While Twitter might not have as many users compared to Facebook, it still stands as an ideal platform that could help grow your business. Twitter stands out from all other social media pages due to its anatomy. There is a different way in which socialites interact on Twitter compared to other social media networks. Therefore, the first step to understanding how to use this platform to grow your business is to know how to use it.
A unique aspect of Twitter allows a user to use about 280 characters to send their messages. Therefore, one is limited to the number of words that their message can contain. Other important attributes of Twitter that you should be aware of are described in the following lines.
Hashtag
If you are on social media, you should know what this means. It refers to those words that are drafted to begin with a “#” sign. The main reason why hashtags are used is to classify conversations around a topic. Therefore, clicking on a hashtag will take a user to a specific page where a certain topic is discussed.
Mention
Mentions help in creating specific attention to an individual or group. By using the “@username” your message will raise the attention of the person that you are addressing. You can add several people as your mentions. Your message will reach them on their walls.
Reply
Simply stated, this is a common function that you use to respond to a tweet. Your response will be made public, and other people can see what you commented.
Retweet
A retweet is a way of showing that you like a comment on Twitter. Therefore, if a message strikes your attention, all you must do is retweet. For businesses, strive to have their promotional messages retweeted. This is an indication that they are posting relevant content that is worth sharing.
After understanding the basics when it comes to communicating on Twitter, next, you should learn how you can utilize Twitter to grow your business. Just like other social platforms, there are various ways of using Twitter to your advantage.
Build Relationships with Potential Customers
An essential strategy that you need to focus on in your social media marketing campaign is building a lasting relationship with your prospects. Twitter is a good place to do this. There is a tool that can make the entire process easy for you—the Advanced Search feature.
With the help of this feature, you can search for your business prospects by using keywords. Searching with the help of this tool gives you a list of individuals or businesses that are related to the keywords you utilized.
Showcase Your Product/Service
Twitter could also be used to demonstrate your product in action. With a single animated image, you can inform your target audience about how your product is used.
Take Orders
Some businesses use Twitter to help their customers take their orders conveniently. For instance, if you are running a fast food restaurant, your customers could preorder their food without having to visit your store physically.
Keep in mind that quality service provisions will determine the number of followers that will come your way. So, don’t compromise on quality if at all you want a huge following.
Customer Service
Thousands of businesses are also using Twitter to offer customer service to current and prospective customers. In this case, if customers are experiencing certain challenges in using your product, solving this through Twitter is a recommended strategy. Addressing customer complaints through Twitter not only provides them with convenience, but it also guarantees that they save time. With a few tweets here and there, they could easily solve the problems they are experiencing.
Boost Engagement
One of the main goals that your business will strive to achieve on Twitter is to get many followers. Well, this might not directly imply that your business is performing well, but it will prove to you that your brand is well known. Check our Twitter Followers service.
Consequently, Twitter gives you the benefit of interacting with your audience and keeping them engaged in the promotional message that you send them.
Generate Publicity
Depending on the promotional campaigns that you will be running on Twitter, your brand will gain recognition. People will be curious about your brand if they notice that it has many followers. Why are they following you? This is the question in the minds of your prospective clients. Your competitors will also want to know why your brand is popular on Twitter. But this will only happen if your ads are creative to attract a large following.
Generate User Content
Brand recognition will greatly be improved through your tweets. Twitter allows a user to post photos, videos, and texts about their products/services. With the right hashtag, you can get your audience talking about the product or service that you offer them. It is imperative that you focus on creating appealing content that will pull your target market to retweet and share.
Increase Brand Awareness
Your business will grow if you attract a large following to your Twitter business page. By frequently engaging with your clients, you get to understand them better.
This, in turn, transforms into better service provision. Therefore, as people grow to love your brand, the message will spread like wildfire. As such, many people will know about the existence of your brand, and the specific products and services that you deal with.
