How to Use Twitter Effectively to Promote Your Business

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Why you need to use Twitter as part of your marketing strategy

Since Twitter is one of the largest and most active social networks today, it's one of the places where you should promote products and services.

The efficiency of Twitter as a marketing tool has been proven time and again by various companies. For example, Dell Corporation made $6 million in sales over two years by simply tweeting about discounts and providing coupons for their Dell Outlet products.

Twitter can be effective to promote your business, create a brand and improve your relationship with your customers.

So how can people find your message and benefit from your message when there are so many untargeted messages? People use search features and specialized tools and software to find topics, conversations and resources that interest them.

How to use Twitter effectively to promote your business

Social media should be an important part of your marketing plan but you need to do it the right way. Below are several strategies to use Twitter to promote your products and services effectively.

1. Don’t be too salesy.

Share useful information, interact and develop relationships. If you only send promotional links, very few people will continue to follow you.  So, don’t make the mistake of thinking that Twitter is simply an advertising platform.

You need to remember that Twitter is a networking tool. Networking means sharing information and having conversations with people. Online networking is similar to offline networking. For example, when going to Chamber of Commerce meetings, you don’t just introduce your business. You talk to people and ask about their business first.

The strategy is the same with Twitter and other social networking sites. You need to develop relationships and become a valuable resource that others will recommend.  Here’s how you do that:

Successful marketing through social networks means building a relationship with your customers. Once you have that relationship in place you will quickly discover the value of loyal customers.

2. Focus on the needs of your followers

  • Help them (promote others by retweeting their tweets).
  • Share information (more info below).
  • Join conversations.
  • Provide incentives (more info below).
  • Show that you’re a human (provide some personal information).
  • Be funny.

3. Share information

  • Provide valuable information to build your reputation as a valuable resource (send them to useful blog posts).
  • Share ideas that can help your followers.
  • Occasionally recommend something your followers are interested in.
  • Inform your Twitter followers about resources from others that are valuable to them.

4. Provide incentives

  • Offering discounts and special offers is a popular strategy to keep your followers. Providing incentives like coupons and discounts have proven to work very well on Twitter. As mentioned earlier, Dell Corporation made $6 million in sales over two years by simply tweeting about discounts and providing coupons for their Dell Outlet products.
  • Giving away freebies (e.g. a free ebook), creates goodwill and builds a list of clients. Providing freebies seems to work better on blogs than on Twitter.

5. Join conversations

Participating in conversations is an effective strategy to connect with your Twitter followers and get additional high-quality followers. Here’s how to find relevant conversations and join them:

  • Don’t try to force a conversation topic. You don’t have to work on creating a buzz around your desired subject. Simply join existing conversations and try to be useful.
  • Find topics of interest to your audience and participate in topics your followers are engaged in. (Choose hashtags to follow. The # symbol, called a hashtag, is used to mark keywords or topics in a Tweet. Because hashtags identify specific topics, you can easily find people who are talking about specific topics.)
  • Answer questions your followers ask.
  • Ask questions.

Follow the strategies above to effectively promote your business with Twitter.

Social Media Articles 

SOCIAL MEDIA RESOURCES

  • Check out this planner bundle to help you plan your social media, your marketing, and your newsletters.
  • Graphic design software: Canva, PicMonkey, and Photoshop.
  • The Best Free Stock Photos and Images.
  • Tailwind – The best scheduling tool for Pinterest. They have an Instagram version too (but I haven’t tried Tailwind for Instagram yet). Read my Tailwind review here.
  • Hootsuite – Automates scheduling for several social media (I used to use it but switched to using SocialPilot). You can read my Hootsuite review here.
  • SmarterQueue – An all-in-one social media management tool that boosts engagement and lets you curate, schedule, listen, reply, and analyze in one place (SmarterQueue comes highly recommended by experts).
  • SocialPilot – Automates scheduling for a wide range of social media (I’m using it for Twitter and Facebook scheduling). You can read my review of Social Pilot here.
  • Tasty Pins plugin –  WordPress plugin that hides and optimizes Pinterest images in your blog posts.