Twitter is a platform used by 187 million daily active users. Professionals, teens, celebrities. They’re all here. All monetizable. Which is why it is one of the most crucial platforms to use for social media marketing. Time and again, this platform has proven its efficiency, especially in sales and marketing, where numbers are what matter the most.
8 Ways of Effectively Using Twitter as a Business
1. Make New Contacts
Following the people we know is great, however you can also make valuable new contacts with Twitter. It doesn’t matter if you’re looking for people to work for your company or you just want to interact with others who like the same music as you, you can find all the new contacts you need through Twitter.
Engage. Comment on their tweets. When you retweet someone, they might retweet you right back, and you gain access to their audience. This is a subtle but effective technique for promoting your blog on social media.
2. Monitor Your Reputation
If you’re using Twitter for professional purposes, it can be an effective tool for online reputation management. Track your name or business name to keep tabs on what people are saying about you at any given time. Responding to these promptly is good engagement--77% of Twitter users appreciate a brand more when their tweet is responded to-- and this information can be useful for fixing in-house problems\, and it can also help you eliminate any untrue rumours that might be spreading around. This can be done through some great tools like TwitAlert.
3. Gain Exposure for Your Website
Perhaps the most obvious benefit of Twitter is generating traffic to your website. When you’re connected with followers who care about you, they’ll help spread your content by ReTweeting it to their friends. Just be careful that you don’t overdo the self-promotion as that will drive your followers away. Use Twitter responsibly, and you’ll experience more traffic to your blog and website.
4. Stay in Touch
Whether it’s a business contact from across the country or a friend from down the street, connecting with them on Twitter is an easy way to stay in touch. You’ll always know what they’re up to, and you can engage in brief discussions through DM or @(UserName) messages. Even if it’s someone you see all the time, you might get to experience a whole new side of them by following them on Twitter.
5. Be Several Places at Once
Let’s face it–you can’t be everywhere at once. You can’t always afford to fly out to that conference across the country, but you can keep up with it through Twitter. People often Tweet live updates from various events, meaning you can be in several places at once.
6. Build Your Authority
If you’re using Twitter to discuss a particular niche, you can build your authority by writing high quality Tweets. A few ways to build your authority on Twitter are to send out links to useful resources, provide useful tips to your followers, give insight into relevant topics, answer questions, and engage in discussions with your followers.
7. Learn New Tips from Others
In addition to sharing tips, you can also learn new ones from others. That’s one of the things about Twitter that hooked me . So many of the people I’m following provide useful information based on their unique experiences. There really is a wealth of knowledge out there if you know who to follow.
8. It’s Fun
Twitter is fun you can find great resources and even more great people and businesses that you may not have found otherwise.
A quick guide on Twitter hashtags
We can’t discuss Twitter without mentioning hashtags. Tools like MissingLettr can generate hashtags for you based on your content.
So how do you use them?
1. Look at the trending hashtags. Is it relevant to your business? See if you can ride the wave. You gain exposure to people exploring that hashtag!
2. Create your own hashtags to make your tweets searchable and organized. When people see your tweet, they can click on the hashtag and see all the posts where you used that hashtag. So, for example, you can use #tiptuesdayLinda to carry ALL your Tip Tuesday posts, and #askmeanything for your free advice!
3. Incentivize people to use your hashtags. What do they get in return? A retweet? An answer to their question? A chance for a prize?
4. Assign a hashtag theme for specific days of the week. Use a social media scheduling tool to post tweets with your hashtag themes on certain days. This keeps your tweet ideas flowing.
5. Don’t overhashtag. You don’t have to hashtag every word. Twitter recommends no more than one to two per tweet. Make your hashtags matter!
Tools to Help You Tweet
I get it! Twitter can be a little overwhelming and scary, and for wordy people like me, short, sharp tweets don’t come naturally, so here are a few of the tools that will show you how to use Twitter as a business easily and with less beginner mistakes.
Twitter moves fast, but there is amazing power behind a tweet. With social media scheduling tools that remove a lot of the time-suck and potential for mistakes, you can start to get your head around Twitter and inspire, engage and connect with your audiences. If you are not taking advantage of these tools, you'll likely be outpaced by the competition. Here are some tools I recommend.
Missinglettr
Missinglettr is a must have in my toolkit. For us, it takes the posts we publish on Business Business Business, Media Connections, my blog and our other sites, and draws from it Tweets that we can share throughout the year.
We still write our own but WOW this tool thinks of things we did not and it is a great way to get started tweeting posts if you are unsure!
You can take the 14 day Missinglettr trial so why not give it a go today? If you click on the link here our BBB team will get some referral love too! We’d appreciate it!
Meet Edgar
Edgar automatically builds a library of every social update you upload, so you can share the best ones again and again over time.
Edgar was specifically built for smaller, agile companies and entrepreneurial ventures. This isn’t an enterprise-level tool; you get every single feature when you sign up, and a streamlined interface that makes scheduling easy.
Edgar is great as it allows you to create a series of evergreen tweets and more. Upload and edit in bulk Create your library of saved updates from most any source.
Paper.li
Paper.li is a unique application that allows you to collect tweets and curate them manually or automatically in a newspaper-style format which can be automatically shared daily on your Twitter account.
We run a paper for Media Connections on PR tips at @mediaconnects on paper.li
It is a great way to get involved in the community and tweet with others.
Twitter is a wonderful tool for your business. Through your tweets, you can show your audience who you are and what you stand for, promote your blogs, promos and services, and build your authority and voice as a brand. All of those benefits in several tweets a day! Social media management tools like Missinglettr and the others mentioned in this post make this process fool-proof and effective.
