In this 6-minute read:
- Set up a Twitter account
- How to gain followers
- Tips for Twitter content
- Free Twitter tools to try
Twitter is the place to be to see what people are talking about. What are they saying about your industry or brand? What problems can you solve?
Attract new customers and keep them loyal with reputation management software. Learn more, plus get free reputation monitoring and customer insights when you sign up for Womply Free!
There are many opportunities to insert your small business into the online conversation. Make a lasting impression and reach a broader audience by marketing your small business on Twitter. We’ve got a few tricks to help you out!
Set up a business Twitter account
First, you’ll need to set up a Twitter account for your business. It will be pretty difficult to market your business on Twitter without this.
Check out our guide: How to create a business Twitter account
As you’re setting up your Twitter account, make sure to follow relevant accounts to your brand and industry. Follow competitors, industry leaders, and other small businesses to see what they are posting about.
Define your goals for marketing your small business on Twitter
Once you have your Twitter account set up (or ideally even before this), you should define your goals for your account. What do you hope to accomplish for your business by using a Twitter account?
Are you looking to increase brand awareness, gain new sales leads, or increase traffic to your website?
Make sure your goals are measurable and that you can clearly keep track of whether or not you are hitting those goals.
Some common goals for Twitter business accounts:
- Increased brand awareness measured by followers and impressions
- More brand engagement measured by Retweets and comments on Tweets
- Boost traffic to your website
- Generate leads measured by traffic from Twitter and captured email addresses
- Improve customer support measured by customer engagement and company response time through direct messages
Define your reasons for wanting to use Twitter for your business and use that to guide your strategy and metrics.
Research your competitors
As you’re getting started and determining how to best use Twitter for your business, research your competitors to see what they are doing well. Don’t reinvent the wheel, just make it better.
Questions to ask of your competitors’ Twitter accounts:
- What types of content gets the most engagement (replies and Retweets)?
- What types of original content are they sharing?
- What types of content are they Retweeting?
- Which industry influencers are they engaging with?
- What kind of mentions are they getting on Twitter?
Use the answers to these questions to help guide your content strategy. Keep track of the types of content that does well (or not) and share similar content that is unique to your brand.
Build up your business following on Twitter
The larger your following, the more people you can reach with your Twitter content. Increasing your following on Twitter will help you to reach your goals.
Here are a few ways that you can build up your business’s Twitter following:
- Retweet and Tweet engaging content often
- Post lots of visual content
- Use trending and industry-relevant hashtags
- Engage with your followers through replies, Retweets, and tags
- Make your profile inviting and attention-grabbing
- Encourage customers to follow you on Twitter
Tweet often
Tweeting, or posting content on Twitter, is how you gain new followers, get traffic to your website, and increase your brand’s awareness on Twitter.
Twitter is very different from other social media outlets in that you are encouraged to post frequently. Tweets have a life span of about 18 minutes, so the more often you post, the better chance your business has of performing well on Twitter.
Your business should be posting on Twitter at least 5 times each day, but if you can post up to 20 times a day, that’s usually even better.
Your Tweets don’t all have to be original content either (although original content does have the best opportunity to drive traffic to your profile and website). Retweets can be super powerful, and the type of content you Retweet shows others what your business values.
Use hashtags properly
Hashtags are how Twitter tags content and helps users find what they are looking for. Hashtags are used before relevant phrases or keywords to make a Tweet easier to find in Twitter’s search.
When you click on a hashtag, it will show you other Tweets that include that hashtag.
If a hashtag is used often enough and becomes popular, it can become a “trending topic” on Twitter. Twitter shows off trending topics in the sidebar of users’ feeds so they can be accessed easily.
To get the most benefit from hashtags for your Twitter account, try some of these tips:
- Use industry-relevant hashtags to help your Tweets show up when someone is searching for content that relates to your business
- Use trending hashtags for more visibility
- Search relevant hashtags to find more accounts to follow and engage with
- Limit your hashtags to only 2 or 3 per Tweet
Engage with influencers in your industry
Influencers are those accounts in your industry that have tons of followers and that people engage with frequently. Influencers in your field already have the type of audience and followers that you want, so if you can get them to engage with you, their followers will see that and may start following you as well.
Build relationships with influencers by tagging them in your Tweets, Retweeting their content, and engaging with their content.
Monitor Twitter for keyword mentions related to your small business
We’ve mentioned a little about using hashtags. You can search for relevant hashtags to see what kinds of content people are sharing that is relevant to your business. Then share that content or use it to come up with original content.
Use Twitter’s search capabilities to see if anyone is mentioning your brand or relevant phrases to your business and engage with those Tweets. Reply to Tweets and Retweet them to gain more visibility and followers.
Use Twitter advertising
Twitter has some great advertising capabilities. You can advertise your small business on Twitter by “promoting” your Tweets.
When you are on your Twitter profile, you can click the “activity” or “analytics” icon on any original Tweet and you’ll be given the option to promote your Tweet.
When you promote a Tweet, you can select your audience based on location, choose how much you want to spend, and then see how well it performs.
Promoting Tweets is a great way to get your content in front of more people in your area.
Use Twitter tools for small business marketing
There are tons of tools out there that can help you automate your Twitter content strategy and save time, especially if you want to post as frequently as we’ve recommended.
Here are a few free tools you can get started with:
- TweetDeck can help you schedule Tweets
- If This Then That (IFTTT) can automatically share your new blog posts on your Twitter profile
- Twitter Analytics will help you identify your top-performing Tweets so you know what kind of content to share more of
- RiteTag can help you identify the best hashtags to share
Twitter is only one outlet that you can use to improve your online reputation and gain more reach for your brand. If you are interested in finding even more opportunities for gaining new customers, you should try out reputation management software.
Womply’s solution can help you gain new customers, manage all your online reviews, and save time every week. Learn more, plus get free reputation monitoring and customer insights when you sign up for Womply Free!