By Gina Cuclis

This is a follow-up to last week's post, "Should Your Business Be on Twitter?" Offline comments and questions I received since, indicated it would be helpful to provide an example of how to use Twitter. I looked at Twitter profiles of a number of Sonoma Valley businesses searching for one whose Twitter use could be held up as a role model.

#1 Criteria for Effective Use of Twitter

I sought out businesses who understand that Twitter is a conversation. As I discussed in an August entry, What Small Businesses Need to Know About Twitter, followers aren't interested in sales pitches. Twitter is a vehicle to engage with customers in between sales. Followers expect relevant, interesting information. When used effectively, Twitter humanizes a business giving it voice.

My Pick of a Twitter User to Emulate

Not surprising, Twitter is catching on with wineries. I checked roughly two dozen Sonoma Valley winery Twitter profiles. I thought several were doing a respectable job. However, I was most impressed with the stream of tweets from St. Francis Winery's winemaker, Heather Artisan.

What Impresses Me

Heather truly understands how to be conversational and personal, while being informative. She also appears to have a gift for descriptive writing that draws in the reader.

Most winery tweets about harvest tend to be to bland statements suchas, crews up early picking X grapes. The following tweets, however, providea sense of the grape picking experience. A follower is also more likelyto click on a photo link if the tweet is compelling. The combination oftweets and photos helps build the relationship between customer andbrand.



Effective Use of @Replies

A pet peeve of mine is reply tweets of which I have no idea what the person is talking about, because I didn't see the original tweet. When you reply to a tweet, all your followers receive the response. I often think reply is used when a direct message would be more appropriate. A direct message is how to communicate with an individual follower. (I think most of the thank you reply tweets I see are irrelevant to anyone except the person being thanked.)

Writing replies in 140 characters, which are relevant to all or most of one's followers, is challenging. This is another reason why I'm impressed with Heather. She writes compelling replies that make sense without seeing the original tweets.

Another Business to Learn From

The lesson in this example is relevant to any type of business. However, with all the foodies living and visiting Sonoma Valley, I suggest checking out how The Girl & the Fig's Sondra Bernstein @girlfig uses Twitter. She follows the principles discussed here.

Using Twitter effectively takes skill. Some of you will be naturally gifted at it. Others may decide the time required to learn how to use Twitter wouldn't be worth it. The answer to the question, "Should your business be on Twitter?," depends on your willingness to spend time learning how to use it.

If you have recommendations of businesses using Twitter effectively, please leave a comment telling us about them.