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The cost of medical care for pets is rising as fast as it is for humans, and that’s helping to spur sales of pet insurance.

Pet owners are able to choose from a rapidly growing array of policies, featuring everything from high-deductible designs to coverage of alternative-medicine treatments like acupuncture. Some pet policies focus on accidents and illness, while others include wellness checkups and shots. And some things that traditionally weren’t included in pet insurance, such as hereditary conditions, are now paid for under many plans.

Consumers need to be careful, since many pet policies can be as confusing as coverage you buy for yourself. Pet insurance often places strict limits on how much it will pay for particular procedures. And policies can have tricky designs that can leave consumers with big out-of-pocket bills for their animals. Premiums vary from around $10 a month to $75 a month, depending on factors including the richness of the plan, your location and your animal’s breed and age.

This year, pet owners are expected to spend around $12.2 billion for veterinary care, up from $11.1 billion last year and $8.2 billion five years ago, according to the American Pet Products Association. Complex procedures widely used for people, including chemotherapy and dialysis, are now available for pets, and the potential cost of treating certain illnesses has spiked as a result.

Donna Oliver, in Austin, Texas, has shelled out about $32,600 since 2007 to care for two dogs who passed away earlier this year. Marley, a Labrador, got stem-cell therapy for his arthritis, surgery on his windpipe to deal with a condition that was choking off his breathing, and, at the end, medication to ease the pain of advanced cancer. Maddie, a corgi mix, suffered from Cushing’s disease, a hormonal disorder, and got treatment including surgery to heal ulcers on her corneas.

“It does cost a lot if you want to do the right thing by them,” says Ms. Oliver, a 38-year-old customer-service manager, who says she is still paying off the credit-card bills. To avoid a similar situation with her three remaining dogs, Chelsea, Jasmine and Runner, she recently bought insurance for them.

One Million Insured

Currently, around a million U.S. pets are insured, according to the North American Pet Health Insurance Association. The number is growing about 10% a year, the group estimates, though that still represents just a tiny fraction of all pets.

Around 90% of the insured are dogs, with about 10% cats and a small number of other animals. The biggest U.S. pet-insurance company, Veterinary Pet Insurance, or VPI, a unit of Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co., says it has written policies for hedgehogs, snakes, turtles and geckos, among other creatures.

Karen Becker, an art-school program director in Baileys Harbor, Wis., has insured her African grey parrot, Darwin, and blue and gold macaw, Big Bird, since she got them in 2001 and 2008, respectively. Treatments for birds can be at least as pricey as those for larger animals, she says, and the parrots may live for decades. Ms. Becker, 52, says she doesn’t want financial concerns to guide decisions about her pets’ care: “I want it to be because of quality-of-life issues.”

If you’re considering pet insurance, start by shopping around. It’s best to start when the animal is still young and healthy, since new policies won’t cover pre-existing health conditions and some insurers won’t take on pets over a certain age.

The industry has grown in recent years, with new competitors such as Pets Best LLC, Petplan Inc., Embrace Pet Insurance Agency LLC and Trupanion, a unit of Vetinsurance International Inc., entering the market. In the past, a number of startup pet-insurance firms have gone out of business, so it is worth checking with your state regulator about companies’ age and record.

Workplace Benefit

Consumers may also be able to buy pet insurance through their workplace, which can often be cheaper than buying on your own. Around 19% of employers offer the policies as a voluntary benefit, according to a survey conducted this year by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans. That includes firms such as Colgate-Palmolive Co. and Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc.

To learn about policies, you can start with overview Web sites such as petinsurancereview.com, dogtime.com and petinsuranceguideus.com. For definitive information, though, you should click through to the sites of the individual pet insurance firms, which can offer premium quotes.

Once you’ve narrowed down the list, get full policy documents, which are often posted online or available through a phoned request. Use those, in combination with phone calls or emailed inquiries to the companies, to delve into the details of the plans.

You will want to check how the company will raise premiums as you renew the policy. Often, they go up with age and veterinary inflation. They may also be linked to your animal’s claims history—so a pet with a lot of health issues in a given year could see a heftier increase the following year.

You also want to take a close look at what you would have to spend out of your own pocket if your pet got injured or ill. Pet-insurance firms tend to limit what they reimburse for various treatments. And you’ll generally have to pay the bills up front, then seek reimbursement from the insurer.

