It doesn’t take much to convince businesses to create social media accounts.
But once in use the question becomes, “How do I use this online marketing tool effectively?” If this question applies to you, then you’re in luck! Twitter has released a list of helpful tips to best utilize the Twitterverse.
1) Tweet Often.
The idea of tweeting often seems obvious, but a lot of businesses neglect their accounts,therefore losing both followers and potential business as a result.
Don’t have time to tweet?
Use a tool such as HootSuite to plan your tweets in advance! Through HootSuite, you can schedule messages in advance, planning down to the minute when the tweet will appear.
2) Engage Your Followers.
Once you get into the habit of tweeting everyday, make sure to post interesting and engaging messages. Ask questions, share links, and upload pictures to keep your followers interested.
Even more importantly, make sure to respond to questions and comments that your followers post. If you want people to feel like they are personally connected to your business, it is vital that you re-tweet what others are saying about you and “mention” followers who are sparking a conversation.
3) Know what you want to accomplish.
Just because you tweet interesting posts doesn’t mean you are going to improve your business’s success. It’s important to set a goal for your business before creating an account.
For example: I want to increase the amount of people clicking on our company’s homepage by 5% in the next two weeks. If this were your goal, you would want to provide links, mentions, and hash tags using your business’s name or services.
4) Stay Relevant.
Using your account to promote your business is a natural instinct. However, sometimes promotion can be a turn-off to your followers. Make sure to tweet about relevant events and developments in your industry so that followers will keep coming back to your page for news.
5) Manage your account.
In order to have all of these bases covered, it’s important that you delegate one person to oversee your Twitter account. This person should be familiar with privacy settings, respond to direct messages, and be up-to-date on the conversations taking place on your page.
Individual employees can and should stay active on your business’s page through their own personal accounts, but the task of managing Twitter is much easier if one person is in charge.
With this basic checklist, you should be able to better use your Twitter account. There are a lot of complexities on social media sites, but keeping it simple is usually the best avenue for businesses. A final note on how to effectively manage your account is to think about what your clients are looking for when they follow you. What do you need to do that will keep them coming back to your page? Answering this question and following basic guidelines should help you tweet your way to the top.
For more information on how to successfully use social media sites, visit https://www.inc.com/guides/using-social-networking-sites.html.
