The Social Media Marketer

4 Essential Twitter Tips For Business

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The arrival of the Twittersphere and Twitterverse was perfectly on time for businesses. It broke down the barriers of traditional advertising and allowed companies to speak directly to their customers, using informal language. Suddenly, all you have to do is send a short message and it’s out there, reaching everyone who might be interested!

It’s not quite that simple, however.  In fact, Twitter is the ultimate in “pull” advertising, in spite of the fact that at first glance it looks like a “push” mechanism. To get the most out of Twitter for business purposes, you need to follow a few golden rules.

Planning Your Strategy

Twitter success doesn’t happen by itself. Your Twitter strategy needs to be watertight, intensive, focused, otherwise you’re simply taking shots in the dark. With 100 million users out there, how do you reach the ones you want? How do you reach anyone on Twitter, for that matter? By giving them content they want to receive, that’s how. That’s where the “pull” aspect comes in – if they follow you, it’s likely they are interested in reading your content.

The first step is to identify your business goals. Is your main purpose to:

• Raise awareness of your products
• Build the reputation of your company
• Drive traffic to your website
• Develop expert status in your field
• Generate sales leads

Once you know what you want to achieve, create a strategy and a plan of action for regular tweets, on the right days, offering the right sort of content, and stick to it.

Targeting Your Audience

Next, identify your target market. You probably already know who they are in the real world, but on Twitter they may have a different face. For example, if you market a product that targets older, conservative consumers, they may not be on Twitter. To get the most out of the free advertising opportunity provided by the tweet platform, you would need to target their children instead, which would require a completely different angle and approach.

Optimizing Your Profile

Ok, so you’ve heard the words “search engine optimization” or SEO a gazillion times, and you know it means using the right keywords in your online content. But, in the Twitterverse, it’s more than that. Optimize your Twitter account by:

• Choosing a smart Twitter user name that reflects your business. Here’s a revelation: this might not be your company or product name! Think carefully about what would resonate best with your audience. For example, ACME Products sells coffee grinders. How likely are people to search for and follow ACMEProd, compared with ilovecoffee? You get the point. This is often overlooked by marketing people so intent on getting their name out there that they forget Twitter is not actually an advertising channel.
• Building your profile. It’s not just about the user name – Twitter gives you the option of customizing your profile page with images, web links, and other content, and – here’s the kicker – it doesn’t have to be static! You can change it regularly – daily, if you like. Use keywords here too, preferably industry-specific ones. As with everything else on the Internet, quality content published frequently brings you up in the search engine results pages, and attracts more followers.
• Get listed. Add your Twitter link to your email signature, submit it to blogs, directories and other websites. Wherever your company is listed, it should be accompanied by your Twitter handle. Savvy Twitter users know that clicking to follow your profile is a lot faster than visiting your company website and signing up for a newsletter subscription. So if you want to reach the Twitterverse, make it easy for them to find – and follow – you.

Measure Results

Unlike most other forms of marketing, Twitter isn’t only about the numbers. You can’t assume that because you have 20,000 followers, you’re actually reaching them all. This is the number one reason why your tweets need to contain links, apart from the fact that Twitter guru Dan Zarella believes tweets with links get retweeted more than those without.

Use website analytics to identify the traffic driven to your site by Twitter, compared with other social media platforms. Check the days on which the traffic is up, and take a look at what you tweeted that day. This will help you understand what works and what doesn’t. Check the retweets you get, and look at the profiles of those users. These tips will help you to get the most out of using Twitter to promote your business.