6 Twitter best practices for eTailers

1. Specific Marketing Goals - it can be increase sales, establish the identity of industry expert, or for customer services. Some company dedicates their account for specific use and is shown on their username, such as Ford uses @FordCustService. Once you have a goal you know what you should tweet about and what your tone of voice should be like. 

2. Hastags - try to put in 1-2 hashtags per tweet. When people search for the #keywords, they can see your post on the search result. This is very important because those people who search for those keywords must be sharing common interest with you. I always conduct some searches and compare keywords before I use the #, just to check their popularity. To save space, integrate the # into the sentence. For example I would say 'calling all #ecommerce enthusiasts'.

3. Grow your following - I guess everyone likes followers. One of the best ways to get followers is to follow others first. Mention them and retweet their contents etc., Of course I am not asking you to follow everyone, but choose active suppliers, potential customers, employees or industry experts, etc. 

4. Twitter schedule - Schedule is a must for almost everything, including Twitter. Management applications like HootSuite or Buffer allows you to set schedules for posting. The first thing I do every morning is to set up tweets for every hour or so. This can make my account active throughout a day and I do not have to keep reminding myself to go on Twitter when I am working on other stuff. According to Practical Ecommerce 'Such tweets can include helpful tips, observations about your industry, product recommendations, inspirational quotes, and links to relevant resources. The key is that they add value to your followers.' Make sure your tweets is not all about yourself (business news, promotions, etc), unless you are celebrities I guess... 

5. Monitor relevant keywords - You should have a set of keywords that you always use, or that you are interested in. Spend some time everyday to research on them, respond and retweet what other people say. Tips from practical ecommerce: 'If you share links on Twitter and use the URL shortener bit.ly, you can copy the link into your browser and add a "+" at the end to see how many people clicked on it and the types of conversations it generated'. 

6. Tools - Tools allow you to engage via Twitter more easily and you can add other social network accounts and synchronize them as well. The best feature is the analytics which allows you to keep track of what you are doing and compare your performance level every month. For me the data gives me incentives to work hard and improve. It puts a smile on my face when I see the follower graph curving upwards.

Have a look at this link, it gives you more details on this topic:
http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/3921-Twitter-for-Ecommerce-Merchants