Crystal’s Surgery

When Elizabeth Pannill’s Labrador, Crystal, needed back surgery a few years ago, the insurance covered less than half of the nearly $4,000 total bill. Then, when Crystal got a tumor removed from her rib earlier this year, spending 10 days in an animal-hospital intensive-care unit, the plan paid about $1,700 of the nearly $5,500 total, which already included a professional discount for Dr. Pannill, a veterinarian who isn’t currently in clinical practice.

Dr. Pannill says that despite the limited payouts, she also has purchased insurance for two other dogs and a pair of cats. “It just gives you a little peace of mind that you would have some financial help when an illness came along,” says the 56-year-old, who lives in Staples, Texas.

VPI pays flat amounts for various treatments. Other pet insurers pay a percentage of vet bills, although some limit payouts to a percentage of what they consider “usual and customary” fees, which may be lower than what vets actually charge.

As with insurance for people, consumers need to look closely at how the out-of-pocket charges on pet insurance are structured. Pet plans offer a range of deductibles, some as high as $1,000 a year. These may be levied on an annual basis, or charged anew for each illness or incident.

Congenital conditions, behavior modification and pregnancy-related costs are often not included, in addition to pre-existing health issues. VPI is beginning to introduce a cat-focused plan that offers limited payouts for certain common feline issues, like chronic kidney failure.

At least two companies, Embrace and Petplan, offer coverage of alternative treatments such as acupuncture and chiropractic.

Many policies now include coverage for hereditary conditions. It’s often worth paying for this, particularly for pure-bred dogs. Each insurer has its own lists of genetic illnesses, and they vary somewhat, says John Albers, executive director of the American Animal Hospital Association.

Write to Anna Wilde Mathews at anna.mathews@wsj.com

Fund Scope | Scoreboard

It took Rodney Dangerfield more than 50 years to proclaim, “I don’t get no respect.” It’s taken exchange-traded fund executives less than 20.

With 19 years and $1.2 trillion in assets behind them, some ETF leaders have struck out from the fund industry establishment to form their own trade association, as distinct from the Investment Company Institute, or ICI, which has been lobbying on behalf of the broader fund industry for nearly 72 years.

Called the National ETF Association, or NETFA, the new group was created by a trio of executives from United States Commodity Funds, IndexIQ and ALPS. It will write position papers, testify before Congress and lobby regulators; it will also maintain industry statistics and talk to the press. In other words, it will do what the ICI does, with one critical difference, the founders say: While the ICI has a four-year-old committee to address the specific needs of ETFs, at NETFA, those are the only needs that matter.

“Those of us who are ETF issuers right now don’t want to wait 10 years to become equally important,” says John Hyland, NETFA co-founder and chief investment officer of United States Commodity Funds, which sponsors 11 ETFs, including the $1.2 billion U.S. Oil Fund (ticker: USO). “We want our voice heard now.”

It raises the question: What is there to say? The new organization hasn’t hammered that out yet. It will host its first membership call later this month, then begin to establish an agenda. The firms that will participate are also still to be determined; the biggest ETF firms, Blackrock, Vanguard and State Street, have said they will stick with the ICI.

“The F in ETF stands for ‘fund,’ ” says Joel Dickson, senior ETF strategist for Vanguard. “To separate ETFs from other fund-industry issues, to us, runs a huge risk of negating many of the protections and disclosures that have been in place for 70 years.”

ABOUT 90% OF ETF ASSETS are structured as traditional mutual funds or as unit investment trusts, which are both subject to the same set of regulations. For the other 10% of assets, though, the picture is murkier. The $67 billion SPDR Gold Trust (GLD), for example, is not technically a fund. It is what’s called a grantor trust, a structure common among what are usually called commodity ETFs, but one which is regulated differently and creates slightly different tax consequences for investors. Also in the non-fund category: ETNs, ETCs (or CETFs), ETVs and MLPs.

And while the regulatory patchwork has yet to be a big deal, stalwarts and upstarts alike agree that it can be confusing for investors and the regulators who protect them. A common definition—and possibly, a common regulatory structure—is on NETFA’s wish list, if only to make clear what risks may come from an investment’s structure, as distinct from its underlying assets.

“The real focus should be, ‘how does that particular one work, and does it matter to me,’ ” says NETFA’s Hyland.

