8 Tips for Businesses on Twitter – Part 2

After setting up your account details and getting an idea about how to find people to interact with, let’ look at some more specific listening and posting ideas.

3. Listen Up

Now that you’ve got your feet wet with listening and searching, it’s time to start really finding people to talk to. Don’t ever forget that it’s a talking thing, not a spamming thing. One easy way to find people with similar interests is by using Sendible’s Twitter AutoFollower feature, which automatically follows people that mention certain keywords or phrases.

Then you need to get more specific and go after your target customers. Do Twitter searches for the name of every product you sell, your company’s officers if they are well known, and your competition’s mentions. If they shop your competition, they are your future customer – if you play your cards right. Try with and without “@” and hashtags.

Then, do searches for any terms which apply to your business. Using the Bob’s Boots example, we might search for “boots”, “cowboy”, “work boots”, “boot repair”, “sell boots”, or any other variation you can think of that is applicable – “shoes”, “footwear”, “hiking”, etc.

There are a lot of searches you can do, but the trick is to monitor them from now on. Doing all of those searches every day would take way too much time, but a good social media dashboard will do the listening for you and give you reports, which makes the job much easier. Then all you have to do is analyze the data, which of course a good dashboard will also do.

Once you have established a group to follow, monitor them for tweets that include “help” or “support” so that you can try to help them and offer value.

4. Make Every Shot Count

Establish a regular routine for your tweets and interactions, scheduling them with your dashboard. Make sure to follow the 80/20 rule of posting one self promotion out of every five tweets. The rest should be very interesting and attention-grabbing content that is relevant to your field. The part left out there is the personal touch, so don’t fall into the trap of regurgitating links exclusively for your content. Split the other four tweets into two personal tweets and two of curated content. You have to be a person on Twitter.

Use trusted and proven post types that attract attention. Images and infographics are at the top of that list. Discounts and giveaways are good once in a while. Ask yourself if you would follow you. Ask your friends if they would follow you. The point is to get attention, so make sure that every post is thought out to do just that.

Read more: Tips for Businesses on Twitter – Part 1