How Twitter Can Help Your Business?

Twitter is now the second largest social media platform with over 560 million active users and more than 135 thousand new users signing up every day. These figures show that Twitter is a growing platform that all businesses big and small should utilise to the fullest to expand their business and relationship with the customer.

In this blog I will give you a few ideas and techniques that you could use on twitter to benefit your business.

Position yourself as a thought leader

Regardless of the market, businesses can use Twitter’s platform to position themselves as industry experts. You should find your target audience and share useful/interesting information about topics relevant to them, and engage in discussions relevant to your business. Your topics should range from basic to very specific, this opens the conversation to potential new customers while still catering for your current invested customers. It is also useful to share things that you have learnt along the way and use customer feedback as they can also bring new information to light that can really make your product standout.

Remember the 80/20 rule

You have joined Twitter because you want to share content and promote your business. But remember that Twitter is not only used for that and if you only tweet about promoting your business you will be lost in the shuffle. That’s why it is important to remember the 80/20 rule which means that 80% of your content should be tweets about topics that your target audience is interested in or wants, likes or needs to know. The remaining 20% should then be used to promote your company and products. It’s about gaining a audience so when you promote there will be people there to see it.

Follow before engaging

When you start looking for other businesses in your field or potential prospects, it is advised to follow them first before you engage in conversation. This will allow you to see how the person uses Twitter which will give you a better understanding of how to approach them or even if they are the right target for you.

Add value to others

To help stand out from the crowd you need to create an impression with your professional network. You can achieve this by adding value to other peoples content. This is done by responding to other peoples questions, retweet posts from people you want to engage with and post content that is relevant and valuable to others. This will then in turn cause others to do the same for you eg. retweeting your content and promoting your brand.

Share your personality

Social media experts believe that mixing your professional and personal insights result in the best use of Twitter. People will originally follow you for what you provide and a source of information for the topics they are interested in. But when it comes down to them actually doing business with you they want to know what kind of person they are dealing with. You can resolve this by sharing your personality. You can show what you are like outside of your work persona which will build trust between you and the customer. Remember to hold certain things back, make sure your content is still relevant to the business and don’t get to personal.

what’s best to retweet and Favorite?

When you are retweeting or favoriting content make sure that it is relevant to you and in line with your business. This will allow you to better connect with your desired audience. Try to steer clear of divisive subjects that are not relative.

Use of direct messages

You should only consider using direct messages after you have already established a good relationship with a follower/customer. Direct messages can be considered spam if the receiver is unfamiliar with your brand, which can cause people to be put off. Try to avoid them unless they are requested by the consumer.

Take the conversation offline

Using a combination of these tips and your own knowledge, experience and judgment you would of hopefully made connections with clients. Once you have these connections you should move on to communicating outside of twitter. Send them an email, phone them or meet them in person. Twitter is the medium for connection, but once you have a forum to deliver a message that’s more than 140 characters, it’s time to connect outside social media.

Mike James

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