Making the Most of Twitter for Your Business

Whether you have been in business for a long time or a short time, the truth is that you have been remiss if you did not include social media in your content marketing strategy. Of course, the particular social media channels that you choose are up to you. You probably went with the popular ones, which are popular for good reasons. One of those is Twitter, which is more powerful than you might think for business.

The different ways to use Twitter for business

There are a bunch of different ways that you can make Twitter work for your business and your brand. The one thing that you will not want to do with Twitter is to tweet with no strategy behind it. Random tweeting is what gets a lot of people into trouble!

If you are just starting out with Twitter,  you may not have a large number of followers yet. It is definitely a good idea to go with quality over quantity. You will want your followers to become loyal to you and to your brand and you will need to make sure that you give them what they need and want so that you can build solid, meaningful relationships together. Before you can really tap into the power of Twitter and leverage it for your business to its fullest potential, you will need to understand how it works and what it is.

What Twitter Is and How it Works

Twitter is one of the most popular social media channels and because you are obligated to stay within a certain length for each tweet that you share, it forces you to think and write clearly, concisely, and on point (doing all of it creatively at the same time).

Once you have gotten really good at tweeting effectively, the followers will come. It is important to remember (again) that you should focus on high-quality followers rather than worrying about the numbers so much. Afterall, what good is having a large number of followers on Twitter if you never interact with them, or worse yet, if you don’t even know who they are?

When it comes to Twitter and your brand, you should understand that the possibilities are virtually limitless! However, at the same time, it is important to keep in mind that Twitter will not work for you effectively if you simply create an account and fill in your profile. You will need to do much more than that. There are some actions that you will need to take that will help you to get the most out of Twitter for your brand and for your business.

Make your Twitter profile your own

The last thing that you want to do is to have a generic Twitter profile. You will need to customize your profile to your brand. The simple reason that you will want (and need) to do that is that that is the only way that other people will have an understanding (or acquaintanceship) with you as a person and what you can offer them professionally.

Once people have a pretty good idea of what you can do for them, they will want to become your followers at some point. If you are not sure exactly how you should go about customizing your Twitter profile, you can do the following:

• Link your profile to an icon that is closely linked to your brand: The last thing that you want to do is to leave a blank space where the icon should go. Other people will understand that to mean that you are not serious (or professional) about what you are doing. It may also be read as laziness or apathy. Another perception that other people may get is that you have no idea how to use Twitter (or any other technology-based platform), which is the worst that can happen. That certainly will not do your brand any good.

• Use an image for your header: The idea is similar to why you linked an icon to your profile. You want people to identify your brand with the graphic image. Since it is a clear representation lf your brand, you will want it to be of the highest quality possible. It is should also be unique and memorable.

• Make sure that your profile is aesthetically pleasing: It is a known fact that colors influence people, in life and in business. You will want to choose colors that have strong identity power and that cause a positive emotional reaction in anyone who sees those colors. Your colors should be associated with everything that you touch. They are your signature.

• Have a biography, including interesting details about your brand and business, on your profile: The biography should be clear, concise, and to the point. You can make it a little longer than a tweet, but not much. The bio should include who you are, where you are, what you offer, and it should have a link to your website.

Be careful what you tweet

Interestingly, it may be more challenging (at least, in the beginning) than you think to write an effective tweet. However, because we are talking about your business, you want every, single tweet to be spot on. Of course, one of your biggest challenges is the length limit. Once you get used to that, you will find it much easier.

There are certain elements that you should think about including in your tweets, such as images; links to other relevant, compelling content; videos; surveys; hashtags, and add a Twitter button. Of course, not all of these elements will find their way into all of your tweets; however, using some of them some of the time will most likely produce positive results.

Things to avoid

In addition to what you should do, there are also some things that you shouldn’t do when it comes to Twitter. You should not:

• Give anyone the “hard sell” Nobody likes that and nobody reacts well to it.
• Take over discussions that other people have started. In fact, you shouldn’t take over any discussions. You want to be a valuable part of the discussions (assuming that you have something valuable to contribute) but you don’t want to monopolize them.
• Forget to optimize your tweets for the search engines.
• Forget to “speak” in a consistent “voice.”
• Dismiss feedback from other people. Feedback (both positive and negative) is extremely important and it helps you to grow.
• Overtweet. It is annoying to other people and you may be banned from Twitter.
• Ever be offensive.
• Forget about hashtags. Hashtags are critical to your success on Twitter.
• Forget to be yourself. Afterall, that is why you are succeeding and why other people want to interact with you.

Conclusion

Twitter for business is a powerful tool and it will help you to bring your business to the next level. It is an extremely powerful marketing tool that will bring your brand very far. In fact, another part of the strategy that will help you is gathering the analytics to find out exactly how your Twitter efforts are paying off.  It isn’t about writing random tweets about what you had for breakfast and what shoes you want to wear today. Twitter is so much more than that and if you build it into your marketing strategy from the beginning, it will serve you well.

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