How To Use Twitter For Your Business
After Facebook, Twitter is one of the most popular social media platforms. Boasting over seven million monthly active visitors in Canada alone, if your business is not tweeting, now is the time to get started!
Welcome to Part 3 of the Social Media Series. This post will discuss how to develop your business using Twitter, the things you should be doing and what you should avoid. If you’ve missed the first parts of the series click here to start with our general Social Media Marketing Guidelines.
Twitter DOs:
1. Be Visual
Twitter states that tweets with photos get 313% more engagement. So try and use eye catching and high-quality images to accompany your tweets.
2. Retweet
Twitter is a social community and it is important to interact with others in your network. If someone you follow posts informative and relevant content to your followers retweet it. This may not only increase your followers but may extend your reach.
3. Tweet Chat
A Tweet Chat is a scheduled, live, and moderated event that is focused around a general topic. Participating in a Tweet Chat is a great way to discuss and connect with other people relevant to your industry.
4. Shorten Links
Each tweet is limited to 140 characters, so why would you waste space with a long URL? Shorten your links with a URL shortener. It is also important to remember to be concise with tweets. Get your message out with simple, understandable, and grammatically correct language.
5. Use Hashtags
Hashtags are a way of categorizing tweets and providing information about the topic. By using hashtags you increase the reach of your message and can partake in conversations with others, relevant to that hashtag.
Twitter DONT’s:
1. Follow Irrelevant People
While your first instinct may be to follow everyone to reach a high number of twitter followers, this is not a good strategy. This can negatively impact your engagement as many people that you follow may be unrelated or uninterested in your business. It is more important to have a smaller network of people interested or relevant to your business.
2. Ignore a Tagged Tweet
If someone tags you in a tweet or engages in a conversation with your business do not ignore it. If it is a question provide an answer or direct them to call you for more information. If they posted some information for you send a thank you tweet. Sending a tweet takes less than a minute and you never run out of them, so use them.
3. Be Repetitive
Do not tweet the same thing every day. This will get boring and annoy your followers and could decrease your engagement.
4. Follow Influencers Alone
While it is beneficial to follow influencers in your industry, do not only follow those people. It is better to follow more average users that are relevant to your industry, and some influencers. The point of following people is to build an online networking relationship with them. Therefore, you should follow people that you can actually connect with.
Don’t miss the next part in our social media series! Follow us on Twitter @atf_media or like our Facebook Page to read our next entry, Social Guide for a Business Linkedin.