If used in a focused way, Twitter and other social networks can attract new clients to your business at low cost. Here are some tips on getting started with Twitter.

Setting up your account

It’s free to set up a Twitter account and you can add various details to your profile to help people find you. Adding your logo and a header image makes you look more professional and adding a brief biography will help people find you via the search bar.

You can follow industry organisations and other counsellors or therapists and reading their Tweets will no doubt give you ideas about what to talk about on your profile.

What to Tweet about

A mixture of links back to your main website pages, links to your new articles, re-Tweets (abbreviated to RT) of relevant Tweets from other users and some day to day info about what you are working on is a good way to get started with your Twitter profile. It helps people get a feel for you and your business when you use a more informal voice. Keep things positive to give a good impression to potential clients.

Obviously you’ll need to be careful not to talk about clients in too much detail, but you can discuss general counselling and therapy topics.

Follow Fridays and Hashtags

You can also do ‘Follow Friday’ Tweets – you will see these appear on Fridays with the hashtag #ff and they are a list of suggested people to follow. You can also add hashtags to your Tweets so they show up on searches within Twitter, but use them sparingly and make them relevant.

Don’t feed the trolls

Do not engage with anyone that starts trouble on Twitter – just block them. These “Trolls” will sap your energy and arguing online doesn’t look very professional. Keep it lean and relevant and set a time limit on your Twitter activities so you don’t lose your morning!

Summary

So to get the best results from Twitter keep things positive and focused, ignore the Trolls, Tweet links back to your site and show the human side of your business too.