The first thing small business owners do when they find out that I work for an online marketing agency is ask for help. Many small business owners are at a loss as to how to effectively leverage online tools in their marketing mix. The truth is there is a litany of information out there on these topics but most either don’t know where to find it or the text is very cumbersome, often for no reason. For example, I recently read an article with 15 points on effective tweets. That’s 1,000 words to describe how best to write 140 characters. Well, these tips can be surmised in 3 easy points: content, engagement, and aggregation.

In the land of tweets, blogs, and 24-hour news coverage, content is king. This means write good, thoughtful tweets that have some relevancy to those individuals following you. I have run into several small business owners who don’t understand why they cannot increase their social media presence when they are creating content everyday on their wonderful product lines.

Content leads us to the crux of the matter, which is engagement. You have to be actively engaged in what your audience is saying. Consider GM… recently the automotive conglomerate was plagued with protests from angry consumers regarding advertising dollars that were spent with a radio show that some considered to be offensive. This could have been a PR nightmare for GM—a company doing everything it can to support sustainability and American values. For every tweet GM received regarding this matter, they issued a personal apology and assured customers that the affiliate was instructed to cancel any further ad orders.

Finally, make it easy on your audience to find out more about you and your expertise. Twitter requires the creation and sharing of a great deal of content on a weekly basis. You can improve user experience and SEO value by linking appropriate tweets to articles or blogs on your site. Consider a large lumber yard that frequently tweets about DIY projects and HGTV television shows. It would be beneficial to link some of those tweets to appropriate web pages so audience members know where to get material for such projects. Writing 140 characters can seem like a daunting task. The truth is if you follow some basic guidelines and encourage your audience and customers to follow you, great success on Twitter will follow.