Agreed, says Jim Ross, head of the ETF business at State Street Global Advisors: “They all have different risk factors, and that’s what an investor needs to understand.” Still, State Street won’t be joining NETFA. Ross will stay in his seat as chair of the ETF committee for the ICI.

JANET PASKIN is the Digital Editor, Markets, for The Wall Street Journal.

E-mail:
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By SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN

When it comes to social media, franchisers are making sure their franchisees speak with one voice.

Lots of businesses are putting together social strategies. But franchisers face unique problems, since they’re made up of multiple units. Without an overall company policy, franchisees may adopt different online approaches, potentially causing confusion for consumers.

So, franchisers are implementing systemwide strategies and policies on what to post and how to react to company-related chatter. In some cases, they monitor social-media traffic and jump in to resolve disputes or answer complaints about outlets.

Policing social messages is critical for protecting a brand, say franchisers and industry experts, especially now that more customers use networks to contact, and grumble about, companies. “This is a serious marketing channel,” says Lorne Fisher, chief executive of Fish Consulting LLC, a Hollywood, Fla., marketing firm for franchisers that advises clients on social media. “Once you put something out there, it can never come back.”

Letting individual owners send their own messages also raises legal concerns. Mark A. Kirsch, a franchise attorney and partner with Plave Koch PLC in Reston, Va., says franchisers are required under trademark law to ensure that their brands aren’t publicly misrepresented.

These concerns are coming to the fore as franchisers become bigger users of social networks. According to a survey from the International Franchise Association, 27% of 549 franchisers polled said they use Facebook multiple times a day, followed by 22% who use it daily and 20% who use it weekly. The group doesn’t have hard numbers on how many franchisers have set up policies, but many chains say that they’ve taken the step.

For instance, Naked Pizza, which has more than 20 franchises across the world, gives area developers and owners social-media instructions during their training, and watches their online efforts. The company can monitor activity, measure analytics and make recommendations, says Robbie Vitrano, co-founder of the New Orleans-based chain. The company issues weekly “audits” to its stores, focusing on how much they post and how well they convey the company’s style, and sends out suggested best practices.

Wild Birds Unlimited Inc., a retail franchiser of bird accessories, started rolling out a systemwide social-media initiative about a year ago, says Jim Carpenter, founder and CEO.

It began with a Facebook page representing the company as a whole, managed at company headquarters in Carmel, Ind. Since several franchisees had social-media profiles of their own, Mr. Carpenter took steps to give the company a uniform online voice. For one thing, he purchased software that lets corporate staffers suggest content for franchisees to add to their social-media pages. Wild Birds also set boundaries for franchisee posts on Facebook. For example, headquarters recommends sharing information about birds, such as how to turn a backyard into a bird-feeding habitat. Sharing what a store’s employees ate for lunch isn’t allowed.

“If you have no policy, [franchisees] will do whatever they think they should do,” says Mr. Carpenter. “It may be wonderful, but it may be not.”

Some franchisers don’t just police what their owners write on social networks—they closely watch what customers say, too. The rubbish-removal chain College Hunks Hauling Junk, for instance, has a corporate employee who keeps tabs on what people post about the franchise.

Last year, a customer complained on Twitter that a price he was quoted over the phone didn’t match what he was charged in person. The monitoring employee saw the message and reached out to the customer and franchisee. The company determined within a few minutes that the issue was a simple misunderstanding.

“The customer later tweeted again that the problem was resolved,” says Nick Friedman, co-founder of the Washington, D.C., chain.

Ms. Needleman, small-business assistant editor in The Wall Street Journal’s New York bureau, can be reached at sarah.needleman@wsj.com. Emily Glazer, a staff reporter in The Wall Street Journal’s New York bureau, contributed to this article.

The tax filing deadline, April 17, is coming up soon—and experts say this year’s returns are littered with potential land mines.

Among them: a new form for reporting foreign financial assets (with large penalties for not filing) and a new form for small businesses reported on individual returns that will make it easier for the Internal Revenue Service to find unreported income.

But the biggest new hurdle involves capital gains on investments. Tax preparers say they are finding serious snafus involving “cost basis,” or the amount an investor paid for a stock he later sold.

This is the first year brokers have been required to provide this information to the IRS. In the past, the agency often took investors’ word for it.

