Back to Basics: Dragonfly PR’s Top Tips for the Perfect Twitter Profile!


Social media is great for engaging with current and potential customers, as well as promoting your products and services. Manyconstruction and manufacturing businesses have recognised the benefits of appointing Dragonfly PR to run proactive social media campaigns on their behalf.

These benefits include engaging directly with your customers, as well as potential customers, generating more traffic to your website (especially the news and blog pages) and engaging with relevant organisations or government bodies.

This week, our Back to Basics blog gives some top tips for creating the perfect Twitter profile. This platform is great for a soft B2B approach – it’s not quite as chatty as Facebook, but it’s not as formal as LinkedIn – so it’s a really good starting point for any construction or manufacturing business.

Tip 1 – When you first set up your account you’ll be able to choose a username, known as a Twitter handle. This will have a ‘@’ sign at the beginning of it and it’s the name that people will use to connect with you. We recommend you try and use your company name as your Twitter handle, or at least part of it. However, as handles are unique, there is a chance that your chosen name has already been taken. If so, you may have to make compromises and you could shorten your name or add your location to it.

Tip 2 – You can’t use spaces in Twitter handles and it can only be 15 characters long. So we recommend that you start each word with a capital letter rather than using underscores to separate words, as it uses fewer precious characters.

Tip 3 – Try and keep your Twitter handles as short as possible so that it doesn’t take up too many characters when people reply to you.

Tip 4 – You can choose a picture for your account, otherwise known as an avatar. This will be located on your profile and it will also come up next to each tweet you send. When choosing the picture, it’s important to choose one that’s relevant – one that people will see and instantly associate with your business. Also remember that the avatar is just 73 by 73 pixels and that a lot of people will be using their phone to view it, so keep it clear and simple

Tip 5 – If you’d like to use an image of your brand name for an avatar, but find it’s too long, why not ask us about designing a new logo for you, just for social media?

Tip 6 – Your bio, or biography, can be found in your profile. It’s your chance to provide a bit of background to your business so that people can decide whether they want to connect with you. At just 160 characters, your needs to be succinct and only include key words and messages. It’s also important to note that you can change the bio as often as you like so you can update it to reflect any changes to your business.

Tip 7 – As you can include your location and website address elsewhere on your profile page you shouldn’t waste characters by including them in your bio too.

Tip 8 – Every time you follow someone, they will receive a notification and therefore following the people you want to connect with is your opportunity to start to get noticed. For construction and manufacturing clients we recommend you start following the relevant magazines and press for your sector, current customers, prospective customers, local business groups and the local chamber of commerce.

Tip 9 – Twitter doesn’t like ‘aggressive following’ where people try and follow a lot of accounts, whilst only having a few followers themselves. You might notice this if you try to follow more than 2,000 accounts, but have less than 1,000 followers. If so, you’ll need to wait until you have more followers to balance out the ratio.

Tip 10 – If you haven’t got anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. It can be very difficult to give (or accept) constructive criticism in just 140 characters. Keep things positive with good news stories about you, your industry and interesting things you’ve seen.

As with all PR, content is king and our future blogs will look at ways you can build up a relevant following by creating content that’s engaging but still relevant to your business.

Our team is experienced in all the popular social media platforms. So if you want expert advice on how you can make social media work for your business – why not contact us today on 01709 300130 for help setting up your accounts? We can discuss campaign ideas and develop content for you too – ensuring you engage with your customers whilst promoting your brand.

Call us on: 0114 349 5341