You’ve heard of Twitter and Tweets – everyone seems to be doing it these days – but does this social media outlet have any potential to help your small business grow and succeed? A Tweet may only be 140 characters long, but a lot of marketing punch can be packed into those characters. As a leading global social media communications mechanism, Twitter had 307 million monthly active users as of the third quarter of 2015.
You don’t have to be a celebrity or a major business to take advantage of this marketing opportunity. Whether following industry innovators, or posting your own updates, here are five Twitter tactics that your small business can implement quickly and cost-effectively:
- Follow and ReTweet: This doesn’t even take any extraordinary creativity on your part. Follow thought leaders and creative thinkers in your industry and ReTweet their posts with a comment of your own.
- Be Consistent: You can’t build a following if you are only posting on a hit or miss basis. Set a schedule for how often you want to Tweet – whether it is once a day or once a week – but keep to it. You can put together some ideas in advance so there isn’t a lot of last minute stress.
- Be Interesting: Don’t only Tweet about yourself, your products and services, or your business. Your followers want to know what is in it for them. Think about things that your followers will be interested in knowing and mix that in with product updates and new information. You can run the occasional contest or promotion, tell an audience-appropriate joke, and even include a video or photo every now and then, just to keep things fresh and interesting. Followers should never be able to predict exactly what they will get from you.
- Be Engaged and Engaging: Twitter is often a two-way street. A follower may ask you a question, which you will need to answer promptly. If someone ReTweets one of your posts, a quick “thank you” is in order. This is a social medium – which means being social – not a “post and hide” event.
- You’ve Gotta Love the Hashtag: Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake did a great parody on the overuse of hashtags, but the reality is that hashtags work. Include appropriate hashtags in your Tweets to help non-followers find you when they are searching by topic.
Use Twitter to let followers know about any new blog posts or updates to your website. This is a current medium which responds in the “right now.” Twitter users do follow businesses, and they like to buy from the businesses they follow. Plus, the mobile-friendly aspect of Twitter helps your business communicate to the modern consumer on the go. Twitter isn’t for the birds; it is a smart marketing strategy that can be used by any small business entrepreneur to attract prospects and help convert leads into sales and profit.