With over a billion registered accounts and 271 million active monthly users, Twitter is one of the biggest in the social media game alongside Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn. Big business and SMEs alike are taking advantage of this giant audience, free to access and still growing.
Although many users use Twitter to update friends and family on their day-to-day activities, the platform allows users to engage with people who share similar interests or desires from across the globe. Brands have used the platform to introduce new products, drive increased sales interest and now Amazon have introduced a way for users to add tweeted products to their shopping carts via #AmazonCart.
If you haven’t jumped up on the band wagon yet, or are a little unsure as to how to get started on Twitter, this list of tips will clear up a lot of the confusion. Even if you’re already an avid producer of ground-breaking tweets, think of this as a refresher course—there’s plenty in this list for you to brush up on as well.
First things first: present your brand right.
One of the major benefits of producing content for Twitter is the huge audience you stand to connect with. It’s also good reason to be certain that your business and brand image is carefully constructed and presented well to the world.
Think of your brand as a personality. Do you define your brand as casual and funny or more formal and informative? These are the sorts of questions you must ask yourself before tweeting for the first time.
How you define and position your brand will determine the type of audience member you will attract; it will also determine how likely you are to be followed by influencers in or around your industry.
Develop an effective plan of attack.
As we’ve outlined above, there are all sorts of ways to use Twitter. In order to develop content that remains consistent with your brand, you’ll want to first develop a communications strategy and stick to it.
It’s just as easy for a tennis shoe to have a Twitter account as it is for a fictional character, infant or household pet. Decide whether you will be selling products, promoting yourself as an expert or positioning yourself as an industry leader, sharing breaking news.
The aim of the game is to attract attention and keep it. Once you have been followed by a Twitter user, your tweets will continue to appear in their news feed and drive future engagement.
A picture speaks a thousand words.
Each tweet may be limited to 140 characters, but the images you include will blast open your capacity to communicate effectively.
Once you have determined how you will present your brand and what you will tweet about and how, be sure to source engaging images that will not only demand attention but reinforce your brand personality.
For example, if you’re tweeting as an organic grocer, simply uploading the logo of your business may not be enough to stand out in the Twitter world. Try uploading a photo of a beautiful leafy salad, a close-up of a tomato covered in beads of glistening water, or a kid ripping up a carrot from the ground.
Be creative, be different.
Know your hashtags, people.
Hashtags aren’t unique to the way Twitter works. In fact, hashtags are used by a lot of social media platforms and are essential to use.
Hashtags allow you to highlight the key words in a tweet you publish. It’s a way for those looking for information in a specific area to find your tweets, your profile, and follow you for future updates or information.
When deciding on the key words to hashtag in a tweet, consider popular keywords that are already ‘trending’ or in common usage. It’s best to avoid reinventing the wheel here; watch what words others in your industry or popular influencers are consistently hashtagging and use the same.
Google can also give you a hand determining your keywords with their keyword planner—a priceless tool for cutting through the noise.
Building your audience; follow to be followed.
Once you get started and you’ve polished up your profile, developed your Twitter brand and have a plan of attack, the next step is to observe.
It’s important to see what’s out there, what the competition are tweeting about and what influencers are saying. You will build the audience for your tweets by gaining followers. Follow appropriate influencers, potential customers and those businesses in your industry.
If you can get one or two big brands or an influencer to follow you, ‘favourite’ or ‘retweet’ one of your tweets this will give your profile and your brand a great deal of new exposure.
Make your first tweets count—most of us don’t.
As a new user of Twitter you have a wonderful opportunity that most of us gave up years ago. Writing your first tweet can be a great way to generate a lot of interest and, if you do it right, it may even be retweeted and shared with much larger audiences.
Don’t let your first tweet worry you too much, however. Planning to introduce a competition exclusive to twitter or new product teasers is already surpassing the first tweets of many now-influential Twitter jockeys.
Jeff Bullas or @jeffbullas, for example, an Australian marketing and advertising guru or influencer currently has over 260,000 Twitter followers. His first tweet to the world was “watching the cricket.”
Finally, cross promotion is key to growth.
Twitter, like all social media is about forming connections with people. You’ll have to get the word out there if you want to generate followers.
You may already have a healthy number of connections generated through other social platforms or online gateways such as your Facebook page, LinkedIn profile or company website.
Using these other platforms, invite your friends and connections to follow you on twitter. Publicise your Twitter ‘handle’, for example @Jo_anneRyan on your website and on print media like pamphlets, signage or your business cards.
You may not believe that Twitter is something that can benefit your business. But, with Google’s prediction that mobile-based searches will surpass those on desktop computers by next year, the true penetrative power of social media and Twitter a cog in its machine is something to consider now.
Getting started on Twitter is easy. What they don’t tell you, however, is that for a business to have a truly robust presence online, an integrated communications strategy is best.
Lost for words?
Infodec Communications are experts in producing online and offline marketing plans. We are an experienced communications agency that has developed and executed a number of creative and hard-hitting marketing campaigns for SMEs and big business alike.
If you would like to learn more about what Infodec can do to enhance the market presence of you and your business, contact us today to discuss a plan, tailor-made for you.
