As social media engagement increasingly becomes an important metric for small business marketing, many entrepreneurs and business owners feel overwhelmed by the available options.
These days, Facebook is usually the go-to platform, but Twitter can play a valuable role in a strategic marketing approach.
It can be hard to find the right balance between playful and professional, relevant and current, and pithy and informative when it comes to 140-character tweets. Read on for five ways companies can boost interactivity on Twitter and improve their bottom line.
Tweet relevant content
As you grow your community, you want to fill a specific niche for your followers. Make sure your content is generally tied to the company’s industry. There is, of course, some wiggle room for “tweeting outside the box”, but it’s a good idea to offer up content that is relevant to your business to keep things consistent.
Optimize message times
Take advantage of programs like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck to prep tweets first thing in the morning (or at the start of each week) to avoid any lulls in messaging.
While you certainly don’t want to rely completely on auto messaging, it can make it easier to stay consistent with tweets throughout the day.
Another timing trick – write unique, interesting tweets in the afternoon when other tweeters are tired after lunch. Your tweets are more likely to be retweeted when followers don’t feel like putting in the effort to make up their own content.
Use hashtags
Hashtags are a great way to expose your brand to those who wouldn’t normally stumble across your tweets.
Look on the homepage for the trending hashtags of the moment and include the most relevant one to the end of your tweet. Hashtags are easily searchable and, depending on your industry, they can make a “boring” company seem fun and worthy of engagement.
Mention others
Twitter is a great place to get the attention of people who could be major brand influencers down the line.
Interact with people with large followings on twitter and mention them whenever possible to ensure that they see your tweets.
When important tweeters engage with your brand, you increase the odds of gaining free publicity from them.
Just include @username to the end of a tweet when you want to direct someone’s attention to your message.
Ask questions
Asking questions is a great way to get followers engaged and interacting with your brand.
Questions also serve as a valuable, informal survey tool. The merchant account provider, HighRiskPay.com found that posing questions about convenient payment solutions for small businesses was one way to determine what services were most valuable to customers.
The process of asking questions via twitter is not as scientific as conducting official market research, but in this case, it provided the company with information about their business model and made it easier to appeal to customers down the line. All thanks to inquiring tweets.
Twitter might not be considered the most professional of social networks but it’s a valuable tool for any company looking to promote a brand and gain visibility on the web. Not only is twitter a way to interact with users around the world, it’s also a way to share industry news and build a community of potential customers.
About the Author – Brian Patterson is a Marketing Analyst with Online Trading Academy, a day trading education firm with 33 locations spread internationally.
It is common knowledge in the world of search engine optimization that using social media channels as promotional tools can really make a big difference.