How To Effectively Use Twitter To Market Your Business

Using Twitter To Increase Website Visitors

Twitter is an effective way of promoting blog articles when running content marketing campaigns.  The goal is to have your content with it's all important link back to your website; distributed to people who have never heard of you. When well written Twitter posts get shared by your followers, they get seen by their followers.  Sharing like this encourages dissemination on an exponential scale and using a hashtag helps you reach your target market. The key, of course, is the perceived value and share-ability of the post. With skill and a bit of luck, your posts will reach your market of prospective buyers, and they'll click on your embedded link to read your blog article. You can increase your odds of this happening by attaching an image, including a hashtag and posting frequently. To close the circle of the marketing campaign, be sure to have a call-to-action on your blog article that takes the visitor to a landing page where you can capture contact information for email marketing purposes. Social media marketing won’t generate leads overnight, but there are certain things that you can start doing right now to get your business and services valuable exposure. 

Follow Your Ideal Customers

There are a lot of people would rather lead than follow. As you beg but following provides insight into your target market. Choosing to follow other people’s posts is one of the best ways to get information about your target market, as most posts are candid. They are liable to be more honest than they would be in face-to-face communication. As far as they are concerned, you are behind the curtain and could care less about what they like and what they don’t. For a successful entrepreneur, this couldn’t be farther from the truth. 

Encourage Others to Follow You

This is easier said than done, but it’s the concept is simpler than most people make it out to be. Write great content and make it easy to follow you. Consider your following to be your Twitter ‘reach,’ so to speak. Use the ‘Follow’ button and have links to your Twitter account in your blog posts.  Writing compelling articles and making the follow button obvious increases your chances. Think of the ‘Follow’ button as a bridge from your blog content to the content on your Twitter page.

Ensure that the content that you’re posting is relevant to your target market, unique, highly visual and engaging. It’s important that your followers remain interested in your content, so tailor it. Don’t post the same message over and over again. One Twitter post repeated daily is an awful lot, once a week may be too little. Finding the right balance of tweeting new content and tweeting blog articles that have been tweeted in the past is and retweeting the content of others is important. The first thing many influential Twitter users do is view your profile and Twitter feed.  If you're blasting out the same tweet repeatedly, not engaging with others, never changing the subjects of your tweets and not sharing the tweets of relevant followers, don't expect to be followed by anyone other than spammers. 

Interact with potential followers by keeping up with their comment streams and responding to them. This type of engagement gives people something to respond to, and they may begin following you because your conversations help them increase their visibility. This is the social nature of social media. The more active you are on Twitter, the more exposure your firm well get. 

Ask Influential Followers for Shares

Ask users who have a significantly higher following than you do if they will share something you have posted. Now, I'm not talking about the ubiquitous RT: or Re-Tweet we see amateurs include in posts. I'm suggesting you direct message or contact them on a message board on Facebook or LinkedIn. Make certain the person you hope to retweet a post follows you on Twitter and ask them if they share your posts.  If you're granted the request, your post will be seen by a new, larger audience, creating awareness of your firm. Asking for a share makes the recipient feel valued that you have taken a particular liking to them, value the size of their network, and will possibly spread the word for you in turn. Also, take note of your influencers, the users who post or repost on your behalf most often, and thank them periodically for doing such a good job getting the word out. Your influencers are just as important as strangers who have higher followings because they are in direct contact with your target market. 

Ask your employees for help 

Send a company-wide e-mail to your staff asking them to tweet on behalf of the company. If you’re in a position to do so, offer monetary compensation for their efforts. Hold weekly meetings to show your employees how their efforts have paid off using the demographics that Twitter provides in regards to page views, retweets, and the like. 

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About Michael Conway

I'm the owner and strategist at Means-of-Production. My firm builds Squarespace websites, Houzz profiles, and content marketing and advertising solutions for architects, interior designers, design-build contractors and landscape design firms. Our all-in-one marketing tactics attract the right clients with exceptional architectural photography and brand messaging that sets you apart from the competition.