Well I had a really great response to my blog about Facebook so I thought I would carry on the theme and write something similar about Twitter. If you enjoy this post then please share it and subscribe to my blog!

Twitter

Twitter is most famous for its short message limit of 140 characters and the fact that you can directly tweet your favorite celebrity. However, don’t be fooled! As a marketing tool it can also be extremely effective for certain types of businesses.

Unlike Facebook every tweet you post shows up on every feed of your followers. This has positives and negatives as it means you are competing with lots of other tweets to get noticed but it also means you are not being filtered out as you are on Facebook.

Twitter is great for networking if you work with other businesses or events as you can tweet them directly when you are working together. It is also a great way to see what people are talking about and getting involved in and the topics that are trending.

Twitter Profile

When creating your twitter profile, it is important that you use the keywords that you want to be “found” for in your title description. The way Twitter works is that people can search keywords and they will be shown people, photos, broadcasts and posts related to that word. So, if you wish to be known for marketing then you need to make sure you have marketing in your title description.

Ensure you complete your profile fully adding any social links and websites as well as your location. This will give people a better idea of who you are and give them more ways to connect with you.

Follow People 

Twitter operates on a very much ‘you follow me and I follow you back’ system. So the more people you follow the more followers you will have. You should find people who are linked with your industry, eg potential clients and customers as well as competitors and influencers, business partners and suppliers and businesses run by people you know. You can do this by searching for individual business names or by using hashtags or keywords. When you enter a keyword or hashtag into the search bar at the top, Twitter will display the top people linked to that keyword or hashtag. To follow very specific audiences or people you can use  Twitter advanced search.

Be careful when following people that you don’t follow too many people at once because, as with Facebook, you can only follow a limited number of people at any one time before they warn you and finally block you from following people.

Use hashtags 

Hashtags are absolutely key to doing well on Twitter. As with your profile people can search for things using hashtags and this will pull up all the most recent posts linked with that hashtag. You need to be creating posts and using hashtags within your posts. You don’t have to save all the hashtags until the end either, you can put them in the middle. This saves words as you can use a hashtag as part of a sentence. If you have linked your website to your Twitter account then the hashtags will also act as SEO boosters for your website, linking your website to those key words. 

Talk & Retweet

Twitter is all about sharing your thoughts instantly. Things don’t have to be quite as well thought out as on other social media where your posts last a lot longer. However, do be careful to keep things professional. There have been many cases of people getting into trouble for things posted on social media. Do feel free to post comments about your day, new products that have come in, or share what is happening in your world.

The best way to engage with people is to comment on their posts. You can do this by using the reply button below their post which is the arrow pointing left. If there is a particular company you wish to work with or a client whose business you would like to win, then comment on their posts. Engage with them and get to know them. Retweet their posts using the retweet button, which looks like a square of arrows. If you just want to like a post then click the heart icon.

Another way to engage with people is to tag them in a post using the @theirname. When you do this the tweet will then appear on their wall as well as in their feed.

Add Images, Videos and Links

The limited number of characters on Twitter can sometimes make it difficult to get your message across. But you can add images, videos and links to your posts.

As the old saying goes, a picture speaks a thousand words. It’s true that visuals are are great way of giving more of the message than the 140 characters will allow. So if you have an image that fits with your post, then be sure to make use of it. If you sell products then snap some of your products with a short description and share them.

Using links means you can drive traffic to your site and share your blogs or other posts that you think your followers might enjoy. Long links can take up too much space in your post and if I have this problem then I simply use Bitly which is a link shortener.

Keep it regular

One of the problems with twitter is that the life span of each tweet is considerably low. That means that each tweet only lasts a few minutes before it is forgotten. So you need to tweet all the time to stay on peoples radar. Keep tweeting regularly throughout the day, adding things that are happening  within your business. This can seem quite challenging and there are programmes out there which you can use to schedule posts so that they go out regularly throughout the day/week/month. Hootsuite is a great one which I use myself. If you plan on using Twitter regularly then this is a really good way to keep your tweets consistent. However it does remove some of the authenticity and limits how responsive you can be. It’s better if you can genuinely tweet and respond to people throughout the day.

Use Twitter Analytics

As with all marketing it is important that you know how well you are doing, who is engaging, what they like and when is the best time to post. Using twitter analytics you can see who your main audience are by demographic, lifestyle and mobile footprint. It is a good idea to know these things so you can create posts that will be most engaging for your audience. You can also see which posts perform the best and use this to create more engaging posts.

Twitter is a great medium for businesses to connect and engage directly with customers. Make the most of it and get started on Twitter today!

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