Twitter for Business - Advanced Techniques

In my last post about Twitter, we discussed the very basics: getting signed up, learning the lingo and the like. However, Twitter has capabilities far beyond basic communication. From increasing your brand reach to building a real, captive audience, Twitter can be used for powerful marketing at a very low cost (free!). Here’s how:

1. Cultivate a following that matters. This is a topic we discussed before - but let’s get into it a little further. There are some easy ways to increase your following and some that take a little more effort. For example:

Easy: Follow industry friends, family, industry experts, competitors, local businesses and really anyone on Twitter that posts interesting content or may be interested in yours.

More time consuming (but worth it): Reach out to some of the prominent voices in your industry. Favorite and retweet their content. If they mention you, or better yet, tweet some of your original content, you’ll certainly get followers. And, bonus: those followers think of you as an expert in your industry and will watch what you post closely.

2. Post content that matters.  Set up a feedly account and fill your RSS feed with content that’s related to your industry. Read through each article and comment on them when you tweet them. If you’re using a service that automatically generates tweets, don’t - and I repeat, do not - tweet them as-is. Nothing screams lack of effort like not even customizing your tweets.

If you’re posting content that matters to your audience, you’ll know. You should see your followers start to favorite, retweet and respond to your tweets if they’re fun, engaging and interesting.

3. Automate where you can.  Automation has its perks; it saves you a lot of time and you don’t constantly have to be staring at Twitter. However, if you automate once per week and don’t spend any time on Twitter afterward, your followers will know. Here is my advice:

Sign up for Buffer. This is the easiest service I’ve found to manage multiple social accounts. It’s free to a point so you can try it without any commitment up front. You can sign up here.

Check out unfollowers.me. It can be difficult to keep track of who follows you and unfollows you. You’ll want to follow all of the Twitter users that follow you, and unfollow those who follow then unfollow you immediately just to grow their audience numbers. Unfollowers.me is a simple tool that will provide all the information you need to keep track of your following. You can sign up here.

Log in at least once a day. Favorite, retweet and respond where appropriate. You should try to respond to your followers shortly after they mention you, but one day is within the acceptable range.

Managing your Twitter business presence successfully takes time. However, with the right tools, you can cut down the time it takes to become great on Twitter to just a few hours a week. If you’d like to share ideas or are interested in discussing more, please feel free to check out my website or email me at jackie@jackiesteinmetz.com.