So, you decided it’s time to get on Twitter and promote your business. STOP! I’ve seen many businesses go head first into twitter and not achieve optimal results because they did not follow these simple, yet effective steps.

Developing a Twitter campaign is a great way to drive traffic to your website (increasing SEO), create a BUZZ about your company or a particular product and connect with like minded business individuals. A campaign is much more then just setting up a Twitter account and tweeting nonsense.

A Twitter campaign consists of strategic tweets that produce intended positive results.

Here are 10 things  to do before launching a twitter campaign:

1. Be open minded. Using social media platforms to market one’s business is a fairly new and misunderstood concept. Give your campaign a chance to work and the time it needs. After all, time and repetition are the successful basics to any market campaign.

2. Critique your website. Take an in depth look at your website and ask honest opinions from others. A successful twitter campaign will drive traffic to your website.  When your audience looks at your website they should know what you do within seconds, the navigation buttons should to be easily found, the design should be professional and appropriate to your business, a clear call to action should be visible and there should be a way to contact someone within your company.

3. Get your Twitter profile ready. Upload your logo, make sure to have your company name, bio and website link.

4. Learn about the Twitter basics. It’s always good to know the Twitter basics before launching a campaign. Knowing some basics like direct messages and mentions will help you run, maintain and understand your twitter campaign.

5. Add existing clients as followers. Before starting your campaign, get your follower count up. The first step is to add followers that are your existing clients. Twitter allows you to upload email addresses, finds those users and allow you to follow them. Export emails addresses from newsletter lists, mailing lists and email address books. If you follow them first, the higher the chances are of them following you back.

6. Promote your twitter account everywhere. If you have a store front, post a sign that says “Follow us on Twitter.” Post on other social media profiles, “Follow Us on Twitter, too!” Place a twitter widget on your website. Place a twitter logo on your print material and business cards.

7. Post interesting  tweets for a few weeks and get follower count up before launching a campaign. This DOES NOT mean tweeting about what you had for dinner and what time you woke up! This means to tweet about your company and what your target audience wants to hear.

8. Place someone in charge. Either if you hire Cultural Sponge or decide to facilitate your own campaign, it’s  a good idea to assign one person within your company as a point of contact. This person should be regularly checking your twitter account for any direct messages, mentions, commenting on positive feedback, dissipating any negative feedback and tracking results. Cultural Sponge provides these services for you, but also needs a direct contact within your company to discuss results and the steps within the campaign.

9. Develop strategic campaign ideas. A campaign could be as basic as promoting a new product line and giving a promotional code for a coupon.

10. Track your results. A marketing campaign is made successful by tracking results. Results can tell you many things about your target audience and what steps to take within your business. For example, a restaurant owner decided one day to post a link about weekend specials and the next day post about week day specials. He tracked the clicks on each link and found that 80% of his followers clicked on week day specials and 25% clicked on weekend specials. So he created more week day promotions.