Business Twitter Tips

Twitter is a probably my favourite form of social media as it puts you in constant contact with prospects and customers. It allows you to communicate in bite size sound bites and if used correctly can drive customers to your business. However, never lose sight of what your aims are; to generate more business. Do your prospects need to know or care what you are eating or what you can see – I would imagine not!

So here are our top 5 tips which we believe most business Tweeters ignore on a daily basis:

1)   It’s all about the HEADLINE

You have 120 words to push someone to your website, blog or other area. This is not easy at all so your headline must be compelling and make people take the next logical step. This is your goal when tweeting – how do you push the reader to the next step. The whole process is very simple (but not that easy). You need to engage them with your tweet so they click on your link, then they go to your website (for example) and read some excellent copy on your new product, then they click on the find out more and email you, you respond and answer all of their questions and voila a new customer! Now, I am not naive and realise it is never that easy but I bet most businesses are getting it wrong on step one. Be compelling, interesting and drive the twitterers from Twitter.

2)   

F  Follow thy Followers

If someone follows you on Twitter, I am a firm believer in following them back as this has a dual effect. Firstly they were obviously interested in you enough to follow you – wouldn’t you like to know the sort of people your Tweets, and ultimately your business, is attracting? Secondly it is great for brand name recognition. If you follow them quickly after they follow you, they will have come in contact with your business twice in a very short period of time thus making recall far more likely.

3)  

   BBe Relevant

This is the golden rule and it is violated every day. People tweet the mundane, stupid observations and celebrity gossip. This is fine for social users and their followers may find this entertaining but it is not appropriate for business users. The other extreme is constantly talking about your business and essentially spamming your followers. You need to give something and want nothing in return. You need to highlight other sites, interesting articles and retweet relevant posts.

4)    Invite Customers

Twitter is also a great way of being constantly in front of your customers. It is a great way to touch base every day without taking up much of their time and whilst you are always at the forefront of their mind, competitors don’t stand a chance.

5)    

Help your Customers

A really advanced technique is to use your twitter account to promote your customers businesses.... and they will love you for it – Free Marketing! You should aim to tweet about one of their “great” services, a recent clients win or an important news story. Not only will this give you varied content but it will help cement you customers to you.

Follow these rules and you should see a dramatic improvement in your conversion rate. As ever, for all your social media needs and to really take this service to the next level, you can talk to Igneous Marketing – plus some of our unique, pay monthly small business marketing bundles actually include a whole range of social media options.