How to market your business on Twitter

Twitters affect on businesses Twitter has dramatically transformed the way businesses interact with their customers since its launch in 2006. It encourages conversations between businesses using targeted hashtags. With a 140 character limit per tweet it pushes businesses to focus on the message they want to get across.

Who uses Twitter?The majority of users on Twitter are fairly young, with the majority of accounts belonging to people aged 18-54. You only have to look at the trends to see how much power younger people have on Twitter.

So, how should your business use Twitter?

Step 1 – Plan aheadSocial media marketing is a delicate balance of being on top of current affairs and keeping on track. Twitter’s fast moving nature means that it is easy for a single tweet to get lost. You have to make sure you tweet at the right time.

Step 1 – Plan AheadTo schedule Tweets you will need to use a third party application, Hootsuiteis a personal favourite of mine, enabling you to schedule your tweets over multiple accounts. It is important that your account has regular updates to keep your followers interested.

Step 2 – Provide Customer ServiceTwitter is quickly taking over the role of customer service phone numbers, it allows customers to communicate directly with your company and get fast responses and issues resolved as quickly as possible. You should also do regular searches of your company name to see who is talking about you without actually directing the tweet to your account.

Step 3 – Think Beyond BusinessTwitter marketing is all about personality, it is a great way to gain exposure for your business. Make sure some of your tweets aren’t entirely about business. Twitter lets your customers know what your business attitude is, sometimes its better to have quirky responses to customers. Having live events on Twitter is also a good way to interact with customers, you can schedule an hour where a senior member of the company can answer questions immediately.

Step 4 – Follow and be FollowedAn account that follows almost nobody will appear to be authoritative, exclusive, and superior. These accounts attract followers because they hold social currency and often market on the basis of being too cool to follow people back.However, if you are a small business you should look at who follows your competitors and follow them, this is a good way to find targeted followers as they are likely to be interested in your industry.

Step 5 – Optimise YourselfTwitter bios are often overlooked as a marketing tool, but they are extremely important. Twitter bios are indexed by search engines, so you should at least do some basic optimisation for your account.Try and make sure your bio contains keywords, do not spam it as people are less likely to follow an account that looks spammy.