How to Use Twitter for Your Business

TWITTER DASHBOARD

When using Twitter for business, it’s the best place to share news, short stories and have conversations that support, educate and delight your customers. It’s about creating authentic and personal interactions. Twitter Dashboard was created to make it easier for you to have these interactions with your audience, customers and community. Twitter Dashboard offers a single destination to get things done. It gives business owners a chance to see what’s being said about their business, lets them schedule tweets and offers insights about their tweet performance.

 

ENGAGE WITH YOUR AUDIENCE

Using Twitter Dashboard, you can create a custom feed to find out what’s being said about your business. The best part about doing this is you can get right to the tweets you want to see first and interact with so you can better engage with your community. Seeing these tweets at a glance offers endless opportunities for you to connect with customers and potential customers with responses that add value.

TWEET WHEN THE TIME IS RIGHT

Twitter Dashboard allows you to schedule tweets to reach your audience when they’re online and you’re not. If you want to edit your scheduled tweets while you’re on the go, you can use the iOS Dashboard app to update your tweet queue within seconds!

POSTING SCHEDULE

Every social network is different, so your posting frequency strategy should reflect the norm of the social network you’re on. You also want to keep note of when is the right time to post.

 

IT’S OK TO RETWEET AND SHARE OTHER’S CONTENT

Don’t be afraid to retweet other people’s content or tweet an interesting blog post that you found online! In fact, this is something that is encouraged! The entire point of being on social media is to talk with other people, so when you’re sharing other people’s content, be sure to give their username a proper shout-out. A simple “by” or “via @username” will work. Also, when you share links, be sure to use shortened links with tracking tokens. Shortened, trackable links let you see which pieces of content are driving the best results for you and they’re short so they don’t take up too many characters. Make sure every link you post has some UTM codes added, and then is shortened.

TWITTER ADS

You can promote information to specific user demographics and even tailor keywords for more of a broad match, meaning that you can immediately increase your reach. Utilize Twitter cards to promote your tweets. Twitter cards are displayed as promoted tweets would, but when someone clicks on the image, the card expands to reveal a sign-up form that is auto-populated with the user’s name, email address and twitter handle. Did you know that 37% of Twitter users would buy from a brand they follow?
Running Twitter ads will ensure that your ads get put in front of the right people. With Twitter’s geo-targeting feature you can aim your ads at prospects within a certain metro area or a particular zip or postal code. Once you have your location set, you can add more filters to further refine your search, choosing everything from audience interests and behavior, to language and gender. You can test different targeting approaches to understand fully which audience is the best fit and which messages resonate with different groups.

 

TWEET WITH A PURPOSE

The think with quick message platforms like Twitter is that it is easy to schedule posts in advance on a number of different topics. However, you have a better chance of seeing real, consistent user engagement if your tweets have a purpose. Tweets should be relatable, timely, on-topic and match your brand’s message.

BUILD RELATIONSHIPS WITH BUSINESSES TOO!

Building relationships with your potential customers and your current customers is great and ultimately what will get you more leads. However, building relationships with nearby businesses and influencers will also help get your name out there. Try to befriend businesses that are in a related field as you. For example, if you run a pet grooming business, it makes sense that someone walking out of a pet shop near by with their dog would want to visit your grooming store. You can make that happen by building a relationship – online and offline – with the neighboring businesses. To do this on Twitter, search for the pet shop’s Twitter handle and start building rapport. If you engage with other businesses on Twitter, you’ll be introduced to their loyal followers and customers that could potentially end up being yours. Making regular and positive exchanges between brands can sere as endorsements for both you and your neighboring businesses.
If your businesses are that close in the field, you might want to consider launching a multi-store promotion! Create a Twitter List of all nearby businesses to keep an eye on these types of engagement opportunities. By converting and engaging with influential Twitter users and businesses in your area, you’ll likely see an increase in engagement from their followers.

MONITOR AND RESPOND TO ALL TWEETS ABOUT YOUR BUSINESS

A customer’s happiness with your business should always be your number one concern. That’s why good customer service is so vital. A happy customer is a returning customer and an advocate for your brand. With more customers using social media to discuss buying decisions, it’s vital that you are listening for these conversations about you and responding to them. One thing to keep in mind is that your brand might not be mentioned on Twitter by @mentions. A majority of people who discuss brands don’t actually name the brand or follow their social media profiles, or just simply leave out the @ before the brand name.

How to track these conversations using Twitter’s advanced search function

• In the “All of these words” box, include your business name without the @ symbol in front of it, your business name with the hashtag symbol, and common misspellings of your business name (with and without the @ symbol)
• Set any other parameters you’d like and click “Search”
• Select the “More options” tab to bring up a dropdown menu
• Press the “Save this search” button for quick reference later.