Congress changed the rules in 2008 after studies showed that many taxpayers were misstating their investments’ cost basis. That number is the starting point for measuring a taxable capital gain after an investment is sold; if it is too high, taxes will be too low.

Now brokers must track and report cost basis both to the IRS and to clients. The law took effect in 2011 for stocks bought and sold last year, and the coverage will expand to mutual funds and beyond in the future.

Tax preparers say this year’s snafus involve data reported to the IRS that are sometimes incorrect and often don’t match investors’ own records. They fear that mismatches could trigger unnecessary IRS scrutiny.

The problems arise in several ways. For certain transactions, reporting requirements for brokers are less stringent than those for filers. What’s more, the IRS hasn’t stipulated how data must be presented, and firms do it differently.

And some brokers are reporting more information than is necessary. While not all of it is sent to the IRS, all of it might download into a tax-prep program. Or none of it might download, requiring laborious calculations by hand.

“There’s no consistency in how brokers are reporting information, so it’s taking a lot of extra time to do returns,” says Daniel Moore, a CPA at D.T. Moore & Co. in Salem, Ohio.

It is up to taxpayers to explain any discrepancies between a broker’s report and their tax returns. The bigger the discrepancy, the more scrutiny is likely.

The upshot: If you still are racing to file your tax return before April 17, slow down and take a long look at your 1099-B, the form that reports cost basis. If it doesn’t match your records or the broker’s trade confirmations, you might want to get an automatic six-month filing extension so that you can iron out the discrepancies. (The extra time is available simply by filing IRS Form 4868.)

Darren Neuschwander, a CPA and co-head of Green NFH in Robertsdale, Ala., says he is reluctant to sign returns given the current confusion. Mr. Neuschwander estimates that 80% to 85% of his more than 1,000 stock-trading clients have incorrect or inconsistent 1099-B forms. He expects to file extensions for most of them to work out glitches.

Robert Green, also a co-head of Green NFH, says the problem isn’t limited to people who make hundreds of trades in a year. “We had a client who only made seven stock trades last year, but on the 1099-B six out of seven didn’t match the broker’s trade confirmations,” he says. Both accountants say they have seen issues with every brokerage firm their clients use.

A spokesman for Fidelity Investments says the firm has identified some technical issues, but that less than 2% of the firm’s brokerage clients “have experienced an incorrect cost basis report for a limited period of time.” He adds that customers “can expect to receive accurate information in time for tax filing purposes.”

A spokesman for Charles Schwab

says the firm “hasn’t seen widespread issues” concerning the 3.2 million 1099-Bs it has sent out this year.

For taxpayers with questions, the broker usually gives a number to call on the 1099-B it sends to customers. One good question to ask your broker: Will there be any further corrections to this form? Waiting until information is complete could prevent your having to file an amended return.

There is a larger lesson here: With the IRS, an ounce of prevention is often worth a pound of cure, so smart taxpayers carefully check all the “third-party reports” providing information about them. Correcting mismatches, even if it means getting an extension, can keep you under the radar.

Forms to Double-Check

In addition to the 1099-B and W-2 wage statements, these are the most common third-party reports providing information about you to the IRS.

1099-C. This form covers canceled debt, such as from a home mortgage modification or bankruptcy. Forgiven debt is often taxable, but special relief may be available to home owners and taxpayers who are insolvent. See Publication 4681 at www.irs.gov.

1099-Div. Pay close attention to dividend payments. “Qualified” payouts—usually on shares held longer than two months—have a top tax rate of 15%, while the top rate jumps to 35% for nonqualified dividends.

What many taxpayers don’t know is that if a broker lends their stock and pays a dividend equivalent instead of the actual dividend, it isn’t qualified and so is taxed at the higher rates.

1099-G. This form covers state-tax refunds and other government payments. Refunds are usually taxable, unless you didn’t itemize or owed alternative minimum tax for the year.

1099-Int. This covers interest you earned. Even if you don’t receive a form, you may still owe tax. Examples: accounts earning less than $10 annually; interest from private loans to a relative.

1099-K. For individual returns reporting a Schedule C business—such small shop or restaurant—this new form shows payments received from third parties—credit- or debit-card firms, PayPal and the like.

While the IRS won’t make the business owner distinguish these payments from ones made in cash on the tax return, the agency now has the right to use this information when it is looking for unreported income—so taxpayers cutting corners should take note.

