Twitter is giving businesses some tips for “devising effective Twitter content” in light of its recently announced timeline option.

Do you think the new option is of benefit to businesses? Discuss.

In case you missed it, last month, Twitter announced a new algorithmic timeline, which users can opt into. It shows users what Twitter thinks they’ll care about most at the top with the rest of the tweets appearing underneath like normal.

When the company announced the news, it said people who had early access to the feature tended to retweet and tweet more. It said the timeline is an improvement for consumers as well as for businesses and brands.

Twitter is now giving businesses 7 best practices, which boil down to:

1. Define the voice of your business.

2. Know your audience.

3. Tap into important events.

4. Draw in your audience with rich media.

5. Use hashtags to help people discover your business.

6. Respond to tweets.

7. Celebrate your advocates.

Some of these are pretty self-explanatory, while others might require a little bit of elaboration.

When it comes to defining the voice of your business, Twitter’s Kathy Foley says, “To be heard in the noisy environment of social media, it’s crucial to have a clear voice that channels your business’s personality. For example, is your business inspiring, playful, or a serious authority? Use language and tone that conveys the key attributes of your business.”

The example she uses is woot.com.

“Woot.com, which offers new retail deals every day, has a distinctive brand voice,” she adds. “The brand’s fun personality comes across strongly on Twitter, in both standalone Tweets and in product captions on Website Cards.”

When it comes to knowing your audience, the advice is to utilize Twitter’s audience insights. These are easily accessible via analytics.Twitter.com.

Tapping into events is self-explanatory, though Twitter makes it a point to note that you should link your business to those in which you can in an authentic way. As they also note, events don’t have to be major things, but can be everyday occurrences, such as meals, if applicable.

Utilizing rich media, means using GIFs, photos, videos, Vines, emojis, and anything else that will draw in eyeballs and inspire engagement. Text alone is often not enough.

When it comes to hashtags, Twitter says to use consistent brand or campaign hashtags, but you can of course also tap into trends and recurring conversations via hashtag as well.

Responding to tweets is self-explanatory, but as we’ve seen fro study after study, businesses are generally bad at this.

Twitter did recently introduce some new customer service tools that should help in that department, however. Plenty more on that here.

Finally, when Twitter says “celebrate your advocates,” it means simply “like” tweets about you and/or tweet and mention those who tweeted these tweets. Show some reciprocal appreciation. Not only will these people appreciate it, others likely will too, which could very well lead to more such tweets.

Since Twitter released the 7 tips, it also posted 7 more tips specifically for businesss using Twitter polls. These are as follows:

1. Regularly post branded polls.

2. Give people a say in decisions.

3. Tap into live events by hosting related conversations.

4. Conduct market research on your products or services.

5. Create polls on topics relevant to your brand.

6. Promote specific products.

7. Have a little fun with followers.

You can see examples and additional elaboration for all of these in Twitter’s blog post here.

Do you ever run Twitter polls with your business account(s)? Have you found them to be beneficial? Let us know in the comments.

Image via Twitter