Twitter Tips for Businesses!

Hello and welcome back! This month we’re going to discuss Twitter and how businesses can successfully leverage the platform. If you’re like most people, you don’t know where to start, but with over 300 million monthly users, Twitter is one network you shouldn’t ignore.

Here are our TOP EIGHT TIPS for utilizing Twitter:

1. You only have 140 characters, use them wisely! You have a very short amount of space to grab somebody’s attention, make sure your tweets are enticing and relevant. Think about it as if you’re writing the headline of a newspaper.
   
2. Establish yourself as an industry expert. Become a trustworthy source of information by putting out high quality information. If you’re tweeting your blogs, make sure to fact check your blogs and always provide links to your sources.
3. Attract and maintain your Twitter followers. Make sure to tweet content that your followers can’t get anywhere else. If you always post the same content across all of your social media channels, your followers won’t have any reason to engage with you on multiple channels. Keep your content exciting, post images (images receive the highest engagement), quotations, run competitions, promotions, provide industry insight.
4. Promote your Twitter account online and offline. Make sure to include your Twitter (and other social media handles) on your website, business cards, email signature, newsletters, etc. When creating your usernames (aka “handles”) make sure to be as consistent as possible for brand recognition.
5. Send out important Tweets multiple times. Twitter posts can be very fleeting so be sure to repost content. Feel free to post a single blog multiple times over a period of days, just change the headline.
6. Follow and engage with industry influencers. Follow other industry experts and engage with them. Join their conversations and share their content. Follow their followers which will serve to introduce your business to new fans.
7. Be careful with your hashtags. Make sure you know what a hashtag means before jumping on the bandwagon and using it. In a more wellknown incident, DiGiorno’s Pizza used the hashtag #WhyIStayed in one or their pizza promotions before realizing it was tied to a domestic violence discussion.
8. If you’re finding you don’t have time to post on Twitter, schedule your Tweets in advance. Websites like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck will help you manage your Twitter account, follow mentions of your business, and schedule tweets.

We hope you found this installment of our small business marketing series helpful. If you have any questions about Twitter and how to best utilize it, please feel free to email me, Amy Grishman, CEO of Social Focus www.socialfocus.com, for more information. See you next month!