This is the first in a series of our Twitter tips for publishers, with info on how to use the tool for book campaigns, events, personal profiles and more. Here are 6 beginners’ tips for your company account(s).

1. Brand-building

Ensure the tone and content of your tweets are reflective of your company’s brand and the books you are publishing. This will allow you to attract the best followers for building a community around your products.

2. On your site

Make your links to social media sites easily visible and make sure all content shareable (use shortened links, edit the text and check it’s under 140 characters). Incorporate a, well-maintained, twitter stream into your site to generate interest and to show your activity and topicality.

3. Multiple accounts

It will be harder to retain followers if your stream is regularly tweeting content of no interest to them. Set up accounts separate to you company one, depending on the frequency, variety and format of content you publish. Build communities where the majority of your tweets are relevant to your followers.

4. Be Topical

Use trend monitoring tools to keep up-to-date and tie in your tweets with industry-related news and events. Write new content, and reuse old, to capitalise on opportunities to build your brand, drive traffic to your site or increase awareness of your books.

5. Splash out

Have a budget for promoting your account(s) and certain tweets to build awareness of your company / book launches, targeting potential customers and industry influencers.

6. The 80/20 rule

Around 20% of your tweets/activity should be self-promotional. The other 80% should be sharing useful content, and engaging and promoting others.