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5 Tips for Branding Your Business on Twitter

 

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Twitter can drive leads and sales. However, because of the simplicity of the Twitter platform, some businesses overlook simple ways to improve their business' branding on Twitter.  Taking the time to optimize your brand on Twitter is important to help capture the ultra-short attention span of users scrolling through their Twitter feeds.

One way to enhance your company's branding on social platforms like Twitter is by empowering all employees to be part of your company's brand online. It is not about mandating that employees support the company online; that doesn't work. Instead, it is about providing tools for employees to easily become a part of your online brand.

Branding Your Business on Twitter

1. Template Background for Employees -- A major branding factor within the Twitter experience is profile backgrounds. Profile backgrounds are the largest piece of visual real estate that you have to share with other users. While many businesses have custom Twitter backgrounds for their business' profile, take this a step further and offer your employees a custom company template for use on their Twitter backgrounds. By creating a Twitter background template file, you can offer it to all new employees and provide them with simple instructions on customizing the template and uploading it to their Twitter accounts.

twitter background template


2. Consistent Profile I
mages - In a Twitter stream profile images are a major branding opportunity. At the same time, most people don't like pictures of themselves. Take this opportunity to have someone in your company or a freelance photographer take new profile pictures for current and new employees. When doing this make sure that the pictures are taken in the same style: lighting, positioning etc. Additionally use a common background for the photos that represents your company in some way. This background could be as simple as a wall in your office that is one of the company colors. The goal here is all about creating consistent profile images across the company.



3. Custom URL Shortener -- Twitter is all about sharing great content. Take advantage of this by making your own URL shortener to help brand your company as people share your links. This can be done pretty simply by selecting a domain name and connecting it to Bitly Pro.

custom bit.ly

 

4. Consistent Twitter Account Naming -- Twitter profile names, or "handles" as they are often called, are an important identity for your business and employees. When setting up Twitter profiles, be consistent. Dell has done a good job of this. For employees representing the company on Twitter, each person uses their first name followed by "atDell" to make it clear who represents Dell to customers on Twitter. 

Dell Twitter users

Dell Twitter user

Dell Twitter user

 

5. File Branding -- This tip is dead simple, but a great added touch. When sharing files like eBooks or whitepapers on Twitter, make sure that your company name is in the file name of the document.

Example: "youcompanyname"documentname.pdf. Because these documents get shared through email and will go to others within an organization, make it clear from the moment others open the file that your business is the source of the information.

Have you taken any of these steps? What other recommendations do you have?

 

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Posted by Kipp Bodnar on Tue, Apr 27, 2010 @ 12:00 PM

COMMENTS

Hi Kipp, 
 
we're actually discussing how to start on twitter with a consistent identify for all employees. thanks for your tipps!

posted on Wednesday, April 28, 2010 at 2:11 AM by Patrick


Interesting that although Dell have consistent twitter names, you guys at HubSpot don't.  
 
Do you have any views on how that evolved? We are considering how to have employee twitter accounts named so any insights would be helpful. 

posted on Thursday, April 29, 2010 at 7:43 AM by Danusia


Danusia, 
 
Great question. I think that consistent Twitter profile names is a company by company choice. Many of the Dell folks first set up Twitter accounts as part of their job at Dell. At HubSpot most people had personal Twitter accounts before joining the company. I am sure this is part of it, but it also comes down to how an organization is using Twitter.

posted on Thursday, April 29, 2010 at 7:52 AM by Kipp Bodnar


Comments have been closed for this article.