Though Twitter’s traffic is on the rise, the platform as a whole isn’t exactly a home run with small businesses. A study by Constant Contact indicates that only 25% of SMBs use Twitter for marketing, while a good 82% use Facebook. Part of the reason for this might be the trickiness of using Twitter for promotional purposes.
This situation presents an opportunity for SMBs willing to spend some time learning to use Twitter to market their content and brand themselves decisively. Before embarking on a full-fledged promotional campaign, heed the following Twitter advice.
Identify the Right Hashtags
You’re no doubt aware of the fact that hashtags are how regular Twitter users zero in on conversations and get their tweets found. As such, including the right tags in your own tweets is of paramount importance. There are plenty of free tools available for researching the appropriate hashtags including SeeSaw, Twubs, Trendsmap and even the official Twitter Search. In order to get noticed by the right target demographics, it’s imperative that one adopt an analytical approach to hashtag selection.
Be on the Cutting Edge
As a real-time exchange of news and opinion, Twitter rewards those that time their blasts intelligently. This isn’t particularly surprising and the same has been true of blogging for years now thanks to Google’s increasingly sophisticated algorithms. If your tweets aren’t timely, they’re probably going to be ignored. Stick to what’s happening now and tie it back to your business in a relevant way. If you’re a bricks-and-mortar outfit, make your tweets hyper-local to attract your desired consumer audience.
Become a Trend Setter
Outside of latching onto trending hashtags, the best way to surge ahead in the Twitter standings is to create and popularize some tags of your own. There are many different routes that small businesses can take when creating hashtag memes. For instance, running a giveaway contest using your own custom hashtags will help to brand your business in the local Twitter sphere. Utilities like Bottlenose and HootSuite will help you to manage your Twitter campaigns without neglecting your other online promotional efforts.
Promote Lively Back and Forth
Starting a conversation with your current and hopefully future customers is easy if you’re willing to put in a little effort. As with so many other marketing tacks, consistency is the key. Though the medium of micro-blogging might seem like a frenetic blizzard of incoherent gibberish, you can create order from the chaos by taking charge of the dialog. Don’t just broadcast to your list. Rather, elicit responses from them that will provide you with marketing research that you can build on. Be a bit controversial if you must to get your followers talking.
Slow & Steady Wins the Race
While Facebook is the most popular social network at the moment due to its massive user base, there are signs that others like Twitter are becoming more trendy. Given Twitter’s relatively low utilization as a marketing vehicle, there’s great potential for small businesses to capitalize on an untapped medium. Local Twitter marketing can help a business to go viral in a variety of unpredictable ways. If you’re not using Twitter nowadays to further your SMB’s interests, you’re definitely missing out.
