• Listen first.  Before your new recruits post their first tweet, have them spend some time reading the tweets you’ve posted in the past and the tweets of those you follow.  This will give new tweeters an idea of the tone that people use on Twitter and should reinforce that it’s not all pointless jabber or self-promotion.
• Know the basics.  Make sure they understand RTs, @replies, common courtesies, etc.  Check out our Twitter primer, do’s and don’ts.
• Search.  Teaching Twitter newbies to search is like dropping off a kid in a candy store.  Encourage them to search for things that interest them as well as things that pertain to your brand.  This will heighten their appreciation for Twitter and give them ideas on how and what to tweet.

Keeping the Training Wheels on for New Twitter Users

If you’re not quite ready to let your new tweeters out on their own, TweetFunnel can take some of the stress off.  Different user roles let you choose who can contribute tweets to the “funnel” (for review) and who can publish directly to Twitter.   This easily lets your new tweeters contribute tweets, but gives you the option to approve and/or edit them first.

For example, if your new tweeters don’t quite understand the proper use of hashtags yet, you can add tags to their tweets before posting them to Twitter.  You can check for typos, make sure they aren’t spilling confidential info or just help them write more efficient tweets.  Then, once they get the hang of it, you can take the training wheels off and let them post directly.

1. Expertise: Unless you’re a one-person shop, your organization has different people with different specialties.  You have the marketing folks who are great at snappy messaging, the product guys who know all the specs, the tech guys who can fix anything, and so on.  If the marketing person is the only one running your Twitter account, what happens when a tech question comes in or someone wants to know the exact measurements of your latest product?  What happens is a major time delay when the marketing person has to email the tech or product guy, explain Twitter, ask the question and wait for a reply.  Twitter is real-time and fast responses equal great brand building.
2. Diverse Content:   To keep interest in your Twitter stream, keep things spicy.  For instance, if you’re a restaurant, you can have both the front and back of the house tweeting.  Updates on specials intermingled with recipes, ingredient-specific tweets or even tweets about the fabulous happenings in the neighborhood will keep your followers engaged.
3. Consistent Responsiveness:  You don’t HAVE to be on Twitter 24-hours a day, but if you’re using it for customer support, you should come as close as possible.  It’s a lot easier to make this happen if you have a team of people working in shifts.