Twitter can be an excellent tool to promote an online company. It is, however, essential to get it right. The fact that tweets are restricted to a maximum of 140 characters does not necessarily have to make it difficult to create a presence potential customers want to follow/ connect with if a few simple steps are followed.

Getting the Basics – Before starting to tweet, it helps to learn all you can about this social platform – and Twitter provides plenty of freely available information for beginners.

Personalising Profiles – Reflect your personality by creating a personalised profile. Include lots of relevant, interesting information and don’t forget to add your site’s address.

Drawing Attention – Make your Twitter photo eye-catching – if using a company logo, consider customising it into a snappy, fun version.

Making it Personal – Lighten up and try to connect to potential clients in a more personal manner. Offer witty advice, fun tips and ask for the opinion of others.

Sharing Stories – People love to see and share a good story. If you sell kid’s clothing, you could, for example, tweet about funny/ cute kid’s videos or images.

Tracking – Shorten your Web content links using Bit.ly and track which of them are mostly shared/ retweeted to find out what your followers like.

That ‘special’ Feeling – Make followers feel special by offering special deals/ links for your Twitter fans.

Total Automation – You are not dealing with robots, but real life people, so avoid relying completely on auto-follow programmes, automated sync tools, and so on.

Keeping a Standard Appearance – People are likely to look for you on other social media sites. Make sure they recognise you by presenting the same personality and using the same funky profile picture on all your accounts.