Using Twitter For Business Marketing

Social campaigns for business are a fantastic way to get your message in front of a large audience, letting people know you exist and are providing a great service that none of your competitors can match!

However like many things in business and life, with Social Media there is often a novelty value involved, with week one and two being full of enthusiasm, writing multiple posts or tweets every day and studiously examining the ‘likes’ or followers before winding down to standstill after a month or so.

There are multiple social media channels for you to explore if you so wish, this post will be offering some tips and hints about Twitter and the best ways to use Twitter for your business.

If you don’t have a Twitter channel, it is advised that you get one!  Even if it is just so that other people can’t claim your name.  Visit our Social media page if you need any help.

Getting Started With Twitter

Twitter for your business, like all other online platforms you are using for your business, should have the same consistent branding – colours, logos etc.

The first step in using Twitter is deciding what you would like to get out of Twitter and what you would like to use it for. Bloggers use Twitter to share links to their content and blogs and read about what others are sharing and writing.  Perhaps you would like to use Twitter as a way of communicating with your audience or customers?

Once you have a strategy in place you can decide certain aspects of your Twitter campaign – who to follow, the type of tweets you would like to start publishing etc.

About Twitter

Twitter is known as a microblogging tool, due to the short (up to 360 characters) messages – known as ‘tweets’ that are posted on the site by users. People subscribe (follow) your tweets and you follow other people and get to see the tweets that they write.

A tweet can contain images and video. Links to any website content and can be re-tweeted (shared by others) or favourited (liked as a favourite by others) and can be commented on by followers of that account.

Choosing a Twitter Username

A username is very important on Twitter, as it is the name that is displayed next to each interaction you perform on the site. You need to decide if you are going to use your personal name which is better for professional individuals, or if you should use your business name, or a closely related name to keep consistency.

Profile Image

There are two areas in Twitter where you can upload an image:

A profile picture where many small businesses use a more personal image along with a business name, to add a personal touch.

A Facebook-Esque header image, where you can add a large style image that can tell a little bit of a story about your business.

Both of these images appear at the top of your page with the profile picture overlaying the larger image.

Best Tweeting Practices

1. Share timely news.
   If there is breaking news in your business field be sure to tweet about it in a timely fashion.  If you leave it for a few days or weeks, it will undoubtedly have been shared and discussed by your direct competition already, making it out of date and almost pointless.
2. Add a call to action to your tweets.
   A call to action is simply an action that you are requesting your viewers to perform, i.e ‘click on the link’ ‘watch the video’, while this sounds simple, studies have shown that this increases engagement dramatically over tweets/posts/webpages that don’t include a call to action.
3. Utilise hashtags #
   Hashtags are Twitter’s way of grouping content, making searches for subjects easier to perform and opening up your account to non-followers who may be interested in the subject that you are tweeting about.  Try to keep the hashtags in your tweet to a maximum of 2-3 per tweet though, as nobody likes reading through a tweet that is hashtag crammed and comes across as a little spammy, offering very little information in the already cramped character tweet limit.
4. Share Media – Images & Video
   A picture speaks a thousand words, next time you are scrolling through your Twitter timeline, take a look at how many accounts are attaching images and video to their tweets.  Rich media is a fantastic technique for getting viewers to spend more time on your content.
5. Re-tweet
   A re-tweet is sharing someone else tweet, this gives the original tweeter more exposure to all those that follow you. This can lead to engagement and re-tweets/favourites of your own content, exposing your tweets to a new audience, potentially increasing your follower count and any benefits that may come with that.
6. Engage your followers
   Regardless of how many people follow your account, always remember that you started with 0 followers and therefore you should thank those that helped you out and got you into the position you are in now.  Go through your followers and thank them for following you, retweeting or mentioning you in tweets.

Find out how we can help manage your social media and branding here!