How to Start Promoting Your Business on Twitter (A Guide for Beginners)
Do you hear that? It’s another “tweet” sounding into the universe. Not from our fine, feathered friends, but from someone sharing their thoughts, interests, or opinions on the internet in the form of a 1-280 character post. Since its founding in 2006, Twitter has become one of the most popular worldwide social media platforms.
It’s not new news that people love following Twitter trends on current celebrity scandals or opinion polls. But have you ever thought about Twitter as a business tool? With its extensive reach and reputation (especially among consumers ages 18-35), Twitter should not be overlooked. Read the following suggestions to learn how to turn tweets into tools for business growth.
Tips for Using Twitter for Business Growth
1. Understand How Twitter Works (#EspeciallyHashtags)
Before using any platform for business, it’s important to understand its setup, features, and purpose.
You can create a Twitter profile in a matter of minutes. A profile consists of a picture of yourself or perhaps your business logo, a header image, a username of up to 50 characters, and a “handle.” Although each component is important and should be in keeping with your business’s brand, the handle requires extra thought. Formatted as “your name @identifier,” the handle comes at the end of your Twitter URL and is how you will be identified and tagged on the platform. Because of this, you’ll want to make sure that your handle represents your business by making it easy to find and memorable.
For examples of great existing business handles and how to craft one of your own, visit Rebecca Carliss’s HubSpot article Twitter name ideas .
A Twitter profile also includes bio and interest sections where you have 160 characters to introduce the world to your business. You can select interest identifiers that will help like-minded users find your profile. Other users can choose to “follow” your profile, and you can do the same for theirs. You are able to direct message your followers and to view their tweets in a “timeline” on your feed.
Hashtags are another important aspect of Twitter. These little marks and the words that follow them link you to tweets beyond your existing followers. Future sections of this article explore how to utilize hashtags specifically for business marketing.
When setting up your profile and using Twitter in general, it is important to recognize that Twitter’s role in the social media universe is to host conversations. This means that Twitter’s tone is more emotion-based than that of other social media sites. While you do want to keep things professional, make sure that your tweets and profile descriptions are conversational rather than stiff.
2. Observe Your Competitors’ Marketing Strategies
Twitter is not only a great place to gain followers but is also a place where you can learn from and leverage your competitors’ marketing strategies.
By visiting other businesses’ profiles, you can observe their branding techniques and the hashtags they use. If you notice a business similar to yours receiving positive attention, you might try using the same hashtags in your own tweets. Alternatively, if you realize that too many businesses are tweeting about the same trend in the same way, you might decide to tweet about the trend with a slightly different angle to see if it will draw more traffic.
Twitter also allows you to see with whom other businesses are working by reading their tweets, conversations, and lists. You never know when you might find new profiles to follow or connect with yourself.
Even if you don’t take any immediate action based on your competition’s tweets, you can at least rest assured that you are keeping aware of trends and setting yourself up to better represent yourself on Twitter in the future.
3. Create Tweets
Speaking of tweets, make sure that you make them! And regularly. The more you tweet, the more that you will stay at the top of your followers’ feeds.
What type of tweets should you make? Business updates, witty sayings, inspirational quotes - whatever your creativity produces in keeping with your brand! Twitter also offers the option to create polls in which users can participate.
Tweets that start discussions will draw more traffic, as will tweets that include images or other forms of media. While the 280-character cap does not leave room for tweeting entire articles, you can tweet article summaries or provide links to items of value for your customers. As with any other form of promotion, make sure that you consider your audience and purpose with each tweet.
Another great tweeting method is to “retweet” which means sharing a tweet that someone else created. Not only does a “retweet” boost your presence in the feeds, but it also forms a networking tie (more on that below).
If you plan to use Twitter as a significant marketing tool, it’s necessary to tweet regularly. Various experts and organizations have differing opinions as to how much is enough without being too much; somewhere in the neighborhood of 5-40 tweets per day is appropriate. One major difference between Twitter and other social media platforms is its real-time use; this means that you should establish a presence on Twitter during important events such as the Superbowl, the Oscars, or TV show debuts. During these times, Twitter users tweet and comment on discussions in real-time, playing off of other reactions and tweets. Don’t be left out of the conversation!
Regardless of what you tweet, don’t forget to use hashtags so that you can draw in more followers! Just make sure you don’t go overboard. If you use too many hashtags, your post may look like spam (Business News Daily).
4. Network, Network, Network
While all of the tips above will expand your network, you will want to make sure that you are intentionally and strategically liking tweets, retweeting, and following trends (whatever hashtags currently have the highest number). You can also host or participate in a Twitter Chat, which is a discussion using a shared hashtag. Twitter Chats can be scheduled in advance and participating in other Twitter Chats frequently, especially ones hosted by influencers, will make your brand known to others. Connecting with others in these ways will form networking ties and will increase the likelihood that they will retweet or post positively about you.
Don’t have enough time to connect with everyone in a day? Twitter allows you to make public or private lists of users you want to remember and return to later. You can even group your lists for your business needs. Regardless of how you organize them, lists help narrow your focus and allow you greater intentionality for frequently connecting with the right people.
5. Employ Marketing Plans and Assess Your Twitter Analytics
Although it is perfectly possible to market yourself on Twitter using the steps above, Twitter also offers marketing plans for various business needs.
You can advertise your business through promoted accounts and promoted tweets. Such promotions will give your profile and tweets more exposure and will even suggest to users that they follow you. Twitter Amplify promotes of real-time content videos while Mobile App promotions will expose customers to the services you have to offer. All of these promotions will make your business more discoverable in a target-specific way based on your business demographics and location.
After your advertising strategies see action, use Twitter’s analytics pages to measure your results. These pages show what type of content gets the most engagement so that you can know what to keep tweeting. When considering analytics, look for engagement activity rather than number of followers. Popularity may help your exposure, but it takes actual engagement to make a sale.
Perhaps the best way to market on Twitter is to do a great job for your customers. Happy customers tend to share their experiences on Twitter and elsewhere. Customer referrals are the best form of marketing and one that doesn’t cost a dime.
Tips for Twitter Maintenance
Is your head spinning yet? With all of Twitter’s features and creative uses, it can be difficult to see the birds through the trees. In order to maximize its power, you will want to set up a system for maintaining your Twitter presence. The list below gives some initial suggestions on how to do this:
• Carve out a daily time in which to engage Twitter activities
• Tweet at least 3 times per day (make sure at least one of these is a retweet)
• Keep tabs on what is trending and use hashtags effectively
• Consider “pinning” your most recent tweet to ensure visibility (pinned tweets are featured at the top of your page)
• Embed tweets/Twitter link in your business email signature, blog, website, etc.
• Read Twitter articles to learn advanced tips and tricks
Handle customer complaints over DM rather than publicly to avoid scandal.
For additional support, consider using a third-party tool such as Tweetdeck or Hootsuite to help you organize your Twitter account, track hashtags, manage notifications, automatize tweets, and sync Twitter with your other social media platforms. Additional tools such as Audiense and Ritetag exist to support you in finding the right influencer or identifying what hashtags to use.
Final Thoughts
As with the entire social media world, Twitter is always changing; be sure to keep current so you can use tools most effectively. At the same time, do wait until you have the “perfect Twitter maintenance plan” to use Twitter. As long as you go further than yesterday, you’re growing. Just one, additional tweet per day could change the direction of your business.
WRITTEN BY: KATIE BARNETT
