As previously discussed in my post “Which Social Media Channels Should I Use For My Business?”,  I am following up with an more in-depth look at Twitter and why your business should make use of this social media channel.

There are about 1 billion registered Twitter users, with 241 million monthly active users. The average Twitter user has 208 followers. If you have succeeded in gaining some popularity with your Twitter account you will know how it can boost your business.

Twitter is meant not so much for friends and family but for people and prospects you actually want to communicate with.

You may think the 140 character count (or the amount of words you can tweet) is limited, but when used correctly, you can reap the rewards:

• Find and grow your target audience
• Engage with that audience in a fast and efficient way
• Be available to your audience instantly 24/7
• Build credibility
• Promote your company and your content, and Get Noticed!

Tapping into Twitter’s power:

• Twitter has proved its worth in recent years as a platform for breaking news.
• The great hashtag feature keeps you up to date with latest trends and news worthy events. Use hashtags for your business to increase your exposure and followers.
• It has become a rich source of fresh information that keeps you updated with your industry, customers, and competitors.
• It has become a repository of the latest thinking shared by industry and thought leaders, whom you can follow.
• It provides great information sources via links shared in tweets.
• It connect you with your customers.  If you have an unsatisfied customer you will hear them on Twitter, and this is your chance to excel at customer service. If you have a satisfied customer, encourage them to tweet about their experience.

Questions To Ask

Before setting up a Twitter profile for your business, here are some questions to ask:

1. Is this the right social media channel for your business and does your target audience use Twitter?  Make a list of your target audience demographics, and compare it to the user demographics of Twitter.  Americans make up 24.3% of monthly active users on Twitter.  27% of users in the USA comprise of 18-29 years olds, 16% are between 30-40.
2. Do you have the human resources available to effectively run your Twitter profile? Statistics show a business should tweet quality content at least 4-5 times per day, answer, comment and connect with followers as well as outreach to new followers.
3. Do you have the financial resources to grow your followers with advertising on Twitter? This will help you get your brand name out there and grow your followers. Work on a budget for what you can afford to spend on Twitter on a weekly or monthly basis.

How to Tweet to Twitter

• Plan your content ahead with a Content Calendar. This will help you work out a creative strategy, be consistent with your content on Twitter, and save you a ton of time.

• Use images on Twitter to get more retweets. Twitter just added inline images to tweets so that you don’t need to click a link to see an attached image, but rather the Tweet itself expands. This only works with images uploaded directly to Twitter (which use a pic.twitter.com URL).

• Keep your character counts above 70 and below 100, as it it gives you more room for the @username, RT and comments…and gets 17% more engagement.

• Use hashtags with your keywords and stay on top of the trending hashtags as well. Statistics show that at least 20.8% of retweets have at least one hashtag. Tweet about the trends and don’t forget about Follow Friday (#FF or #followfriday) where you can tweet about your favorite Twitter users, users that give useful information or just giving credit to your followers.

• Best times and days to tweet: Stats show click-through rates are higher on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, and tweets posted in the afternoon hours has higher CTRs that tweets posted in the mornings. You should do your own testing and experimenting with your Twitter account and your followers.

For more in-depth information on tweeting, read my blog on Understanding Twitter: Best Ways to Tweet.

Here’s more great reading on this:

Twitter Research By Dan Zarrella of Hubspot [Charts]

10 Surprising New Twitter Stats to Help You Reach More Followers

Tips for getting for Retweets

• Ask for a retweet! When tweeting to followers, don’t be afraid to ask for a retweet (or RT) and always give credit where it is due (for example mentioning your @username source). If your content is original, interesting and informative, users won’t mind retweeting it. Research has shown that ‘Please Retweet’ has a 51% retweet rate, while ‘PleaseRT’ has a 39% retweet rate.

• Keep you tweets interesting: Like all social media channels talking about your business all the time will result in a negative fan base growth and social sharing. Remember to adhere to the 80/20 rule: Only tweet about your business two out of ten tweets. You will increase followers due to your useful and entertaining content.

• Be Fresh and Creative: Almost 80% of Twitter users retweet news-worthy posts, so your tweets should be current, in line with recent news worthy events and give users your perspective on a news worthy subject. Also remember that when tweeting about news events, for example, to mention the @username (or the origin) of the article or information. Use @BBCNews or @HuffingtonPost where appropriate.

• Reward your Followers and Retweeters: Don’t forget to reward your followers on a regular basis, even if it is just an @username shout-out. Run competitions, take part in Follow Friday, mentioning one or two of your most engaging followers, and reply to the comments made on your tweets.

KEY: Before starting a Twitter profile for your business, work out a clear plan that can be easily implemented as it will help you stay focused on your goals for your social media campaigns.

Then you can focus on:

• Getting engaged in conversations with useful and relevant comments.
• Create content that is relevant to what people are talking about and share it with the right people on Twitter.
• Be helpful and answer questions, whether it is relevant to your business or not, if people know they can come to you for help, then they will listen when you speak!
• Tweet and re-Tweet helpful articles not created by you, just because you didn’t create it doesn’t mean people won’t be happy that you led them to it!

Don’t get frustrated and don’t give up in the first couple of weeks – Twitter does take time and effort. If you stick with it, you will certainly reap the rewards.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me to get you started!

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