As a business owner, you need to utilize as many possible tools available at your disposal in order to communicate with your customers. Twitter is one of these tools and it is very powerful because it encourages customers to engage in conversations with businesses and vice versa. These conversations can then help build relationships, which in turn translates to higher engagement, conversions and ultimately, profit for your business. Tweets can help you spread the word about products, services and projects you are involved with. Tweets can also spread news about what’s going on within your business such as working on a new product or starting a live event. Most importantly, it allows customers to see that you are human, which is a necessary component of social media engagement, especially these days with so much Artificial Intelligence on social media.
Tweets can be up to 140 characters long. In writing your tweets, you can use any characters and even include links. By typing @ followed by the username of the person you want to talk to (@username), you can send a tweet directly to that person. When you do this, everyone, not just that person you indicate, will be able to see your message. Following other users simply means their tweets will appear in your home stream. In order to follow someone, click “follow” on their profile page. Just like Facebook fans, these are the people who will see your tweets appear on their home screen. In other words, these are the people or businesses that follow you. Direct private messages are also available on Twitter. It’s important to note that for this feature to work, you must be following each other.
A nice looking Twitter profile is an important aspect of your success with the platform. Here are some suggestions for an appealing Twitter page; for the profile picture, it is important for you to upload a good photo of yourself (or your business) because then people will see that there is a real person or business behind your account. If you are tweeting for your company, you should use your company logo. There is an option to show your location just below the profile picture so make sure to include it. You will also need to add your primary website URL but it can actually be any website you want like a link to your blog, a product you sell, etc. If you want to, you can also change your profile background. This can obviously be done through either uploading one of your own, or you can also use one of Twitter’s built-in designs. It is best practice to upload your own because you can then customize it and make it unique to yourself or your business.
You are free to include text and advertising in your background, so another possibility is to include your website address.
Perhaps the most important aspect of your Twitter account is your Bio. Remember, you have to explain what your business is and what it does in 160 characters or less. When putting this together, remember to take these questions into consideration:
No one will see your tweets if you don’t have any followers. This is the equivalent of not having Facebook fans; if you have no friends or fans in your Facebook account, no one will be able to see your “status updates.” Therefore, in order to attract followers, you should know about two types of followers:
1. The first type of follower follows you because you follow them. Some digital strategists will advise you to follow people just because they sometimes, in turn, will follow you. While this strategy will be good as you get started, it will only work in the short-term. However, it is quite polite to follow someone who is of high-quality who follows you because it shows you care. Just make sure it’s not a fake account or someone who promotes something unethical or politically motivated. You want to be quite neutral in your demeanor. Also, be careful of the abundance of marketers and other business employees looking for you to follow them by following you then, once you are following them, they secretly unfollow you giving the impression that more people are following their page than people they are following. This is a very common practice on Twitter so be careful and only follow relevant pages.
2. The second type of follower is the one you really want and those are the people who follow you because they want to follow you.
Let’s suppose that you just created a brand new Twitter account, and you don’t have any followers. To start, you’ll need to begin to follow other people. To do this, you’ll first need to make a list of the most influencial people in your niche. Find them through searching and then look at who follows these power players and then follow them. You might ask, “Why should I do this?” In answer to this question, if they are already following your competitor, they are at the very least, partially interested in your niche. For example, if someone is following BBC Technology, it’s a pretty good indication they want to know more about the technology field. Once you follow these people, a small percentage of them will then follow you back. We suggest you follow up to 300 people with that method over your first couple of days. Once you do this, you’ll start to notice followers coming to you – so keep it going until you get the first 100 followers, and then your next 100 followers and so on
Other methods to generating followers:
Have an email list? Email your subscribers and tell them they can connect with you on Twitter.
Tell people whom you have on other social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, etc., about your new Twitter profile.
Add a link to your Twitter profile on your websites, blogs, email signature, and forum signatures.
The most important part to remember in Twitter is that your brand recognition will depend on posting relevant and interesting tweets. If you post genuinely, and are not all about self-promotion, you’ll begin to notice people following you without you having to do anything. These are the best followers because they are most likely to engage with you and click on your links.