Choosing the social media platform for your business can be a trial! Do you do everyone one or should you just look at a couple and do them well? Personally, I think the second option is the best option, but still you have the question of which one you choose?
Your choice will depend on a number of things:
Where your audience hangs out?
What age they are?
Are you looking to build brand awareness?
Are you looking to generate leads and sales via the content you post?
Are you looking to leverage the advertising capability?
Your time and your own capability
Should you choose Twitter, you will find it simple and easy to use. You can use it easily from your workplace PC, your phone or your pad. It's quick and easy to read and gives you numerous content options by allowing you to add text, photos, videos and GIFS to your feeds.
In no particular order, here are a few of our top tips for making the most of your Twitter feeds:
Get organised! Decide on your strategy and get others involved if needed. Decide on your approach, your persona and your messaging. Set up your page to reflect this and make sure you have some basic images you can share straight away.
Twitter marketing isn’t for bots! It's for people! You can greatly benefit from a number Twitter tools to drive your Twitter marketing campaign, but at the end of the day, you must personalize your brand and let it stand out from the competitors.
Post regularly. Remember that each tweet you send is in your audience’s eyeline for a very short period. It is very likely that adhoc and random tweets will not add much for your business. You need to tweet regularly and probably more than you think to keep people engaged. There is no magic number, but consistency is key.
Entice your readers. Let each and every tweet be enticing enough for your followers to engage with it. Whether you’re sharing an image, video or blog post, try to make it appealing to your followers.
Brand your content as much as you can. We appreciate that as a small business you may not have the budget for fantastic images, but you can use your own or free resources to help you out. Investing in a decent lightbox or using an online resource such as Canva can make a huge difference. The free image websites are a godsend to new businesses.
Be human! Share and retweet others content. Like other’s content and be personable with your replies.
Find your tribe! Build your audience effectively by locality, interest or by sector. Make sure you allocate enough time each day to build your following. Try starting at 10 minutes a day to engage with other users and build your community. Follow people with aligned interests, see who others in your industry are following, search for keywords and check out bios. Actively search for your potential customers. For example, a subscription food service could search for posts containing negative sentiments such as “I hate cooking” or “grocery shopping”. As you get going and used to the platform, you will find the optimum time.
Promote your business. Promote your blog articles, your webinars and your news by posting links to your articles systematically. This will lead people back to your website and if shared by a retweet will put your business and your logo in front of a new audience. Remember you can re-share them in different formats and re-engage your followers.
Tagging: You can tag any of your followers in your posts which will help bring your post into their eyeline. To tag people or pages in a photo, click the photo you are adding to your feed to expand it. Hover over the photo and click Tag Photo at the bottom. Click the person in the photo and start typing their name. Choose the full name of the person or Page you want to tag when it appears. Click Done Tagging when you are finished.
Announce any special deals or sales you have. You can use the advertising options to push your deals out to a wider, but still targeted, audience.
Promote events. If you are attending any events or conferences you can use Twitter to announce your presence and any last-minute changes or individual promotions you have planned. For instance, if you are speaking at an event, announce the time and place on Twitter with a tag to the event organisers.
Have a conversation. If you are the boss of your company, social media is a great way to have a conversation with your market place, to make and manage connections with your prospects, customers, media and other influencers. Twitter is perfect for the time short, but engaged CEOs.
Use it for your PR campaigns. Twitter is the perfect place to search for and engage the media and bloggers if you are looking to promote your business through PR. It's quicker, more responsive and you generally get a better response than emailing or calling! You can search on interest or names and see who’s covering subjects which will suit your business.
Build lists. We use lists all the time with clients. They could be based on their competitors, their sector influencers, their potential customers or their sector media. They can be made private or public depending on what you are aiming to achieve.
Search for appropriate hashtags. Hashtags are used when people want to search on specific subjects and you may notice popular or topical hashtags 'trending'. Use those which are appropriate for your business, your area and your customers. Keep an eye on the trending ones which will show in your profile pages and use them if you can!
What not to tweet!
Twitter is not about you! You need to find a ratio of around 20% of the tweets you send being about your business and the remaining 80% about things which your audience will appreciate.
It’s not just a portal by which you can share your press releases. Yes, it can be used for that, but it needs to be far more than just your company newswire.
It’s not for selling! Its about building relationships, joining in conversations and starting them. Your aim on Twitter is to engage, inform and entertain before you ever think about selling!