As one of the biggest three social media platforms, there’s no ignoring Twitter. Many business owners, however, don’t see the benefit of Twitter marketing. To them, it’s the likes of shouting at a chaotic crowd of people talking amongst themselves. Twitter is actually a great tool for marketing your business and engaging your audience. This post will go over the basics of Twitter and how it can be used to market and grow your business. This article will provide some oversight on why Twitter remains a relevant social media tool for social media marketing.
Related: Social Media Pocket guide
Twitter Marketing Basics
Twitter is a fast-paced social media channel but can be very useful for small businesses. It is good for real time customer engagement, and the retweet feature makes it easy to share relevant content or good customer comments and reviews.
Posting on Twitter
Here are some things to include in an ideal Twitter post when using it to market your business:
- Less than 140 characters (photos add characters so you may need to get creative!)
- Photos, graphics, or videos
- Engaging caption that promotes the post
- Call to action, if necessary
- Tag people or places
- Hashtags
Engaging on Twitter
Depending on your industry, Twitter may not be as strong of a lead generating channel as other social media sites, but it is still worthy of putting forth some effort. If you want to generate leads on Twitter, it’s important to post regularly and engage with followers. Here are some guidelines for engaging:
- Engage with followers who like, follow, and comment on your content
- Retweet customer posts and reviews about your business
- Use local hashtags to tweet events/sales/ promotions
- Limit your hashtags—use no more than three per tweet
- Use a link shortener
- Tag users in a photo or graphic
- Tag a physical location
Related: Hashtag Marketing eBook
Why Is Twitter an Important Marketing Tool?
Market Research
Twitter is a place where users share fleeting opinions and disseminate timely news and memes. From a marketing standpoint, Twitter’s social ecosystem enables business owners to listen to consumer opinion and leverage that information to create relevant and engaging content for their audience.
Brevity with Messaging
Twitter is important marketing tool because brevity is powerful. Facebook allows the space for long-winded posts, which risk losing the attention of some readers. Twitter’s rule of 140 characters per tweet keeps messaging digestible.
Twitter forces you to whittle your messaging down to only what you need to say, and spare the rest. Tweeting is short and sweet, but is done with careful editing to make the message powerful and terse.
Website Traffic
Twitter is a great place to promote your blog posts, product updates, public press releases, and more. By including links in your Tweets to your website pages and landing pages, you can increase traffic leads traffic right to the doorstep of your website.
Social Listening
“Social Listening” is the process of monitoring conversations in certain audiences pertaining to particular topics. Twitter allows for social listening through its polling feature, which gives businesses the opportunity to ask their audience questions directly with 2 – 4 provided ballot choices. Interaction like this encourages users to engage with your account, view your profile, and maybe even visit your website.
Most importantly, the data you collect through Twitter polls can be used to create blog posts and other content that performs well among your audience. Audiences online are reassured when businesses tweet actively and helpfully. Providing this reassurance is key to retaining readership and generating leads through marketing on Twitter.
Why Use Twitter Marketing?
In addition to the above benefits of marketing on Twitter, there are several other features that make it a growth tool for your business. They include:
Flexibility: Marketing on Twitter is free and completely up to you. You can decide what kind of content you want to promote on your Twitter feed, and what kind of audience you want to attract on the platform.
Ease of Access: Another reason to do marketing on Twitter is its ease of access. Your audience members do not have to have a Twitter account to access your Twitter profile and content. Twitter is the most public form of social media, plain and simple.
Relevance: Twitter’s algorithm focuses heavily on timeliness and influence, which provides opportunities for real time marketing.
Advertising: As with Facebook and Instagram, Twitter also supports advertising, through promoted tweets, accounts, and trends.
Analytics: Twitter provides clear analytics for impressions and interactions with your tweets so you can track your activity.
Depending on your audience and products or services, Twitter may be a great marketing platform for your business. Set up an account today and start engaging your audience.
