5 Ways For Startups To Grow Their Brands On Twitter

This is a guest post by Ryan Spoon (@ryanspoon), a principal at Polaris Ventures. Read more about Ryan on his blog at ryanspoon.com.

Last week I began an effort to answer the questions I get asked most frequently by entrepreneurs, starting with how to create an early-stage pitch deck. Today, I address a topic as relevant for early stage startups (vying for consumer attention) as it is for more mature companies (focused on customer relationships):

How to grow your brand on Twitter?

Twitter is the ultimate marketing platform. But the scale of Twitter activity is so extraordinary (250 million tweets per day) that it is quite easy to get lost in the noise… particularly if you are an early-stage startup and/or an emerging brand.

Separating yourself from the masses really begins with the recognition that Twitter is first and foremost a platform for conversation. If you believe that, you avoid the mistake most brands make: treating Twitter as a mechanism to push content rather than create engagement.

And once your goal is to foster conversation and engagement, you can follow these five guidelines:

1. Listen.

2. Be authentic.

3. Be compelling.

4. Find the influencers.

5. Extend off Twitter and onto your site.

In the below presentation, I break down these core themes and provides examples of people and companies successfully using Twitter to drive engagement and grow their brands.

Crunchbase

• RYAN SPOON

Person: Ryan Spoon

Website: ryanspoon.com

Companies: Polaris Partners, beRecruited, ReadyForZero, Fridge, Offline Labs, Dogpatch Labs, Movity, ShoeDazzle, Formspring, InGameNow, Widgetbox, eBay, KISSmetrics

Ryan is a Principal at Polaris Venture Partners and leads Dogpatch Labs California. Either as lead investor or board observer, he works closely with Automattic, Formspring, Frid.ge (acquired by Google), KISSmetrics, LOLapps, Movity (acquired by Trulia), Offline Labs, Recurly, and ShoeDazzle. Previously, Ryan founded beRecruited.com (acquired in 2007), spent 2003-2007 at eBay (internet marketing, social media & leading Kijiji.com) and launched InGameNow as part of sfEntrepreneurs, LLC. Most recently, Ryan ran marketing at Flite (formerly Widgetbox).

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