How Your Business Can Be Successful Using Twitter

Posted by Matt Reilly on Feb 2, 2017 4:02:00 PM

You may view Twitter as just an outlet for bloggers, news stations, and highly opinionated people.  Upon Twitter’s arrival to mainstream media consumption in 2006, this was the case. But today, Twitter can be a powerful tool for small businesses. Over the course of this article, we will go into detail about how you can best leverage your company Twitter account to reach your current and potential customers.

Businesses Can Reach a Huge Number of Potential Customers on Twitter

Over the past 10 years, how people leveraged Twitter has changed drastically. If you are an active user on Twitter, you may see that many tweets are in fact links to business sites, or content created by companies attempting to reach their consumers. With over 140 million daily users, Twitter is one of the largest platforms of active consumers that can be easily reached by businesses.

 

How To Begin Using Twitter

If you are new to using Twitter, don’t worry, the ship hasn’t sailed. Setting up a Twitter account is very easy, but there are a few areas you should prepare and plan for.

 

Imagery

While this may seem obvious, choosing the right pictures for your profile is huge. There are two types of images your profile will have, a cover image and an avatar image. The cover image should be 1,500 x 500 pixels, and represent your business and the service it provides. Your avatar image should be 500 x 500 pixels, and most companies use their logo. Whatever you do, don’t stick with the provided egg image.

 

Your Bio

You have 280 characters to describe what your business does. Be succinct and clear, but also sprinkle some personality into it. While Twitter is a great place to showcase your company’s expertise in its industry, it generally has a lighter atmosphere than LinkedIn & Facebook, so make it fun!

 

Make Your Business Accessible

Doing the small things, like linking to your website and adding in your location, are all key to your business being accessible and visible to the millions of daily users. Help them help you!

 

Define Your Voice & Tone

Before you can begin tweeting, you need to plan how your business’ voice and tone will be communicated on Twitter. This outlet has the ability to showcase your content to thousands of potential consumers, and you need to ensure that the content you post is clear and consistent with your brand’s direction.

 

Show Your Personality

You’ve now chosen photos for your profile, linked your website to your profile, and defined the way you want your company’s voice to be perceived. Now it’s time to start tweeting and reach all of those potential customers! The biggest thing you need to do is SHOW YOUR PERSONALITY. Regardless of how boring your industry or service is, you NEED to spice it up. Build a customer profile of your typical customer, and research them. Their interests, hobbies, etc. and create content that will appeal to that user base. I recommend going into Google Analytics and searching through the demographic data it provides to start building your customer profile.

 

Responding to Complaints

Twitter is now a medium for customers to post their grievances, and you need to stay on top of them. Having negative tweets aimed at your brand never looks good, and angry customers don’t pull punches, so the things they say can be very damaging. The tweets may fade away as you create more content and fill up your feed, but it’s always good to have a plan on how to address these complaints. And don't just monitor your direct mentions - users may be mentioning your brand on Twitter without tagging you, so do a regular check for your business name.

 

Using Hashtags as a Business

Using hashtags is vital to reaching your current and potential customers. After you have researched and created your customer profile, identifying and creating hashtags that will appeal to your customer base is extremely important. Being visible through hashtags will place you in front of your customers and similar consumers who may be interested in purchasing your product or service. If you are having difficulty brainstorming hashtags, look at your competitors’ profiles and see what they are using. When you begin to use hashtags, monitor the reach and engagement on each post, and try to find the most effective hashtags.

Pro tip: always check a hashtag before using it. Twitter moves fast, and you'll always want to make sure the use of a hashtag aligns with your intent before posting.

 

Using Images on Twitter Posts

If we have learned anything from social media, it's that people like images and video. Consumers would much rather digest content through an image than four lines of text. Tweets with images are 34% more likely to get re-tweeted than ones without. Think about your own social media experience, do you spend more time reading someone’s status, or looking at images of cute puppies?

 

Just Be Yourself

In the end your business being successful is based on how much work you put in. You need to research and understand your potential customers, consistently create and publish engaging content, and have fun with it. You can’t solely promote your product, you need to have a mix of relevant and interesting articles that mix in with advertisements for your business. Start tweeting!

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