As the most popular micro-blogging platform in the world, Twitter serves as an effective marketing tool for your small business. Not only can it get you noticed by more people, but it can also help you develop a relationship with those people and turn them into loyal followers who may eventually become loyal customers.
Before you get to that point, however, you’ll need to learn a few simple – but powerful – tactics. Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as just setting up a Twitter account and posting a link to your website or blog every day. Put these 5 tips into action, and see what Twitter can do for you.
1. Master the Art of Hashtags
Hashtags are a way to tag your tweets with keywords that make them easier to find via Twitter search. Additionally, a hashtagged word is automatically converted into an active link that leads to a search page displaying all tweets containing that keyword.
By using hashtags, you can expose your business to people who might never find you otherwise. Also, it’s safe to say that people who use the same hashtag as you are interested in similar topics. Hence, they’ll likely find your tweets – as well as your products and services – useful.
Further, many people use hashtags to ask questions on subjects they know little about. That way, they’ll likely get responses from the general public, as well as their own followers. You can reply to those tweets, and position yourself as an expert on the topic. Just pick a hashtag, and start answering questions.
2. Schedule Your Tweets to Maximize Exposure
Very often you can tell the moment somebody signs into their Twitter account, because your feed gets flooded with responses and comments to tweets that happened during their offline time. With a big number of followers and a very active Twitter user, it sometimes borders on spam. In fact, some people get very irritated with accounts they consider “too active”.
At the same time, as a business owner, you can’t afford to spend your entire day monitoring your Twitter feed and allowing it to distract you from actual work.
A great solution to that problem is to schedule your tweets to space them in time, not only avoiding making your account “spam-like”, but also making sure your account will be promoting you and your business while you’re busy working.
While Twitter website doesn’t offer that feature yet, there are many free online services that can help you manage and schedule your tweets any way you want. Personally, I have very good experience with Tweetdeck.com and Hootsuite.com and I can recommend them to both new and experience Twitter users.
If you’re sharing links to content in your niche that your followers might find useful, or if you’re posting free tips, scheduling your tweets can be the answer to keep your account active and attractive to prospective clients.
3. Interact With Your Followers
That’s really the best and most important advice you will ever get regarding managing your Twitter account. And while you don’t have to thank them each time after they add you to their feed, it’s good to respond to their tweets if they’re relevant to your niche. You should also always respond if they mention you in their tweets. Answer their questions and be as helpful as possible.
The truth behind a successful Twitter account is to make it seem as personal as possible. It’s not a tool that favors hard sell techniques, at least not too often. It’s developing a loyal following that will get you the sales, the clients and the profits.
Additionally, loyal followers, people who feel they have a personal connection to you and your business will be more than happy to Retweet your tweets, promoting your content to a wider audience. They are more likely to respond to a promotional call to action and refer potential clients to you.
4. Synchronize Your Twitter Account With Other Services
The last thing you want to do is waste your time by cross posting updates to various social networking tools. You can easily avoid that by synchronizing all your social networks and other publishing tools so that one update shows up on every site you’re using to promote your business.
While there are a lot of networking tools, the most popular choice is to synchronize your Twitter account with the RSS feed of your website or blog, and with the Facebook page of your business.
By associating your RSS feed with your Twitter (I recommend using Feedburner.com as it offers many additional features), you ensure that every time you update your blog, your Twitter followers will get a notification in their Twitter feed. All because Feedburner will automatically post the update to your Twitter and you won’t even have to think about it.
If you decide to sync your Twitter and your Facebook, you will ensure activity on two biggest social networking sites, allowing yourself to engage your Twitter followers in Facebook polls and events and vice versa.
5. Polish Your Twitter Profile
And finally, a tip many people dismiss even though it’s crucial in the process of branding your business.
It’s true that your followers rarely view your profile, receiving your tweets directly in their feed. But it’s one of the first things a potential follower and a potential client see. Yet many businesses don’t care what their bio says, what picture they use as their avatar, or what their Twitter handle is.
Meanwhile, you should make sure that your Twitter is an extension of your website and your business, making sure your brand is promoted in both your Twitter handle and your avatar. You could say that in the micro-blogging world, it’s the little things that matter.
Take Twitter by Storm
Managing your Twitter account can be challenging, but it can also turn into an easy way to gain more exposure and provide your business with additional clients and supporters. All the tips in this post are meant to show you that you can achieve that by working smarter, not harder, allowing your Twitter to promote your business.
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