Behind Facebook and Google+, Twitter is the third largest social media platform, and the second fastest growing behind Pinterest according to GlobalWebIndex.

Twitter is a great social tool for any business, but since Twitter launched its “mute” button many businesses might be in trouble. This mute button allows users to still follow someone without seeing their tweets. For businesses, this means there must be no bad tweeting or the business risks being “muted.” A business must sell its products and keep its tweets informative, but simultaneously keep its followers entertained.

So how do you keep from being muted and not fall into the “boring spam” tweet category?

#1.) Know Why You’re on Twitter. You’re a business and you’re here to promote your business, but your tweets need to be more than self promotion. Your followers will get annoyed if you only tweet about how awesome your toilet paper is, so get creative with your tweets.

#2.) Share Compelling Content. This kind of goes with #1 as well, but make sure you tweet things that will keep your followers interested. Charmin does a great job of keeping things interesting with their #tweetfromtheseat.

And if you feel like you can’t say much in a 140 character tweet, you’re wrong! You could for example say whether or not you liked an article, then post the link to that article with a cool hashtag to boot. Tweets like this keep users entertained and keep them from getting bored with what some call “self promotion spam.”

#3.) Own Your Twitter. If you want to be successful on Twitter, you have to use it wisely. If you’re a blogger or business owner, Twitter can be a very useful tool for seeing what other people are saying about a topic you’re researching.

If you’re trying to drive traffic to your site, Twitter can also help you build name recognition. If you reply to someone’s tweet with an interesting comment or suggestion, you expose yourself to that person and other’s reading that tweet. People will see your name and icon and you could possibly gain more followers just because you replied to a tweet.

#4.) Keep Your Privacy. Just as you can gain more followers by replying to tweets, you can also get followers perhaps you didn’t want to get. Always be careful with what type of information you’re sharing and be aware of the people who can see your page. If you don’t have any privacy settings activated on your account, then just know that anyone can see what you post. It would probably be best not to put a headshot as your profile picture with your first and last name, plus your city and pictures of your kids on your profile. Make sure what you post is okay for everyone’s eyes.