Today I hold the title (according to one website anyway) of the ‘most influential CSR person’. I also have direct access to well over 7,500 people (and potentially 500,000 beyond those), saved thousands of pounds on attending conferences, met global CEOs, Executives & prestigious authors, added countless fantastic new contacts, enhanced Coethica’s brand reputation around the world and learnt more than any course could offer – for free, through Twitter.

This time last year I really couldn’t see the point of Facebook, blogging or something new called Twitter, especially Twitter! What can you possibly say in only 140 characters? No chance for me to get on my usual ethical soapbox there!

As a specialist Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR for short, but please don’t be put off, keep reading!) consultancy, with a particular passion for wanting to encourage a more entrepreneurial approach to the agenda even to the smallest of businesses, we definitely fit the ‘niche’ description.

A local marketing company pushed me uncomfortably into writing about the expertise we had developed, to position myself as an expert in CSR for SMEs. A blog sounded like a good idea as I had a head full of information I wanted to share and it sounded like a sensible platform to broadcast tips and advice. The idea was to use Twitter as a tool to guide people to the blog, and then onto the main Coethica website, but my Twitter account is now as important as the blog itself.

Here are a few tips to improving your profile using the world of Twitter:

1. Be yourself. Twitter is at its best when it’s about conversations between real people – not a tool to shout out scripted marketing messages.
2. Quality over quantity every time – don’t worry about numbers of followers.
3. Don’t sell too much. Ok maybe about 10% of your time you should, but Twitter is about building relationships to complement your existing sales & marketing strategies.
4. Spend 90% of your time giving information away or discussing. Prove you are an expert by sharing links to relevant news, your opinions, tips & advice and connecting people etc.
5. You can also use Twitter for customer service, research, recruiting & plain old networking.
6. Have a strong bio.
   1. Make sure you have a decent photo of yourself rather than a company logo.
   2. Have a link to your blog or website (and make sure it works!).
   3. Put your location in. People are really interested where you are.
   4. Find yourself a tailored background – ask Google for plenty of sites to help
7. Follow key Twitterers to find out what they are saying – then follow the people they are following.
8. Use the Twitter Search facility to find people you are interested in:
   1. learning from – including competitors, industry experts, academia and the press etc
   2. potential customers – learn what their problems are, how to help / sell to them
   3. current customers – what are they saying about you and providing a chance to respond in real-time
9. Don’t auto-respond (DM) to people who follow you – it’s about relationships not building lists. I’ve responded to every one of the 7,300+ people that follow me. You’ll miss somebody exciting unless you are watching as they come in.
10. Visit http://www.twitip.com for further great advice for beginners

Be patient. It will take a few months to build any kind of momentum. Enjoy the ride and say hello.

Twitter – @davidcoethica – http://twitter.com/davidcoethica

My blog – http://davidcoethica.wordpress.com

Coethica’s website: – http://www.coethica.com

Tags: csr, social media, twitter

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 21st, 2010 at 1:38 pm and is filed under Enterprise, Support. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.