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As one of the largest social media networks, Twitter is a great platform that any business can utilize. With a well laid out plan, virtually any business can use Twitter to help promote their business, offer better customer service, and earn new customers. When you’re planning out a strategy for any social media channel, the most important thing to remember is that it won’t stand alone. Your Twitter presence should accompany your website, your email marketing, and any other digital and traditional marketing you do.
1. Define Your Goals
Since you’re running a business and not getting a Twitter account to keep up on news and entertain yourself, you need to carefully define what your goals are on Twitter. First, choose a broad goal. What do you want your Twitter account to do? Is your main goal to draw traffic to your website? a communication channel to offer better customer experience? to help current customers stay connected? In reality, it can be all these things but it is important that you determine how you want to use Twitter for your business.
2. Create Your Content Calendar
Keeping an up to date content calendar is important to make sure you are consistent in your posting. Unlike other social networks, on Twitter it is really hard to post too much. That said, tweeting more than twice an hour has shown to cause a decrease in follower engagement. Determining when you should post can determine greatly on your followers and industry. Tweriod is a free tool that will analyze your twitter account and tell you when your tweets will get the most exposure. Buffer or Social Scheduler are both great options to help you schedule and manage all of your social media accounts.
Never forget that social media is an entertainment platform. If your content is all about you, people will tune you out.
Now on to the most important part—your content. The types of content your business posts should be determined heavily by industry and target audience. The most important aspect of social media content is not to over-promote. Never forget that social media is an entertainment platform. If your content is all about you, people will tune you out. According to a recent study, 57% of individuals avoided bands that bombarded them with promotional material. I would conjecture that when it comes to social media, this percentage is significantly higher. In order to grow your following and see engagement, your content needs to be useful and entertaining. That doesn’t mean that you can’t advertise your company. But your advertisements should be limited and spread out between lots of other great content. The Social Media Examiner suggests advertising in, “1 out of every 15 tweets.“
3. Build Your Following
There are tons of great ideas and strategies out there to help you build your twitter following. When you’re getting started, just start following people. Following new people is the best way to get them to notice your brand. However, following random individuals won’t get you anywhere. Find experts in your industry, follow them and see who follows them as well. This will help you to start building a following of your own of people who are likely more interested in what you have to say. Doing an advanced search on Twitter can help you find people who tweet about specific keywords as well.
One thing I highly recommend doing is participating in a Twitter Chat. Twitter chats are essentially just a hashtag that have a set time where people come together and chat about a particular topic. Anyone can organize a twitter chat but they are often done by companies. For instance #bufferchat is a Twitter chat run by the Buffer App, a social media scheduling application. The chat is all about social media and attracts many social media marketers and they are very good about following up with chatters and using the forum to help grow their customer base and improve their product. Twitter chats are great ways to have meaningful discussion and to connect with thought leaders in your niche. Particularly if you are a B2B company, I highly recommend you consider starting a twitter chat of your own down the road.
To learn more about Twitter chats and find the best business related chats, visit Brian Fanzo’s website. You can also find an extensive list of twitter chats on a number of topics at Chat Salad.
4. Develop Your Offer
In the social media world, actually getting conversions is a challenge. Conversions don’t typically happen on social media because it is a form of entertainment. To actually convert followers into customers you need to develop an offer that a customer will want to give you their contact information for. This is often takes the form of email marketing but can be SMS marketing, direct mail, or a phone call. Your offer should be compelling and be relevant to your business. It can be an e-book or similar informational offer, a free trial period, or even a free consultation. Just remember to spread out offers with plenty of other entertaining and informational posts.
5. Track Your Results
Don’t waste your money on expensive tracking software. You can track your tweets directly on twitter for free. Just make sure your Twitter analytics is set up. From there you can track your engagement rate, how many click throughs you are earning to your website (landing page if they clicked on an offer) and how many new leads you earn through twitter. It is also a great way to start tracking potential blog titles and marketing buy-ins so you know what messages work best with your audience.
When you’ve developed a clear strategy, you will see better results on Twitter or any other social platform. Building a dedicated following takes time and consistency is key. If you’ve got your strategy right, Twitter will help you to build trust with potential and current customers and provide a way for you to stay better connected with your customers.