Essential Twitter Marketing Tips for Your Business
As much as marketing on Twitter might sound like an easy bone to crack, the truth is it isn’t. Simply learning the basics on how to promote your brand on Twitter will not get you to the top, nor will it get you the attention that you crave for from your customers. You need to learn more about what other businesses are doing to maintain their competitive nature in their industry of operation. Indeed, businesses that make the best out of Twitter have a large following. These companies are using Twitter to sell products and services to their clients. They are using the platform to respond to customer queries. This is perhaps their ideal platform that increases its brand awareness in the market.
But what is the secret here?
What are they doing differently?
This section will draft out essential Twitter marketing strategies that will ensure your business blossoms.
Make Use of Twitter Tools
To ensure that you effectively manage your Twitter marketing campaign, you will need to exploit the wide array of Twitter tools that are at your disposal. Some of the tools that you will be using include SocialRank, TweetReach, Hootsuite Analytics, etc. These tools are meant to make your marketing experience easy. For example, some of the things that you will be doing with ease include:
• Generating leads
• Finding trending subjects
• Managing your followers
• Identifying industry influencers
• Editing and adding images
Twitter tools are handy for your marketing campaign. Thus, you ought to find a way of understanding the importance of each tool that you can use.
Creating an Outstanding Twitter Profile
Part of having a good Twitter marketing strategy requires that you create an excellent Twitter profile. Unquestionably, this is your first impression. How best will you present yourself to your target market? It is vital that you create a profile that sells your brand right from the first glimpse. Your profile should entail a great bio about your business.
Twitter will allow you to use a few characters to define who you are; so, it is crucial that you maximize on selling your brand with the fewest characters possible. Every word that you use here counts.
Besides creating a great profile, you need to optimize it. Your profile should not just share the name of your business. Instead, it should reflect on your entire brand. Important considerations to be talked about include your physical location and a short description of your business.
A Twitter profile that is verified will perform well compared to one that is not verified. Verification gives customers a reason to trust your brand. This is a blue checkmark that you get after getting the appropriate verification.
Listen to Your Audience
The aspect of listening is something that you will come across in every social media marketing strategy. Customers use social media to catch up with their friends and relatives. They also use this opportunity to express their concerns about the products and services that they are relying on. All this has been made possible as businesses have turned to the internet to reach their prospective customers. As such, it is essential that you listen to what they are saying. What are they saying about your brand? Are they talking positively or negatively about your service provision? Are they out in search for a more reliable brand?
Social listening is a vital part of any successful social media marketing campaign. If you don’t listen to your audience, you will not know how to serve them. Apart from listening to what your customers are saying; you should also listen to your competitors. What are they doing on social media? Which hashtags are they using on Twitter? Which promotional messages are they using often? Knowing your competitor moves helps you to differentiate yourself from their marketing strategies. Most importantly, it gives you an idea of how you could easily gain a competitive advantage by simply focusing on their weaknesses.
Create Highly Engaging Content
Any marketing expert will tell you that content is what will determine the success of your social media marketing promotion. Yes, you might be limited to just 280 characters on Twitter. But this does not mean that you should waste the words you use to develop your message. It should motivate you to create highly engaging content with just a few words. The tweets that you post should resonate with your target market. Some pointers that will help you in creating great content are debated here.
Help Your Target Audience
People have all sorts of needs to be fulfilled. Consequently, you should take this to your advantage and post content that aims to solve the need they are facing. If your customers are searching for a brand that will impress them, sell your brand with the right message.
Keep It Short and Simple
Posting on Twitter doesn’t mean that you should use all 280 characters given to you. Make your tweets short and simple. This will strike attention fast compared to a long tweet. Bear in mind that the audience you are reaching out to have hundreds of tweets that they need to catch up on. Therefore, get your message out with the first sentence that you use.
Make Good Use of Hashtags
The advantage of using hashtags is that it categorizes your content to make it easily accessible. This implies that it could reach out to your followers, as well as potential clients. Your audience will find it easy to reach you if you use the right hashtags. It is vital that you create short and simple hashtags that will not be confusing to your audience.
