Twitter and other social media platforms are great ways to keep in touch. What started as a purely personal platform for people to re-connect with friends and family has today become a marketing tool for business, small and large. Businesses are literally hustling up to get attention on social media platforms and leave their mark on people. There is no doubt that Twitter is a great marketing tool for businesses and taking the right steps is the only way to get noticed. But what are these right steps? In this article we will be looking at a few great ways to use Twitter for marketing.
1# Focusing on How To Use Search Results
Search function on Twitter works in a slightly different manner. For example when we type keywords in a search engine, we get any/all results related to the words used. You would expect the same for Twitter however this isn’t the case. Twitter lists results when ‘all’ the keywords are present in a single tweet. Now, that’s not very helpful, isn’t it? To avoid this you can use ‘the/or’ in between keywords while searching on Twitter. The use of these words tells Twitter that you are searching for one or the other term from the keywords.
2# Creating a ‘Special’ List of Followers
The idea of using Twitter for marketing is to follow certain kind of people/organizations. Similarly you would want that section of people to follow you who would add to your business in some way or the other. Twitter allows you to group people based on similar characteristics, functions or interests. You can set these groups to be private or public. With the help of the group, you can monitor your competitors, ideally on a private list, and flaunt your brand advocates on a public list. There are other advantages of using groups – you can attract more people to your profile as your group listing can/will attract others. You can also aim to become an authority in your field when your community starts trusting the information you tweet. The twitter account of Moz, Unbounce, ChameleonJohn, Brandingly etc are living proof of this.
3# Images and Videos Should Never Be Neglected
Images and videos boost the chances of re-tweets. We are not merely saying it but we are quoting from a research done by Twitter which reveals that adding an image to a tweet boosts re-tweets up to 35% and adding a video boosts results by 28%. The reason for this is quite simple. People get a sense of engagement when they see their pictures/videos getting appreciation in the form of re-tweets. Twitter is integrated with video-sharing sites such as YouTube and Vine (owned by Twitter) which makes it easier to upload videos as tweets.
4# Communicate With People
There is a very popular saying about marketing – ‘people don’t talk to brands, they talk to people’. Twitter should not be seen as a medium to only give out information, in a top-down method. Twitter should be seen as a channel to strike a conversation. Ask a question, incite your followers to reply, put across your opinion once they reply and make things personal. Customers should feel that their favorite brands are listening to them too and not hammering them with information. The advantage of using social media for marketing is that it helps brands connect to their customers in real-time, something that other mediums haven’t offered. Use it wisely and communicate with people.
5# Use Analytics to Measure Engagement
It is one thing to follow the above mentioned tricks for marketing your brand on Twitter but it would be equally foolish to think your job is done. Unless you keep a track on how your tweets are affecting your target audience, you wouldn’t really be making any progress with your marketing. You need to measure the reach of your tweet. You can use the analytics feature which gives insightful statistics about your account. However, the catch is that you have to sign up to Twitter Ads for accessing analytics. However analytics is free.
Social media, especially Twitter has had a huge impact on business and the above are tried and tested methods. Of course, there are many more tricks to use Twitter for marketing and the web is filled with resources for you to check.