I Have Nothing to Tweet!

Sure you do! You just haven’t thought of it yet. When you’re tweeting for the sake of business networking — and also taking care of your business — it can be challenging to come up with that daily tweet. But consistent presence is the backbone of good social media marketing.

Here are some suggestions for you:

• If you’re one of those over-zealous twitterers who started off tweeting every few minutes, calm down. Once or twice a day is plenty to keep you on the radar of most of your followers. The ones who follow hundreds or thousands of people may miss your tweets, but — do the math — they’re not really reading all those tweets anyway. The people with whom you’re actually networking will appreciate the fact that you don’t take up their entire screen every time they look. A few tweets a day over the long run will be more effective than spurts of intensive tweeting followed by silence for weeks when you run out of steam.
• Join conversations. See what the people you’re following have to say, and respond to them. If the people you’re following aren’t talking about things that interest you, you’re following the wrong people. Try using the search box to find people who are talking about things that interest you.
• Share information. Twitter has become one of the best places to go to find cool blogs and articles, since people tweet the things they enjoy and find useful. You can do the same. When you find an interesting article online, or a book (search for the author’s website to link to) you’d like to tell people about, tweet about it.
• Report on your company. Seriously. Your customers want to know that you have a new product, or a sale, or a new version of your software or whatever it might be. They’re your customers. They don’t want to see ads all the time, but they want your news. They may even like to see your link on their Twitter screen often enough that they can be reminded to go and visit your website now and again.
• Be a little frivolous. Don’t be frivolous all the time if you’re tweeting for business. You don’t want your customers to get the impression that your new phone or the flavor of yogurt you’re having for lunch is the main thing on your mind. You also don’t want to Tweet as you get arrested or cope with a hangover. But an occasional glimpse of the personal is nice. I set up a new Twitter account for Clevertech yesterday (see how easy it is to make a custom background that sets you apart from the other Twitterers?) and the very first bit of news was that the CEO is headed to Amsterdam. I’m intrigued, aren’t you?

Think of Twitter as being like those little conversations you have with people as you ride in an elevator together in your building at work — not time enough for anything earth-shattering, but plenty of time to start developing a bond.

Hey — come and visit me at Twitter, too. I want to know what you’re doing.