Social Media Marketing is turning traditional marketing techniques on its head. In recent years, due to our ability to filter out advertising, we are moving into a friendlier, “getting to know you” version of marketing, as opposed to “just buy this.”

Twitter is a great way to connect with your customers. To get the maximum out of this social media channel, follow some of the Twitter best practices outlined below:

• Do get a Twitter account for your business, but also make sure that people know there is a real person behind the account.

• Aim to tweet at least once a day to start, but check your @mentions and DMs three times a day and respond accordingly.

• Tweet a variety of different things: direct info about your business, info about your industry, entertaining tweets, help tweets and questions, photos, and also jump in and start conversations with your followers.

• Use a service like search.twitter.com to see if anyone is tweeting about your business. They may not know you already have an active Twitter account, this way you can connect with those people.

• With Twitter, your following will most likely grow organically, but slowly. Don’t feel obligated to follow back every single person that follows you.

• Don’t link your Twitter account to your Facebook Page. These are two separate audiences. Take the extra 30 seconds to repurpose content from your Facebook page as a Tweet.