If you are running a business – whether it is Internet-based or local – you certainly need additional promotion to reach more people, prospective customers. Harnessing the power of the Internet is one cost-effective way to do that.  And, with the current domination of online social media, it makes sense to invest some time and effort particularly on Facebook and Twitter – the leading social media giants to date. We will discuss specifically about Twitter in this resource – on how to tweet for business.

We should begin our core discussion with this threshold question: what should you tweet about for your business?
Tweeting for business could be challenging especially for beginners. However, according to Anne-Marie Concepcion, a reputable social media marketing consultant, you can craft follow-worthy tweets easier by considering topics that fall in the following three (3) general categories:

Tweeting about Sales and Marketing

What can you post under sales and marketing topic? Since you are running a business, your main goal is to increase your return-on-investments (ROI) and a tweet that has something to do with any of the following has been proven effective:

•    Event sign-up – most especially if you are hosting a free event (whether virtual or in person), an event is worth tweeting for business.

•    Time-limited sales – do you have a special offer? If so, you should inform the twitterworld about that (you might have 20% discount on all your products or services that would last for only a day or two).

•    Coupon codes – in e-commerce, it is a special set of letters or numbers given to customers to obtain discounts when they purchase. Is your business offering discount coupons? Let your potential customers know about it – tweet it!

•    Website specials – if you have published new resources on your site (any content that other Twitter users might find them useful) they are worth tweeting.

•    Store/service special – what’s your company’s latest special offering to customers? Are you giving free samples of your latest product? Again, that’s worth a tweet!

Tweeting General Info

Tweeting general info is effective for you to give valuable posts to your followers. You can tweet about the following:

•    Industry news – what’s the latest in your industry? If you are into web development niche, you can tweet about a newly-developed website platform, latest on programming languages, etc.

•    Re-tweets – it is not always about original tweets; you can also re-tweet someone else’s post that you find useful for your own followers.

•    Ask questions – this is another yet effective way to spark a conversation and to make account more active. It can also develop a stronger relationship with your followers, including your prospective customers.

•    Request help/suggestions – are you organizing a special event for your business? Ask suggestions from people in the Twitter world and you will be surprised with the results.

•    Personal info – once in awhile, you can tweet about personal info as this creates an impression that there is indeed a real person working behind your Twitter account (not auto generated) and it helps build online credibility.

Tweeting Company info

Under this category, you can post topics that have something to do with the following:

•    Product images/videos – people might be interested about your new products and they are worth your tweets…even more effective when you include images or videos with them.

•    Staff – have you just hired new staff or interns? Feature them on your tweets!

•    Customer support – you can use your Twitter account to address your customers’ needs. Via tweets, you can provide answers to some questions and offer assistance pertaining to your product or service.

•    Customer/client news – if you are in web development niche you can tweet about the newly-published website you just created for a particular customer.

•    Product tips – customers are always eager to learn about how to use a particular product efficiently, effectively, etc.

•    Press mentions – have you just submitted a press release? Was your company’s name mentioned by a particular press lately? Have you had an interview with a press? Tweet them!

Attracting followers

There is no point investing your time and effort on Twitter if you are not able to build and increase the number of your followers. It is useless to post tweets without readers. You need to attract more followers and the these below can help:

•    Include your Twitter account URL everywhere – whether you are sending an email, submitting a press release or content to article directories, include your Twitter URL to generate more followers.

•    Write about your Twitter feed – you can mention your Twitter account in your press release content or other promotional campaign.

•    List your account in Twitter directories – Twitter directories are a useful way to find new followers. (Check this list of some popular Twitter directories)

•    Get re-tweeted – another way of getting new followers is to write tweets that other would re-tweet. You can gain more followers through the effort of others. Remember, any tweet could go viral).

•    Adding Twitter badges/buttons to your site – adding a Twitter badge or button to your site could bring more followers (your website visitors might be interested to follow you on Twitter so provide them an easy way to do it.)

•    Adding Twitter feed on your blog – aside from Twitter badges or button you can also add Twitter feed on your blog to provide your visitors with updates on what’s happening on your Twitter stream, which could make them follow your account and interact with you.

Note: If you find integrating your Twitter feed code by yourself difficult, you can have the option of sending the task to your web developer to avoid your site getting messed-up.

Measuring Your Impact

It is imperative that you understand how and where your Twitter campaign is going. Are you hitting your goal? Are you getting there? Are you getting your return on investments? Well, the best way to know that is through some analytics tools that measure the effectiveness of your campaign. And you can use the following:

Bitly – is a free tool that allows you to shorten and customize long URL of a page you want to post on Twitter.  In addition to that, it also provides some useful statistics on posts you tweet such as the number of clicks. Thus, it can give you some useful insights about your Twitter campaign.

 
Above is an image showing a sample ‘look and feel’ of bitly account

Google Analytics – is another yet free and effective tool that gives detailed information about your website performance, including referral traffic. You can get useful statistics on how much traffic your website is getting from Twitter with your posted links.

Click on Standard Reporting >>Traffic Sources>>Sources>>Referral to view your website referral traffic statistics.

Twitter provides a lot of possible ways to build online reputation and reach for a wider community of prospective customers, which can turn into paying customers. You just need to be more creative on attracting followers by posting follow-worthy tweets, making sensible interaction with other users, and other effective social engagement techniques.

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