As one of the world’s foremost social media outlets, Twitter boasts an impressive 330 million users. From celebrities to politicians to popular brands, Twitter provides people with a simple, concise and highly effective vehicle through which they can spread their message. Unsurprisingly, many businesses have taken notice of Twitter’s popularity and incorporated it into their digital marketing strategies. Since the platform is free and user-friendly, most companies have nothing to lose by trying their luck on Twitter. Small businesses looking to bolster their online promotional efforts would do well to heed the following pointers.
Engage with Your Followers
One of the best things about Twitter – and other popular social platforms – is being able to actively engage with your target audience in real time. This means that any time you receive a comment or query, you’ll be able to provide an answer in a timely and convenient manner. Even in the digital age, responsive customer service is a vital quality for every business to possess. If anything, politely engaging with customers is more important than ever. Popular consumer feedback sites and social media platforms make it easy for dissatisfied patrons to voice their grievances to large audiences. So, if you rub someone with a massive social following the wrong way, your business may find itself at the center of a publicity nightmare.
That being the case, it’s in your best interest to be as gracious and obliging as possible when interacting with your followers. If someone pays your business a compliment, make sure to thank them, and if someone poses a question, take care to provide an answer at your earliest convenience. In addition to building your brand, this type of engagement helps foster brand loyalty – and the more connected people feel to your enterprise, the more likely they’ll be to support it.
Caption contests have proven to be a fairly effective means to promote brands while building audience engagement. These contests generally entail providing followers with photos pertaining directly to your business and tasking with providing humorous captions and/or edits. All the likes and retweets the various entries receive can help spread the word about your business and expand your social media following. However, like any good contest, caption competitions generally involve decent prizes. If they don’t stand to gain anything, many of your followers will be unwilling to put forth effort on your behalf, so take care to make participation worth their while. This isn’t to say prizes need to be extravagant, but they should be suitably enticing.
Utilize Pay-Per-Click Advertisements
If your business has yet to experiment with pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements, there’s no time like the present to get the ball rolling. A well-planned and solidly-executed PPC campaign has the power to bring your brand to the attention of scores of prospective customers and exponentially increase website traffic. Given Twitter’s immense – and rapidly growing – popularity, it may be in your best interest to incorporate PPC into your overall Twitter strategy. With Twitter’s convenient PPC options, you’ll be able to connect with your target audience and spread the word about your enterprise. Of course, before launching a PPC campaign, make sure to create effective ads, procure the proper budget and brush up on the best PPC management practices.
Solicit Follower Feedback
Soliciting follower feedback can be a great way to build a connection with your audience and ensure that your posts are shared. For example, if there are any aspects of your brand that you’re thinking about making changes to, why not pose the question to your followers? Their answers will provide you with valuable feedback and show them that their opinions are valued. Now that consumers have more options than ever before, many of them aren’t likely to stand by brands that routinely ignore their needs.
Social media platforms don’t get much more accessible than Twitter. Given the outlet’s ease of use, fun interface and immense popularity, there’s little wonder as to why Twitter has a user base that numbers in the hundreds of millions. So, if your small business has yet to jump aboard the Twitter bandwagon, don’t hesitate to rectify that mistake. Additionally, employing the measures discussed above can help set the stage for lasting success with one of social media’s biggest power players.