Business Insight Zone

This suggestion applies primarily to Twitter, but it works in just about any social medium:

When you’re getting started on a new social-media platform — Twitter, a blog, Facebook, LinkedIn, whatever — put up something that lets the world know you’re a real person.

Simple, eh? Lately the @hoovers Twitter account has been drawing a fair number of new followers (last week’s coverage in Mashable didn’t hurt), for which we’re definitely grateful.

What’s amazing to me is that, when I check out each new follower to consider following them back, some of them have nothing to see on their Twitter accounts. No picture, no real name, no URL to visit, no biography, and worst of all, no messages.

Maybe you really are just dipping a toe in the water. No sweat: we’re all beginners sometime, and not all of us are as comfortable in a given medium. But you can put up something engaging and non-threatening — to you and your audience both — that will humanize you.

The Business Version

If you’re starting an account for your business, do at least these things when you set up your account:

• Use a version of your corporate logo as your avatar. You want something that looks good at the size of a postage stamp. (This is why we use a stylized “H” rather than our whole “Hoover’s” logo.)
• Put your company’s URL in your profile.
• List your company’s headquarters location in your profile. Or, if you want to get clever, you could put something like “Anywhere you need us.”
• Put in a brief descriptor in the biography section: “Changing the way the world thinks about prescriptions by mail” or “The ISP of choice for California’s Central Valley” or “The recruiter you need when you’re looking for top coders in the UK.”
• Write a first tweet. Do it at the same time you set up the account. Keep it simple and not too sales-y, something like: “Hello, everybody. Checking out Twitter to see how it can help us connect with our users.”

After that, figure out some way that you can put in a tweet or two regularly. Ideally, you should have this worked out before you ever set up a Twitter account (or Facebook page, etc.), but in any case, social-media accounts wither if they’re not watered.

Maybe your CEO isn’t as loquacious as Tony Hsieh of Zappos — it’s okay. You could succeed anyway by posting a few links per week to interesting items: news that’s relevant to your industry or your hometown, events your company is hosting, interesting discussions from the top blogs in your industry, etc.

The point, again: show your audience that there’s a real human intelligence behind the account.

The Personal Version

What if you’re using Twitter just for yourself? In general, you could follow the bullet points of advice above, but you can make it more personal or whimsical if you want. Whatever you choose, here’s a suggested first tweet:

“Hello, world. Trying to figure out what all the Twitter hype is about.”

If you find that Twitter is a toy you play with once in a while rather than a staple of your day, you could later say this:

“Twitter seems fun, but I can’t spend too much time on it regularly. I’ll be stopping in from time to time.”

If you figure out you’re going to use Twitter for listening more than talking, here’s a suggested follow-up:

“Note to the world: I’m just a listener when it comes toTwitter, but I enjoy reading what others have to say. Keep talking!”

As in the business version of this advice, if you want to build more of a Twitter presence but you’re shy about holding conversations there, you can just post interesting links — to news stories, blog posts, videos, pictures, music, et cetera ad infinitum. You don’t have to turn it into a tell-all memoir.

Oh, and if you don’t want to put up a picture of yourself, that’s fine. But put up a picture of your cat or Steve McQueen or the Eiffel Tower or something — anything to replace the default avatar and show the world that an actual person is using the account.

Show You’re Human

Social media is about connecting people, but of course there are lame-brain spammers and snake-oil sellers out there who try to use Twitter (and Facebook and the rest) to spread their lameness to the rest of the world. Plus there are plenty of people who sign on to a social-media platform one time only and then forget about it, such that many accounts really are dead.

If you intend to use a social-media platform, even passively, show that you don’t fit into one of those categories. You need not say much, but you can at least show that you’re a real human who’s taking an interest.

Sometimes all it takes is a simple “Hello, world!”

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Related:

• Using Twitter for Business: my presentation to HIMA.

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