Twitter can be extremely beneficial in growing your business, if you understand how to use it. Our team has provided five necessary tactics in order for your company to get the most out of Twitter. Before you get started, set your company’s goals in terms of Twitter—what exactly do you want to achieve by using this social media platform and why? Make a list of your goals and objectives and then proceed to the “how” below.
1. Follow your influencers
Twitter is a useful tool to learn more about your potential and existing customers. In order to learn how to market to them and access their needs, it is important to follow them back on Twitter and engage with them as much as possible. Show interest in their interests and market to them in a more personalized manner. You may be surprised how much you can learn about people via Twitter and how much it can help your company draw them in. For example, individuals tweet about their favorite place to grab coffee or buy locally and you can use that information to market to them in a unique way.
2. Join conversations in a meaningful manner
Engage with others in a meaningful way that will make your time and your influencers’ time worthwhile. If you aren’t engaging appropriately, people won’t tune in or take the time to listen to what you’re saying. Make sure you are offering the right people the right content, in the correct manner and you aren’t trying to win their business right off the bat.
3. Be human—even if you are a brand!
Interact with people on a personal level. Like we said earlier about following your influencers…show interest in their interests. You don’t always have to talk business—build a relationship first. Once you build rapport with your potential customers or influencers, they are more likely to trust your help and experience in the industry. When your brand is human, your brand cares.
4. Time your posts to suit your followers
Do the research and pay attention to when your influencers and audience are on Twitter and social media. It’s difficult during the workday to be a part of the social world 24/7, so you have to learn what time of day is best to market to your customers. Engage with them at those times. It can vary from platform to platform, company to company, or individual to individual, when people are actually using social media. Unless your influencers are social media gurus, they are probably on social before and after work hours or during lunch. If you’re posting helpful content or reaching out at the wrong time of day, most people won’t see it due to the high speed of social media [and Twitter] today. There are also many social media engagement platforms that allow timed or scheduled posting. See our previous social media post for some examples.
5. Utilize TweetChat
TweetChat is a live event or group engagement on Twitter that is focused around a specific topic. A single #hashtag is used in order to funnel all of the conversation into one string. Tweet chats are set for a certain time and during that timeframe you can engage intelligently with others in the chat. Be sure to use the hashtag! Tweet chats are great to host in order to position yourself or your company as an expert in your industry. It’s a great way to give insight and gain potential leads or clients without asking for business. However, it’s beneficial to participate in a few first, in order to get the hang of things before hosting your own. When the time comes to host your own, make sure you promote your tweet chat through Twitter and other social media outlets so you aren’t speaking to yourself!
