Did you know that with social media marketing, your startup has a chance at competing with industry giants? Allow us to explain why and how you can use Twitter to grow your business and turn in profits.
The closer you are to your customers, the more likely they’ll remain loyal to your business. It’s even possible to build a community around your brand.
Having a brand community is the highest level of marketing possible. It’s creating a home for your customers and supporters, where they’ll be comfortable enough to put in the word for you and invite others to join the community. You can call it “free marketing”.
How can startups use Twitter to catch up with industry giants?
Twitter used to be a platform where only individuals shared their personal random thoughts. However, the platform has steadily evolved into a stage where businesses can develop “human-like” personalities and build close relationships with their audiences.
With over 186 million daily active users, it’s not hard to understand why businesses are struggling to charm their audiences on Twitter.
Twitter marketing is significantly cheaper than other marketing alternatives out there. This is good news for startups, that unlike the big dogs, can’t spend thousands of dollars on marketing campaigns. All you need is time and dedication.
So how can you get started with Twitter marketing? What are the best practices for promoting your business on twitter?
Read on to find out.
How to get started with promoting your business on Twitter
Before we start listing the practices, It’s important that you first understand how to get started with Twitter marketing.
The most important thing to have in mind is the concept behind business Twitter marketing. It’s all about personalizing your business. Giving your brand a voice and personality that will relate to the majority of people in your industry’s market.
Developing and maintaining your business’s personality is the trickiest and hardest part of Twitter marketing.
Below are some of the things you can do to get started.
1. Set up your Twitter Goals
Just like any other marketing campaign, you need to set clear, measurable, and realistic long-term and short-term goals.
Goals will also act as milestones that will help you gauge your efforts.
Of course, each goal has a metric related to it.
Below are some of the goals to have in mind as you get started with your Twitter marketing campaign.
a. Build Brand Awareness
An important goal for startups that are still new to the market. The metrics you can check to measure progress are Twitter page and website visits. Make sure that your Twitter followers are steadily increasing.
b. Boost Engagement
After generating traffic and building some followers, you need to make sure that they’re actively interacting with your business’s Twitter persona. Look out for likes, comments, and retweets.
c. Boost Sales Conversion
This is usually the next step after successfully engaging and building trust with your following. You need to come up with ways you can successfully convert them to buyers. Read on to find out how you can do that.
d. Client Referrals
This is the highest level of marketing you can reach where you not only keep your following but also get them to attract more followers for you. You can do this by establishing referral systems, launching fun challenges and competitions, and many more.
2. Find your Twitter persona
Discovering your business’s twitter persona is probably the hardest thing you’ll have to do as you get started. You need to come up with a brand voice that stands out from all other voices on Twitter.
Remember, the secret to succeeding on Twitter is personalizing your business as much as possible. People treasure authenticity.
Something casual with a hint of playfulness is good. You need to communicate with your following in a way that they’ll feel like they’re conversing with a real person.
While you’re at it, stay alert for the latest trends. Allow your business’s Twitter persona to carefully voice its opinions on trends. However, you need to be careful. Don’t be caught up in trends and forget your brand’s voice.
The best way you can approach this is by asking yourself this important question:
“If your business were a person, how would you want him or her to interact with others on Twitter? What character, personality, and voice would you like the person to have?”
Best Practices for Promoting Your Business on Twitter
After determining your business’s goals and Twitter persona, we’ll be going through some of the most important practices that will get your Twitter page up and running in no time.
1. Twitter profile optimization
Remember that as far as Twitter marketing is concerned, you need to treat your business as a person.
Your business’s Twitter profile constitutes 80% of the first impressions you make to your visitors. It needs to fully portray your brand.
Apart from portraying your brand’s personality, it also needs to be optimized for visibility. Just like traditional websites, you should leverage your Twitter account for organic traffic.
Below are sections you should optimize on your Twitter Profile.
a. Twitter Handle
This is your account’s name. Keep it short, simple, and as close as possible to your business’s name.
b. Bio
This is the first chance you have to capture your visitor’s attention. Say something interesting about your business, but keep it short and simple. You can also add links to your other social media pages and business website. For optimization purposes, add some hashtags that are relevant to your industry.
c. Popular Pinned Tweets
After seeing your bio, the next thing to hit your visitors on the face is your first tweet. It needs to be interesting, and that is why we’d advise you to pin your most popular tweet. Do it well, and you’ll have your visitors following for more content.
2. Use Twitter Ads
We’d advise you to spend some money on paid Twitter Ads at the start of your Twitter marketing campaign.
You don’t have a lot of content to fully rely on organic traffic, therefore, Twitter Ads will help you appear before users even if they’re not searching for your business.
While you’re at it, don’t be too salesy with your ads. Keep them interesting- Remember, the goal is to drive traffic to your Twitter page and not to close sales.
3. Post and engage regularly.
The most important practice of them all.
Remember that on Twitter, you need to treat your business as a person. Stay silent and shy, and no one will be interested.
At the start, make sure you tweet at least 5 times a day. Share informative, interesting, and funny industry-related information. Videos, gifs, pictures, and texts are all welcome.
You don’t have to create the content. You can retweet existing content as long as it provides value to your visitors. However, be careful, retweeted content can easily dilute your business’s persona. A healthy 3 to 2 (inhouse to retweeted) content ratio should be enough.
Next, take the time to engage with your existing followers (at least once to twice a day).
Consistency is key. The more you post and engage, the more people are likely to follow your Twitter handle.
It’s easy, just sit down and figure out what content you want to share on your page for the upcoming month. You can then use social media scheduling tools to automatically schedule and post your tweets.
How do I come up with ideas? You can do some research or even go through your competitors’ Twitter profiles and see what they’re posting to make sure you’re not left behind. Twitonomy can help with this.
Conclusion
Promoting your business on Twitter is fairly easy. It’s one of the few ways startups can easily catch up with industry giants. You don’t have to spend a lot of money on marketing campaigns. All you have to do is build a brand persona that is relatable and interesting.
Twitter is also known as the “Discovery Social Media Platform”. This is because Twitter users are more inclined to try out new products and services. As a startup owner, you should rejoice and take advantage of this.