Use Multimedia Content
Videos are often preferred by social media users as they deliver information in a summarized manner. Users do not need to go through text to understand the message that you have for them. By posting an entertaining video, you will easily promote your brand. With the increased popularity of videos on social media, you should exploit this and meet your followers’ expectations.
Besides posting videos to your Twitter business page, images are also a great way of communicating to your target market. Images might be less engaging as compared to videos. However, they are an effective marketing option that will also impress your audience.
GIFs are part of the multimedia content that you are strongly encouraged to use when marketing your brand. The benefit of using GIFs is that it adds some fun to your content. This means that besides posting informative content, GIFs will help you send entertaining information. If at all you do not know how to create engaging GIFs, there are numerous guides that you can find over the internet. They should help you in designing GIFs that are relevant to your marketing campaign.
Well-Timed Posting
Just like Facebook, posting on Twitter also requires that you post at the right time. With Twitter, however, your posts will not last long. The average time that a tweet lasts is only around 25 minutes. For that reason, you should post at the right time to capture the attention of your audience. To guarantee that you post timely, here are a few handy tips to help you.
Tweet Regularly
The sheer fact that tweets do not last long implies that you should post more often. Besides posting consistently, you should try to maintain an active status throughout the day. This applies mostly to situations where you are attending to customer queries.
Schedule Tweets
After posting for some time, you will notice that there is a specific trend in which your audience is responding to your tweets. With this information, you can schedule tweets. You don’t have to sweat over; you could make use of Hootsuite tool. This tool will aid in scheduling your tweets in bulk, depending on how engaging your page is. Moreover, the tool can also schedule to post tweets at specific times. So, first, you need to research and understand how your audience responds.
Follow What Others are Doing
Research shows that the best time to post on Twitter would be in the afternoon. Try to schedule your posts either at noon, 5 p.m., or 6 p.m. However, this timing could change depending on the customers that you serve. As such, make sure that you adjust as per your client’s timing.
Improve Your Engagement
When posting on Twitter, it is important to find ways of enhancing your engagement capacity constantly. Engagement will make a huge difference in your Twitter business page. Without engagement, you will only have thousands of followers that will not help your business grow. So, it is essential that you engage with them more often. To improve your engagement levels, here are a few tactics you should embrace.
Follow Your Followers
As you seek to attract followers, ensure that you take time to follow some of your followers. By following them, you will open yourself to learn more about their tastes and preferences.
Prompt Responses
If customers notice that you take hours to respond to them, rest assured that they might be turning to rival brands that promise them a quick response rate. As such, aim to respond to your audience within a minute. This should not be difficult for you if you have a dedicated team that attends to your tweets.
Like and Retweet
Without a shred of doubt, there is a good feeling that comes when several people like what you post. Return a similar favor to those that like and retweet your posts. Give them a reason to smile and engage more with your brand.
Ask for Help
Successful businesses that have marketed their products on social media will attest to the fact that at times they call for help from their followers. Yes, asking for help from your followers is not a bad thing. Ask them to help you build your brand by requesting their likes and shares. The more they like and share, the better your brand visibility will be. So, it won’t hurt you to humble yourself and ask for assistance.
Monitor Your Brand
Monitoring your brand on Twitter demands that you take time to gauge how your brand is fairing. What are your followers saying about your brand? Are there any mentions about the product/service you offer? To effectively monitor your brand, here a few tips to mull over.
Start with Your Competitors
Your competitors will be a good source of information about the product or services that you offer. Yes, they might not mention your brand name directly, but it would be easy to determine whether they are talking about you. Also, you should listen to what your target market has to say about your competitors.
Monitor Your Keywords
The keywords that you use to create your hashtags should be carefully monitored. Take time to find out whether people are confusing your brand with a rival brand.
Listen More
Successful monitoring also demands that you listen more effectively to what’s going on around your brand. Anything that touches on your brand or industry should be carefully monitored.