These days, no business is unaware of the importance of social media for their marketing efforts. There are a whole host of social media platforms that companies can use to advertise their brand, and different types of business will want to choose different platforms to better suit them. However, social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Google+ are a must for almost everyone.
Having a business presence on Twitter, in particular, is critical for business, as it is one of the most popular social networks for people of all ages and offers a great way to send messages and influence potential customers in an engaging way.
However, things move very fast on Twitter, with the average lifespan of a tweet being just 18 minutes. This means that, to make sure that your tweets have the impact and shareability that you want, you need to employ certain marketing techniques to attract attention. Here are some of the best ways to make your Twitter account work for your brand.
Build Your Profile
Before you can start sending out tweets, you need to create a business Twitter profile that is going to suitably represent your brand. When people look at your Twitter account, they should immediately be able to connect it with your brand, so the most important element is your image. This should be your logo and should be appropriately sized so that any posts or comments you make are instantly recognisable as coming from your company.
To do this, head over to Google and look up Twitter profile image sizes, which should give you the exact sizes that you need. You can then take a high res version of your logo and resize it so that it fits into these dimensions. If your logo doesn’t fit, you may have to do some customisation to the image to ensure that it does.
The next thing to consider is your Twitter handle, which is the @______ heading that accompanies your profile. When people want to tag you or find your business this is what they will type in, so it needs to remain consistent with your other marketing. If the handle you want isn’t available then make small changes, but don’t make it too difficult to find your page.
As an example, you cannot include the character ‘&’ in a Twitter handle, so the brand H&M changed their handle to @hm. This is an appropriate change that still references their brand.
Write Your Bio
A lot of people skip this step, believing that people don’t really read bios anyway. This is not true, especially for businesses, and your bio is one of the first things that a user will see that tells them what your business is all about.
You only have 160 characters to write your bio, so it needs to be concise, clever and interesting. Some of the things that you should consider when writing your bio are:
- Let people know exactly what your business does, and who you are.
- Showcasing your brand personality. People aren’t going to be intrigued by boring business talk with no personality. Don’t be afraid to use humour.
- Targeting it to your audience. You know who your target audience is, so prove it by speaking directly to them in your bio.
- Talking about your achievements. If you have things to be proud of, tell people. There is no harm in bragging on your own profile!
- Adding relevant hashtags. This will help people to find you that may not know your business by name.
Don’t Skip The Social Buttons
Another thing that people tend to ignore that can cost them lots of followers is social buttons. Every business with social networking should include their social buttons on their website, as this is the simplest way for customers who do know about you to congregate on your socials and start building a community.
Have Stellar Customer Support
One of the reasons that internet users like companies to have social networks is it provides a much faster and more personal way to get in touch when they need to. If you are setting up a Twitter profile, then you must be sure that you have the time and manpower to get back to people as quickly and helpfully as possible through Twitter chat. You should also be able to stay on top of your mentions and stay engaged with your audience, so that you can build a reputation as a company who cares.
Be Hashtag Savvy
Just using hashtags isn’t enough to grow your business and keep your audience engaged. You have to know what hashtags to use and how to use them or you risk damaging your engagement instead.
Tweets that contain hashtags tend to receive twice the engagement of those that don’t. However, tweets that contain more than two hashtags actually receive a drop in engagement of 17%
Make sure that you choose hashtags that are relevant to your business and the subject of your tweet and use them appropriately so that you aren’t overusing them and drowning yourself out.
A great tool to use if you are unsure is Hashtagify, which suggests hashtags for you based on the keywords that you enter. This tool also allows you to gauge the strength of your hashtags before you use them, so that you can choose the strongest options for each individual tweet.
Be Creative In Your Calls-To-Action
Because this is a business account, chances are you will be using a lot of your tweets in order to drive sales, generate leads and so on. This is something that you want to happen as the result of a tweet but is also something you need to hide from your readers so that they don’t feel pressured. Simply asking people to share your posts is fine in small doses, but you have to give followers a really good reason to do so.
Instead, use more creative calls-to-action alongside your tweets, that encourage a range of different activities and keep followers on their toes.
Some examples you might use include:
- Follow us
- Visit our site here
- Shop this (look, sale etc)
- Download
- Find out more
Post Regularly
By the time you have finished reading this sentence, about 25,000 tweets will have been posted. That’s a lot of tweets for sure, but luckily most experts suggest that you only need to tweet 3 times a day to get optimal results.
While this figure is relatively modest, it can still be a significant obstacle for smaller businesses which do not have any one solely dedicated to social media management. In these cases it can be a good idea to investigate the benefits of allowing an outside company to manage your profile.
Here at MaxWeb, alongside everything internet and website related, social media management is a core services that we provide. If you are interested in getting on the Twitter bandwagon but wish to leave it to the experts, then we would love to talk to you. Why not give us a call on 0151 652 4777 or email info@maxwebsolutions.co.uk to find out more.
Posted on Friday, January 31st, 2020 in Social Media.
