The following post is by MPFJ staff writer Shondell Varcianna of Call Me What You Want Even Cheap and Varci Media. Enjoy!
With over 300 million users, the massively popular micro-blogging social media site, Twitter, can be a great online marketing tool.
Once you sign up, it gives you access to a vast pool of potential customers for free. It provides the easiest way to reach out to customers, since every tweet goes to all your followers. Tweets are easy to create and each tweet takes less than a minute to write and post. And since each post is limited to 140 characters, you can be specific and direct with your followers without offending them.
Like any marketing program, Twitter can be an effective marketing tool only if you know how to use it to your advantage. Here are 5 tips on how to use Twitter effectively:
1. Tweet useful info as often as you can
At any instant, hundreds of other businesses in your niche could be vying for user attention.
So, in order to get noticed, you need to participate actively. This means you should tweet as often as you can. If you do not have a variety of useful content to tweet, you can tweet and re-tweet the same tweet several times a day with slight modifications. If you have nothing to tweet of your own, you can re-tweet other users’ tweets. Being actively present ensures an audience of loyal followers who will not only wait for your tweets, but also re-tweet your tweets, which will expand your reach to other users who are not your followers.
2. Follow your existing and potential customers
It’s not only celebrities who like to have legions of followers; everyone likes to have hundreds of followers on social media sites. They will be happy to be followed even if they have nothing to say. So, you should seek out and follow your existing and potential customers. In return, they will repay you with their support and loyalty. Your more loyal followers will follow your tweets religiously and retweet your tweets frequently, which is a great way to attract more followers. It goes without saying that the more people you follow, the more followers you will have. So, don’t just wait for people to follow you; take the initiative in following other users. You will have nothing to lose and only to gain.
3. Follow people and businesses in your industry
Twitter is a great place to get the information and news that you need to keep abreast of the latest developments in your industry. Individuals and businesses that have come up with innovative ideas and products often spread the word through social media sites like Twitter. So, you should actively seek out people and businesses in your niche and follow them and encourage them you follow you back. This generates awareness of your Twitter presence and can attract new followers. Following competitors can even lead to collaborations, which can give you access to their large base of customers and create new avenues of opportunities.
4. Place links in your tweets
Instead of just relying on your Twitter account for other people to find you, you should actively direct potential followers and customers to your website or blog. The easiest way to do this is to place a link in your tweets and on your home page. Other social medial sites like Facebook and LinkedIn allow you to put links to your Twitter account in your status. You should use that to your advantage. Also consider including your Twitter account in your e-mail signature so that it will go out with every e-mail that you send, to expand your reach.
5. Hire someone to manage your Twitter account
If you want to make Twitter an effective marketing tool, then you should consider hiring someone to manage it for you. Whoever you hire should be an expert in internet marketing with knowledge of SEO and other techniques. Their job should be to create and post interesting and attractive tweets, follow other users’ tweets and determine if they have any relevance to your business, search for potential customers and follow them, communicate with followers, review the tweets written by your employee before sending them out, to ensure that the tweets going out of to your followers are accurate and correctly presented.
How about you all? How have you used Twitter to grow your business? What was the strategy that worked best for you?
Share your experiences by commenting below!
***Photo courtesy of Slava
