Not everyone’s a writer, so putting together a good Twitter Bio may not come naturally.

As part of my work as an online marketing consultant I help small business owners and start-ups improve their social media profiles where necessary.

Keep reading to discover what you should and shouldn’t do when it comes to your Twitter Bio.

What to avoid

• The hard sell

No matter how hard you try, people aren’t going to buy from you just by reading your Twitter Bio. If you adopt a hard sell approach, you will more than likely damage your credibility and stop people from following you in the first place.

• Jargon

Jargon is another thing to avoid in your 160 character Twitter Bio. Not everyone who wants to follow you will understand industry specific terms. Just because they don’t know the terminology you use, doesn’t mean to say they couldn’t be a potential customer or source of referrals.

• Not getting a clear message across

Since you only have a maximum of 160 characters to use, it’s worthwhile taking your time over your bio to make sure it conveys the right message. If it’s just a jumble of words that lack clarity, you’ll be doing yourself more harm than good when it comes to your Twitter presence.

What you should be saying

By flipping round the points above you can easily get three things you should be doing. There are also another few pointers I would recommend:

• Tell people what to expect

Rather than selling what you do, tell people what they can expect from your tweets. Take a look at my Twitter Bio below for an example.

• Be human

Don’t come over all corporate on Twitter, show people you’re a real person by writing a bio that demonstrates you’re a human being, not a bot.

• Use emotive words

If you feel your Twitter Bio lacks a certain edge, you could sprinkle in a few emotive words to try to connect more with would-be followers. Words such as ‘imagine’ and ‘discover’ are two good examples.

If you liked this article, you should also read: Five Twitter gaffes small business owners should avoid

Image credit: svilen001

This entry was posted on Monday, July 2nd, 2012 at 8:38 pm and is filed under Social Media. 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.