Triumphing with Twitter
To many, Twitter is quite the strange bird. Trying to figure out how to successfully use it can feel like attempting to get all the sides of your Rubik’s Cube (remember those?) to be the same color.
The good news? It’s not as hard as it seems, but you’ll need to make a significant time investment if you want to triumph on Twitter. Let’s take a look at some of the best practices you can take to accomplish this, as well as whether or not Twitter is the right social media platform for your business to be on in the first place.
Is Twitter Right for You?
The easiest way to answer this question is to determine where your clients and potential clients spend their time on social media. Facebook is great for B2C, while LinkedIn is the way to go for B2B. But Twitter is not as easily compartmentalized.
Both B2B and B2C companies use Twitter as a tool to build their businesses and readership. And with the advent of Twitter for Business, it’s easier than ever to gain an understanding of exactly what your company will need to do to accomplish your unique goals. As you might expect, tech companies, marketing companies and social media companies tend to thrive on Twitter.
So, how do you find out if your customers are in the Twitterverse? You can take a poll and ask them which social media platforms they frequent, or your can simply sign onto Twitter and look for them. If you find their page, see how active they are in tweeting and retweeting content.
How to Tackle Twitter
OK, so let’s assume that using Twitter would benefit your company. What are some of the best practices you can follow to make your efforts successful?
1) Set up an account with Hootsuite, Sendible or some other social media scheduling app. Choosing a scheduling app is important because …
2) You’ll want to start creating monthly social media campaigns that include Twitter postings for the month. Typically, it’s best to create the campaign a month in advance, and then schedule everything on your scheduling app. Sit down once, and a couple hours later your posts are scheduled for the entire month!
You’ll want to post relevant content often. And although sharing someone else’s link or content is OK, tweeting your own content or a link to your own material — like a blog post or infographic — is far better. In addition, stating YOUR opinion on a topic is far superior to simply sharing someone else’s opinion, which should be reserved for …
3) Retweeting relevant content. Sharing tweets posted by others, referred to as a “retweet,” helps you connect with the people in your Twitter circle. It’s a way of helping them publicize their content, and in turn they are much more likely to retweet your posts (as long as they’re good quality). Over time, you will develop relationships with some of your Twitter followers that can lead to guest blog posts, Twitter events, friendships, business partnerships — and more customers.
4) Engage. Sorry Star Trek fans, we’re not going to warp speed here. Instead what we’re talking about is having some online conversations that are relevant to you and your followers. Twitter had a pretty nice page on engagement. Here’s an excerpt:
“Tweet in the moment: Live-tweeting means engaging on Twitter for a certain period of time with a series of Tweets on an unfolding subject — a sporting event, a TV show, breaking news, anything. It can be planned or spontaneous. Remember to use hashtags, share photos and videos and have fun. Give followers a different perspective, insight into something with which they would not otherwise be familiar.”
You can start your own discussion, or find one to participate in. It can take some time to find a conversation that’s relevant, and hashtags can help …
5) Use hashtags in your posts, and search by hashtags to find conversations that are relevant to you and your customers. For example, at Tingalls Graphic Design, we might use #SEO, #LogoDesign or #WebDesign as a hashtag in our posts. If we were looking to communicate on Twitter, we could also search these hashtags to see what kinds of conversations are occurring with them.
We hope these strategies help you triumph on Twitter! Take it one step at a time, and do what you can each week until you’ve accomplished all of the steps listed above.
If you need help with your social media efforts, feel free to contact Tingalls Graphic Design to set up a complimentary meeting to discuss your goals further.
Related Posts
