages “My sink is leaking, argh!” then give them a call and ask if they would like you to come out.  This is a business responding to their customers’ needs.

Be careful, and don’t spam people!  Don’t contact random people by doing keyword searches. This is spam, and people will publicly trash your image if you annoy them.  Stick to customers you have, and move the customer service to a phone call, email, or your website as quickly as possible.  You don’t want your customers trying to post their credit card numbers to you over Twitter.

8 – Charity

If your business does charitable work or donations, advertise it on Twitter.  On Twitter, you have to toot your own horn.  This good press will give your customers and critics a chance to see that supporting your business also supports charities that they may care about.

9 – Contests

If you want to take your business to the next level, you could try a Twitter contest.  An online car retailer, @CarMax, decided to give a free car away on Twitter.  All you had to do is “follow” them, and retweet (RT) their contest ad.  They allowed users to enter once a day for every time they sent the retweet.

This is a brilliant use of Twitter.  It gains the company many followers, each of whom are giving the company free advertisement.  Make sure you follow all local and state laws for any contest.

10 – Don’t Over Do It

Don’t send dozens of tweets a day unless they are substantial.  Successful businesses don’t tweet their customers and users more than once or twice a week.  If you post a lot of news and blogs, keep your ads to less than 5-10% of your tweets.  Even one advertisement per day will seem like overkill.

If you use Twitter responsibly, listen to what people are saying to you, and engage your customers in positive ways, you will find that Twitter can be an effective tool for all small, medium, large, local, national, and online businesses.

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