15 Powerful Twitter Marketing Tips (That Actually Work)

Can Twitter actually help boost your business? Or is it just a social media platform that’s mainly catered for teeny boppers who loves following their favorite celebrities?

The honest answer to this question is yes, Twitter can give your business a much-needed boost, but you need to know how to use it properly to get results out of it.

As of the fourth quarter of 2017, Twitter has an average of 330 million monthly active users – you don’t want to miss out on tapping such a vast market right?

If you want to know how you can use your Twitter account to gain new potential customers and engage your existing followers

then read on and find out.

1. Interact with your followers

If you want your Twitter account to engage with your customers, then you need to start interacting with them.

It doesn’t matter if you get a positive or negative tweet about your brand, you need to address these feedbacks to show everyone that your brand care.

If someone is giving you positive feedback, then you need to like the tweet and even retweet it – if people can see that you’re actively interacting with your followers, then they’ll engage with you too.

Don’t forget to retweet and mention other Twitter users and “like” tweets. You can mention other Twitter users by including their @usernames if you want to respond to something someone said about your brand and you want them to know about it. Retweeting or Tweeting what someone else has tweeted before is also a great tactic on Twitter because it creates a sense of goodwill.

If your business gets mentioned in the media, you have to make sure you tweet right back and mention their username to show them that you’re aware of what they said and you’re happy to respond to them. You can also offer a”Twixclusive.” A Twixclusive is an exclusive on Twitter that your followers can’t find anywhere else. You can tweet behind-the-scenes videos or photos, Connect with followers in real time by hosting exclusive Q&A sessions, interviews and chats.If your content is high-quality, you’ll end up getting more retweets that could potentially attract new followers.

2. Integrate Twitter into your blog

If you have a website, then it’s definitely a good idea to integrate your Twitter account into your blog so that you can encourage whoever reads your article to follow you on Twitter. You can either embed tweets or apply the Twitter share button or even the “Click to Tweet” button.

3. Post consistently and create a relevant profile

If you’re an entrepreneur, then you obviously need to have consistency in your social media profiles, so you need to choose
a username that is a direct reflection of your business. Twitter allows up to 15 characters for usernames, so you need to choose wisely and smartly. On that note, once you’ve chosen a username, you need to create a compelling profile. Choose a relevant profile pic (your business logo) and a compelling cover image as well as a brief but clear bio highlighting specific points about your business. People should be able to pick up what your brand is all about based on your Twitter profile.

4. Tweet briefly but consistently

If you’re not active on Twitter, then people will assume that your Twitter account is dead weight, so no one is going to follow or engage with your brand. You need to show everyone that you are actively tweeting about something hence the reason why celebrities tweet all the time. Try to tweet at least once a day or more if you can and maintain consistency.

On that note, Twitter actually has a 140-character limit so keep it short and sweet. You can also use tools to help you manage your Twitter account more efficiently. Here are a few good ones you can use:

TweetDeck: This tool great for scheduling Twitter posts and monitoring mentions among others.

HootSuite: This tool allows you to monitor all of your social media profiles from one location.

TwitterFox: This tool is a Firefox plugin that allows you to see tweets in a popup menu within your browser, so you don’t have to exit your current browser to check your Twitter account.

SocialOomph: This is a tool similar to TweetDeck that enables you to schedule your tweets in advance.

Followerwonk: This is a service that enables you to grow your social reach and review your Twitter analytics.

5. Post compelling and shareable tweets

Try to make your tweets compelling and always keep the interests of your followers in mind. Make your tweets more conversational, friendly, unique, or even funny to get your followers to engage. Try to also include other forms of media in your Tweets to make it more engaging. You can add images, links, animated gifs, and even videos. Tweets that include other media types tend to get more retweeted than those without. You can also plan your content to make sure that you are consistent with your Tweets and your followers know what to expect from you.

For example, Mondays and Tuesdays can be posts about your blog articles, Tuesdays and Wednesday’s can be a spotlight on what’s trending within your niche, Thursdays can be special promo days where one of your followers can win something and Friday through to Sunday can be a tweet highlighting special interviews with industry heavyweights. Having a content plan is must if you want your Twitter account to grow. You need to also tweet links to your content more than just once. Posting a single time is good, but reposting your content is better because not everyone is going to see your content if you only post it once. I recommend spacing out your tweets, so you’re tweets are always on people’s timelines all the time. You can use tools like Tweriod that can tell you the best time to Tweet something or when your followers are most active on Twitter.

6. Be at one with your competition

If you’ve just created your Twitter account and you don’t know what to do yet, why don’t you follow your competitors and see what they’re doing with their Twitter accounts that are engaging their followers? Find out what they’re tweeting about and their Twitter strategies and then implement those strategies in your account as well. Try to find a way to improve their tactics, that way; you’ll eventually get more engagement from your followers.