1099-Misc. This covers miscellaneous income, as opposed to wages earned by an employee. Check whether the income is subject to self-employment tax: An executor’s fee often wouldn’t be, while a payment for consulting work would be. For more information, see the instructions to Schedule SE at www.irs.gov.

1099-Q. Education account distributions, such as from 529 plans, are reported here. Try to make withdrawals in the same tax year as the expense is paid to avoid IRS questions.

1099-R. This form covers pension or IRA distributions. Check whether federal income tax has been withheld already in order to avoid a tax overpayment.

1098. This form is for mortgage interest you paid. The lender has to report only interest payments over $600, but you can still take a deduction for lesser amounts. Remember also that origination fees, or “points,” are deductible only on a first mortgage on a principal residence; with refinancings the deductions are spread over the loan’s life.

1098-E. This form is for student-loan interest paid. Most joint filers with adjusted gross incomes less than $150,000 (or $75,000 for single) can deduct up to $2,500.

Tax-Wise Moves You Can Still Make in 2011

Make contributions to a regular or Roth IRA by April 17. The upper limit to put in is $5,000 ($6,000 if you are 50 or older), and you must have earned income at least equal to the contribution.

Regular IRA contributions are usually tax-deductible, but withdrawals are taxable. Roth account contributions aren’t deductible, while withdrawals are usually tax-free. Income and other limits apply for both.

Taxpayers stymied by the limits can do a “backdoor” Roth IRA: put up to $5,000 ($6,000, 50 or older) in a “nondeductible” regular IRA, and then convert it to a Roth account soon after. Income taxes are due on the conversion, but they will be minimal because the account won’t have earned much.

Contribute to SEP IRA and other pension plans. Unlike with regular IRAs, deductible contributions to SEP IRAs and other pension plans may be made until Oct. 15 for taxpayers with filing extensions.

Contribute to health savings accounts. You may deduct up to $6,150 per family ($3,050 single) for a health savings account if you had an approved “high-deductible” health plan linked to the health-savings account. The contributions may be made until April 17.

Oft-Overlooked Tax Benefits

Charitable gifts, part one. Employees who donate to charities via payroll deduction often forget to include the donations on their personal tax returns. The number isn’t on the W-2 form, notes Melissa Labant of the American Institute of CPAs, and often there is no letter from the charity.

Charitable gifts, part two. Donors may not deduct their labor or time, but they may deduct mileage or uniforms. For 2011 the allowance is 14 cents a mile. Board members or certain others may also deduct unreimbursed expenses for attending a conference. See IRS Publication 526.

Medical expenses. The hurdle here is high—7.5% of adjusted gross income (10% if the taxpayer owes alternative minimum tax). But the array of qualified expenses is far broader than what insurance typically reimburses, extending to breast reconstruction after cancer surgery, tuition for student with severe learning disabilities and acupuncture, among other expenses. For a list, see IRS Publication 502.

If one partner of a couple filing jointly has high bills, it may make sense for the couple to pick the “married, filing separately” status. It’s one of the few times going this route can lower the total tax bill.

Sales-tax deduction in lieu of income-tax deduction. Taxpayers in states without an income tax, such as Texas, Nevada, Wyoming and Washington, routinely take this deduction. It also may make sense for taxpayers with a low state income-tax bill but an outsize purchase or two—such as a car, boat or engagement ring—that incurs high sales taxes.

New Forms This Year—and Why They Matter

Form 8938. This is for U.S. taxpayers with foreign financial accounts above a certain threshold, which can be as low as $50,000.

Covered assets include bank and brokerage accounts; foreign retirement accounts; direct and indirect ownership of partnership interests, such as offshore hedge and private-equity funds; and offshore pensions and annuities.

The penalties for not filing are harsh: up to $10,000 for each 30 days.

Note also that this form, which is due with the tax return, often must be filed in addition to the Foreign Bank Account Report, which is due to the U.S. Treasury Department by June 30.

Form 8949. Investors must fill out this form with information from 1099-B forms provided by brokers (described earlier), in order to complete Schedule D, Capital Gains and Losses. Often multiple versions will be required, depending on whether the broker reported the taxpayer’s cost basis to the IRS or not.

Errors to Look Out for This Year

Forgetting Roth IRA conversion income from 2010. Taxpayers who converted regular IRAs to Roth accounts in 2010 got a one-time boon: Pay tax on half the income in 2011 and half in 2012.

