It’s hard to ignore Twitter; it’s even grabbing headlines on the six o’clock news and tabloids. Twitter is used by A-List movie stars, footballers and even the Prime Minister!

But famous people aside, why should a book-keeper use Twitter? Well it’s obviously great to receive real-time updates from the book-keeping and accounting bodies (ACCA, CIMA, ICB and AAT all have Twitter accounts), but equally it’s a platform for you to share your book-keeping wisdom to fellow business owners. Best of all its FREE and can help raise the profile of your book-keeping business.

You can search for local businesses already on Twitter and start following their Tweets. They may return the favour and follow you. You then have a platform to start promoting your book-keeping service. Be sure to mix any advertising message with useful content, if not you may find your followers un-following.

Carefully choose the Twitter name you're going to use. Short names are easy to remember, so find the one that suits you best. If your book-keeping business is called ABC Books and the Twitter name @ABCbooks is already taken, consider using an underscore (_) e.g. @ABC_Books.

Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on your profile page. Unless you protect your tweets they are publicly available to view, so be careful what you Tweet. You’re using Twitter to promote your book-keeping business, so it’s best to keep your tweets friendly but businesslike.  

Twitter offers various ways to Tweet, either by logging into your web-page, or by sending live tweets via your phone. You can also use third party applications like TweetDeck to update your feed.

If you’re ready to get tweeting go to: https://twitter.com/signup.

Have fun and remember to send us a message at our Twitter account. You can find us @book_keepers.