7. Follow other users

If someone follows you on Twitter, don’t be afraid to follow back. Just make sure you check out who you’re about to follow because you don’t want to be following a spam account. If it’s someone relevant to niche or a potential client, then you need to follow them right back. Especially aim to follow influencers in your niche, if you’re not sure who they are then there are tools such as Klout, Twellow, or Commun.it that’ll help you locate influencers. Once you’ve found these influencers, engage them, mention them and retweet their tweets, you can also use Buzzsumo to filter out and find influencers in your niche.

If they can see that your brand is actively interacting with them, then they’ll most likely follow you back. You need to follow these influencers, like and retweet their content and engage in their content. The key is to build relationships with people so that Twitter users will remember your brand.

8. Use strategic Hashtags

A hashtag is an extremely powerful marketing tool used by businesses in Twitter because the “#” symbol is a keyword or a phrase used to describe a topic or a theme. Hashtags in tweets are used to categorize a specific topic or a theme in a way that makes it easier for other Twitter users to find and follow other people’s relevant tweets. Basically, once you hashtag a word via Twitter, the specific hashtag goes into the world of hashtags which will enable Twitter users who are not following you to view your tweets and your content, so you get more eyeballs on your tweet. Hashtags increase engagement with new Twitter users that’s why it’s important to use relevant hashtags that’ll describe your content.

9. Use Twitter Lists

Twitter lists are an excellent way of keeping up with what’s trending in your industry and connecting with relevant people in your niche. Twitter lists are actually curated groups of users segmented by category. You can create lists for yourself or subscribe to other users lists. It gives you a sneak peek of what users are talking about and enables you to keep in touch with other people in your industry and your customers.

10. Use Twitter Chats

Twitter chats are actually scheduled hashtag discussions that highlight specific topics. If you’re an expert in your niche, then you can always host a Twitter chat where your customers and even potential customers can ask questions about your business and your niche. Cool tools like TweetChat or Twubs are available if you want to make your Twitter chats more manageable.

11. Use Twitter Cards

Twitter Cards enables users to attach rich photos, videos and media experiences to their Tweets, which can eventually result in more traffic to their websites. Majority of Twitter Cards are typically free, but then Lead Generation Cards are part of Twitter’s advertising program which means it can only be used within Promoted Tweets. The cost will, of course, depend on your marketing budget and how much you are willing to bid for each engagement.

12. Use Twitter in real time

If you have a special event or you’ve been invited to an important event, a great way to engage your followers is to live-tweet the event as it’s happening. Live tweeting is a great way to engage your audience especially if you’re attending a high-profile event.

13. Measure your engagement

If you are using Twitter for business, then you need to monitor your Twitter account’s metrics to make sure that you’re on track to achieving your goals. Are your followers engaging with your tweets? Are you getting new followers? Is your website getting any traffic from your Twitter account? How many people are interacting with your posts? If you’re not measuring your Twitter performance, then you won’t know where to improve on.

14. Try a ‘Flock to Unlock’ Campaign

Twitter’s Flock to Unlock campaign is an effective way of encouraging your followers to execute a specific type of action for you to reveal an exclusive deal. The choice to reveal the special deal in your initial tweet or keep it top secret until a specific benchmark has been met is entirely up to you. ‘Flock to Unlock’ Campaigns creates a much-needed buzz and builds brand awareness. If you want to stir things up a bit in Twitterland, then this campaign is gold.

15. use Twitter Ads

If you have a marketing budget, then you may look at using Twitter ads to expose your account to other Twitter users who may want to follow you. There are three different types of Twitter ads, and that’s Promoted Accounts, Promoted Tweets, and Promoted Trends. Promoted accounts are where Twitter will promote your Twitter account so you can gain new followers. Your account will show up in other people’s timelines and search results.Promoted Tweets is where Twitter will promote your regular tweets to other users who aren’t following you yet and who don’t know about your brand. Promoted Trends is where Twitter can promote a hashtag. When users click on your chosen hashtag, they’ll be able to see your promoted tweet first before they see all the other tweets.

In a nutshell, you can pay Twitter to promote your account to get more followers, you can pay Twitter to promote a video and then pay for Twitter users to view it or you can pay for Twitter to promote your tweets for brand awareness and website clicks. Bottomline, you need to choose a Twitter ad campaign based on your goal.

In conclusion

If you want to grow your customer base using Twitter, then you need to use it the right way.

You need to set goals to figure out what sort of result you want then you need to stay active on Twitter and engage your followers by retweeting their tweets and mentioning them when applicable. You can also use Twitter ads to gain more followers and engagement if you have a marketing budget to work with.

What about you? Have you used Twitter yet to grow your business?