Social media has provided a whole new way for business owners to promote their products, services and brand. Twitter is one of the most widely used social media platforms, and a popular choice for marketing campaigns. Using Twitter to market your small business can bring rich rewards, including increased brand awareness, extra website traffic and a wider customer base. Maximize your Twitter marketing campaign with these 10 tips for small business owners.
Choose a memorable Twitter username
With millions of active users already laying claim to almost every simple username you can think of, you need to be creative with your choice. Usernames containing numbers tend to be less trusted by other users, as these are often used by spam accounts. Try to use real words that can be associated with your business. For example, if you run a small shoe store called “Bob’s”, you will probably find that someone has already chosen “bobsshoes” as their username, but you may be able to find a different variation, such as “bobsfootwear” or “bobscoolshoes”.
Use your company or business logo on Twitter account
Twitter allows you to upload an image or avatar to use with your profile. Using your company logo helps to build awareness and make your brand recognizable. Remember to be consistent and use the same image across all of your social media accounts, blogs and websites. If you don’t have a company logo, consider designing a simple image that represents what your business does.
Write a professional looking profile suitable for your business
Twitter allows you to write a brief profile to describe who you are. Think carefully about what you want to say in your profile. You have only 160 characters, which leaves little room for extensive explanations. Keep it simple; use keywords and phrases to highlight who you are and what you do. You can also add a link to your company website or blog, where you will be able to offer a more detailed profile of your company.
Personalize your profile page adding touches that make you look professional, but approachable
Twitter offers a choice of colors, patterns and images for your profile page background, along with color scheme options for the text and links. Choose colors and patterns that fit in with your company image, logo and website. If you prefer, you can set your own image as the background for your profile page. This gives you the opportunity to display more information about your company.
Build, and keep building your follower list
The more followers you have, the more people will be likely to see your marketing messages. Building your follower list is an important part of Twitter marketing. Without followers, nobody will see your messages. In the early stages, it can help to use an application to help find new followers. Another approach is to scour the follower lists of your competitors and leaders within your industry. You can then “follow” the people in their follower lists. Most users will reciprocate and be added to your list of followers.
Clean your follower list
Twitter penalizes those with a large discrepancy between the number of followers and the number of people they follow. Applications and software is available to allow you to manage your follower list and maintain a balance. Your eventual aim should be to have more followers than people you follow, although this may not be possible in the early stages.
Tweet regularly, keep people engaged
Regular activity is important for maintaining a social media presence, particularly if you are trying to build your brand. Sending regular tweets helps keep you in the mind of other Twitter users. Try to stagger the timing of your tweets, as some people only use Twitter at certain times of the day. Avoid sending too many tweets, as you don’t want to gain a reputation for spam messages. For most businesses, publishing 1-10 tweets per day works best. However, in some cases, it may be enough to send just one or two tweets every week.
Interact with other users, be social and keep learning
Aside from publishing your marketing messages, it’s important to interact with other Twitter users. Respond to questions and comments, thank users for retweeting your messages and get involved in conversations. Hashtags provide a simple way for you to follow conversations on a particular subject. Subscribe to hashtags related to your business interests, as this will help you stay informed on the latest news, and enable you to join in with discussions.
Stay professional, do not become too sloppy or get too personal
Once a message, or tweet, has been published on Twitter, there is no way to take it back. While Twitter might allow you to delete the tweet, other users may already have retweeted or taken a screenshot of your message. This means that you must remain professional at all times, as mistakes will stay with you for a long time. Before responding to criticisms or difficult comments, take a little time to calm down and consider your reply.
Use a Twitter client to speed up your tweeting and save time
Twitter clients, such as TweetDeck and HootSuite, help to simplify your marketing tasks. Twitter clients allow you to monitor your lists, messages, followers and hashtags. You can also keep track of your feeds, manage multiple accounts and schedule specific times for sending your tweets.