Twitter may appear to offer only limited opportunities for marketing. Tweets have a minimal life span, and you are restricted to only 280 characters per tweet. Even so, Twitter has a lot to offer a small business.
Twitter provides a platform for marketing messages. Tweets can be used for customer support, launching new products, and developing a business brand. Yet, many small businesses fail to take advantage of this free marketing opportunity.
So, if you haven’t yet taken full advantage of Twitter as a means of marketing your small business, read on. Here are ten Twitter marketing tips for small businesses.
1. Set Your Objectives
Even though Twitter has its limitations, you still need to treat it the same as any other marketing opportunity. And the best way to start any marketing campaign is to set your goals. So, decide what you want to achieve with your tweets and set yourself some targets. Do you want to generate new business, for example? Or is your goal to connect with existing customers? Setting your Twitter marketing goals will help you decide on the type of tweets that you will send, and setting targets will allow you to monitor the success of your Twitter campaign.
2. Watch and Learn
You may have never used Twitter for marketing before. If so, it would be best if you look at what your competitors are doing before you begin your marketing campaign, and it would be advisable to investigate what your target audience is talking about too. Twitter is like a conversation, so you need to know what is being discussed before joining in. The objective is to add to the conversation, not merely fire off random, irrelevant tweets
3. Complete Your Twitter Profile
You only have limited space in your Twitter profile, so you need to make the most of the 160 characters you have available in your Twitter bio. Create a Twitter bio that describes your business in an impactful way, and use all the fields on the Twitter profile to your advantage. You can use hashtags in your bio. However, it would be best to avoid filling the 160-character space with nothing but hashtags. Don’t forget to add your business logo, complete the address fields, and add your website address.
4. Post Short, Informative Tweets
Short and to the point is the best approach for marketing tweets, and tweets should be informative and provide value. Entertaining or amusing tweets can be useful for engaging an audience and building a brand image. However, it would be unwise to go overboard with frivolous tweets. People will read your tweets because they are interested in your product or company, not the office cat. Furthermore, irrelevant tweets will not help you achieve your Twitter marketing objectives.
5. Post Unique Content
You will create more engagement with your Twitter account if you post unique content. So, try to avoid posting the same content across all social media platforms. Posting links to blog posts on your website is okay. But it would be best if you create original content for your tweets as well. People may visit your Twitter account to find out more about your business, so people will be expecting to see content on Twitter that can’t see on other platforms. Posting different content to different media will also encourage people to visit more of your social media accounts.
6. Use Hashtags Sparingly
Using the appropriate hashtags in your tweets will increase the number of visitors. However, overusing hashtags will make your tweets unreadable. Avoid the temptation to use off-topic hashtags as well. Inserting trending hashtags into your tweets will attract the wrong people to your content, and it will annoy Twitter users. If you are unsure what hashtags to use, try using a hashtag research tool, like Hashtagify or Socialert.
7. Use Images and Videos
Adding images and videos to your tweets will significantly increase engagement. People prefer to look at pictures or watch a video than reading text. Indeed, most Twitter users watch videos on Twitter. Adding an image to a tweet can increase engagement by more than 30%. Tweets with videos or pictures are also much more likely to be retweeted.
8. Engage as Well as Advertise
As mentioned before, Twitter is all about the conversation. So, avoid the temptation to fill your Twitter feed with nothing but advertisements. Instead, post a mixture of ads, informative content, and entertaining posts. Aim to initiate a conversation and a buzz around your brand rather than using Twitter purely as an advertising medium.
9. Get the Timing Right
The best times for most businesses to post tweets is between 12 pm and 3 pm on weekdays. However, some types of audiences may be active on Twitter at different times of the day. To discover the optimum time of the day for your tweets, you will need to monitor engagement levels with a social media management tool like Hootsuite.
10. Tweet Regularly and Engage
Twitter is a real-time medium, so you will need to post regularly to generate an audience. Aim to post at least one new tweet every day to keep your Twitter feed fresh. If you always have a fresh and original tweet on your Twitter account, people will revisit your profile more often. And don’t forget to respond to messages and tweets about your brand. Engagement on Twitter is a two-way thing.
Conclusion
Twitter can be an excellent medium for connecting with your target audience. But it would help if you kept your Twitter feed fresh, unique, and interesting. And you need to engage with your Twitter audience. Like all social media marketing, the best place to start with Twitter is setting your goals. And then, you will need to monitor your Twitter marketing campaign’s success by tracking the analytics.
