Building Your Brand on Twitter

In his book Ultimate Guide to Twitter for Business, online marketing expert Ted Prodromou offers an easy-to-understand guide to using Twitter that will help small-business owners generate leads and connect with customers. In this edited excerpt, the author offers a few tips for building a consistent brand on Twitter that will help inspire customer loyalty.

Twitter is a great tool to build your brand and spread the word about your business. Here are six tips for building your brand on Twitter.

1. Use your brand name as your Twitter name.
This seems obvious, but I see many companies not using their brand name as their Twitter name. They use a cute Twitter name that isn't related to their brand name.

Related: Using Twitter's Promoted Services

2. Use your logo as your Twitter picture.
Again, this sounds very obvious, but some companies don't use their logo for some reason.

3. Send Tweets that provide useful information to customers and prospects.
Always add a link to more information on your website. It should be a page on your website that adds value to the Tweet but doesn't require them to fill out a web form to view the information. This complements your lead-generation Tweets. You don't want to make people fill out a web form every time or they may get frustrated.

4. Send Tweets to new blog posts or videos.
You can also send Tweets to older blog posts and videos that are still relevant.

5. You should Tweet 10 to 20 times a day to keep your brand name in the Twitter stream.
You can schedule the Tweets that have links to valuable content and complement that with five to 10 personalized Tweets where you are interacting with other Twitter users.

Related: 10 Things Entrepreneurs Should Be Tweeting About

6. Create a persona for your Twitter presence so people will get to know your brand.
Investopedia defines brand personality as "A set of human characteristics that are attributed to a brand name." A brand personality is something to which the consumer can relate, and an effective brand will increase its brand equity by having a consistent set of traits. This is the added value that a brand gains, aside from its functional benefits. There are five main types of brand personalities: excitement, sincerity, ruggedness, competence, and sophistication.

• Excitement. It's easy to spot a person who's excited on Twitter.These people love life, and they love everything they do. They also love to share their excitement with the Twitterverse, and it's fun to follow these people. Their Tweets will almost always uplift you.
   
• Sincerity. We all know the sincere people in our lives. They really care about you and your well-being. They Tweet the same way by always being genuine, caring, and sincere when they converse with others on Twitter.
   
• Ruggedness. These are the tough guys who never shed a tear. Their Tweets sound like John Wayne or Clint Eastwood confronting their adversaries and never backing down. You'll never see a hint of compassion or sympathy from rugged Tweeters.
   
• Competence. This is a well-educated, knowledgeable person who loves to Tweet information that will impress others. They love to share their knowledge and use big words in their Tweets, which can be challenging with the 140-character limit.
   
• Sophistication. Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian are sophisticated Tweeters. They love to Tweet pictures of their shopping trips and expensive cars, and let you know they're eating in the finest restaurants.

From my experience, consistency is the key to success when building your brand on Twitter. People get used to seeing your brand and persona on Twitter and look forward to your Tweets once they get to know you. You need to be engaging and entertaining when you Tweet to capture their attention. People become raving fans when you consistently provide valuable information and entertain them.

Related: The ABCs of Twitter, Part I