That first installment is due this year, but taxpayers are on their own because there is no official reminder.

Forgetting to repay a first-time-homebuyer tax credit. Congress passed different versions of this benefit during the financial crisis. The 2008 version is a loan that must be repaid over time. It and other versions may have to be repaid if the taxpayer moves.

—Email: taxreport@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared March 31, 2012, on page B7 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Last-Minute Tax Tips.

By SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN

Twitter has turned out to be a useful tool for some small businesses coping with customer-service or public-relations crises.

The social-media service — where users send short “tweets” to followers who have signed up to receive the messages — came in handy for Innovative Beverage Group Holdings Inc., whose drankbeverage.com site crashed last month after a surge in traffic following a segment on Fox News for the company’s so-called relaxation beverage, which contains “calming” ingredients like valerian root and melatonin. News Corp.

owns Fox News as well as The Wall Street Journal.

Innovative Beverage notified consumers on its Twitter feed that it was working to resolve the problem. The company also did a search on Twitter for mentions of the site crash, so it could respond with tweets describing its repair efforts.

Peter Bianchi, Innovative’s chief executive, says the site’s meltdown was devastating, since a small business rarely receives national TV coverage. But he says the 12-hour site crash didn’t appear to have any lasting damage and online sales of the beverage peaked the following day to their highest level to date.

“Twitter gave us an up-to-the-minute ability to take what would normally be a crisis situation and make it just another event,” says Mr. Bianchi. “You can’t do that with a 1-800-number.”

As of Monday, drankbeverage.com had more than 1,000 Twitter followers.

Twitter also helped wine critic Gary Vaynerchuk respond quickly after his company’s Web site, Corkd.com, was hacked so that visitors were greeted with pornography.

While technicians plugged away at the problem, which took about eight hours to resolve, Mr. Vaynerchuk says he shot a video of himself apologizing to customers of the wine-review site. He then posted it on a video-hosting site and linked to the footage from Twitter, where he has nearly 900,000 followers.

Mr. Vaynerchuk, who owns New-York based Cork’d LLC, also tweeted apologies to about 65 people who tweeted about the incident. “Every person that mentioned Cork’d on Twitter got a message from me and a link to the video,” he says.

Mr. Vaynerchuk says his Web site saw no drop in traffic during the days that followed. He also received about 75 emails from customers complimenting him on how he handled the matter.

To be sure, Twitter can also be the root of a problem for entrepreneurs. Virginia Lawrence, a director at Ballantines PR, a boutique agency in Los Angeles, monitors Twitter daily on behalf of several small businesses for tweets that could harm their reputations.

Recently, she says she found several criticizing a client that were from a former employee the firm had fired. The dismissed worker “was saying negative things about how the company was run, as if they were doing illegal things,” she says. Ms. Lawrence notified the client, who then approached the terminated employee about the matter, and soon after the scurrilous tweets stopped.

Twitter can also be an effective way to get a message across to consumers in an emergency. When an ice storm struck the Bartlesville, Okla., area last winter, United Linen & Uniform Services notified customers about the status of their orders through Twitter in addition to its Web site. Scott Townsend, marketing director for the laundry service, says many consumers today will find information about a business on Twitter before anywhere else because it’s where they hang out online. “You fish where the fish are,” he says.

Mr. Townsend adds that while email was also an option, entering customers’ addresses would have been tedious and time-consuming.

Entrepreneurs should bear in mind that Twitter is unlikely to be of help in dealing with a problem if it isn’t used regularly otherwise, says Shel Israel, author of “Twitterville: How Businesses Can Thrive in the New Global Neighborhoods.”

“If you just go to Twitter when you have a crisis, you will have no followers and no credibility,” he says. “The key to using Twitter effectively is to build trust with people who are relevant to your business.”

Steve Fusek, owner of Fusek’s True Value LLC, a hardware store in Indianapolis, now has an employee dedicated to updating the shop’s Twitter profile during business hours. Mr. Fusek says consumers expect to see frequent tweets and swift responses to customer-service inquiries they post.

“You can’t just sign up and leave it. You have to have someone on it,” he says. “If you’re not legitimate, you’ll be found out quickly.”

Write to Sarah E. Needleman at sarah.needleman@wsj.com

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page B5