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If you have a small business, then Twitter can be a great way to reach more potential customers, gain insight and increase your brand reach. Find out how to grow your business on Twitter with these 20 tips!
If you aren’t on Twitter yet – then why not check out this post on How to Launch Your Business on Twitter. But if you are already on Twitter but haven’t found it helpful, how can you use the platform to grow your business and generate leads?
If you want, you can skip reading this entire post and I’ll give you the one-line executive summary. Ready….
Tweet useful stuff and engage, engage, engage.
If you tweet but never engage you will not do well on Twitter.
If you tweet about you, you, you all the time, and not about them, you will not do well on Twitter.
If you do not provide value, commentary, or entertainment, you will not do well on Twitter.
The key to mastering Twitter is to treat it like speaking to your mother.
I rant and rave and complain, educate and entertain my mother all the time.
If I don’t, I get the guilt trip that I’m ignoring her!!!
It’s the same with Twitter.
Saw something crazy! Tweet it.
Just completed something you’re proud about, tweet it.
Angry about something in the news, tweet it out!!!
Need a chat, engage with others on Twitter.
But neglect to engage and your community will neglect you.
20 Ways to Grow Your Business on Twitter
- Create a stand-out profile
- Follow new prospects daily
- Draft and schedule content in advance
- Respond to everyone
- Be responsive
- Retweet
- Don’t overdo the retweets
- Sound like an actual person
- Use @Mentions
- Ask simple text questions
- Pin important and relevant tweets
- Use Video (and upload them directly to Twitter)
- Jump on community hashtags
- Use hashtags
- Engage with your community
- Tweet frequently
- Use GIFs
- Promote your blog posts / podcasts /other content
- Cross promote your Twitter account
1. Create a stand-out profile
Make sure your logo, banner and profile text stand out. Check out my post on How to Launch Your Business on Twitter for guidance and some inspirational accounts to get you started.
Use your graphic design software or a free online provider like Canva to create a banner. This sits as a header behind your profile photo or logo. Canva Pro gives you access to a massive library of premium images that you can use to create your banner. Just check out this link for a free trial of Canva Pro.
2. Follow new prospects daily
Growing your presence on Twitter can be as easy as following relevant accounts – if they follow you back.
Do this as you’re drinking your first coffee of the day, or before you break for lunch.
But, don’t just hit follow on a new prospect. Take time to comment, retweet and engage as well and show your prospect that you are a valuable contact as well.
3. Draft Tweets in advance
Use a scheduler like Later, Buffer or Hootsuite to help organise your thoughts, plan your messages, product launches or shout out to customers over the week.
You can also schedule tweets directly on Twitter as well.
4. Respond to everyone
It’s best to try and respond to everyone who comments. Ideally responding within the first few hours is best.
I recommend scheduling tweets or tweeting when you are available to respond.
5. Be responsive
Other brands like Southwest and Ikea have also embraced the power of Twitter to quickly respond to issues, or pick hilarious fights like ‘who has the best meatballs’ between Frankie & Benny and Ikea.
Just make sure you have someone in the business who has enabled Twitter notifications so they can respond asap!
6. Retweet
Share stuff from your community, followers and customers.
When you retweet, add extra value and comment about what you are retweeting.
7. Don’t overdo the retweets
Often when I’m checking out a profile or doing an audit or copywriting research, I check out people’s tone of voice on Twitter. This is impossible to do when there is absolutely no original content. Instead, you just have a barrage of re-shares from websites.
If resharing content is all you do, it’s an automatic red flag that actually you don’t care about Twitter and are just padding out your feed. If you do share – make sure you put a thoughtful comment or add some extra value.
8. Sound like an actual person
Try to sound like a corporate entity. If you read @Shopify, @Slack and @BurgerKing, none of the comments sounds like it’s coming from a marketing department, but just one person!
9. Use @ mentions
Tagging companies and people if it’s relevant to your post can pay off. Give it a try.
10. Ask simple text questions or statements
Your tweets don’t have to always have images or multimedia. Sometimes, just a simple statement or a question can do AMAZINGLY well on Twitter.
11. Pin important and RELEVANT tweets
Twitter allows you to pin a tweet that always displays at the top of your profile. People use it to put highlight their most valuable product or service.
But if you do that, just don’t forget to keep it updated. It’s frustrating to see a pinned tweet about a book that came out 5 years ago, or a competition that’s expired.
12. Use video (and upload them directly to Twitter)
Also known as posting natively. All this means is that you are loading your video directly to the platform as opposed to linking to your YouTube / Vimeo account. If you do this, Twitter will automatically play it in people’s timelines!
Try sharing video testimonials from your customers!
13. Jump on community hashtags
What do I mean by that? Well in every niche, there will be hashtags that communities are using to keep track of conversations. #sixonsaturday is one I follow and engage with where gardeners post their 6 best flower pictures of the week. These tweets get the BIGGEST impressions and retweets.
Also, most cities and regions have a #<NAME>>hour like #belfasthour #liverpoolhour #kenthour where small businesses can get together and commune in a tweet fest.
There’s #handmadehour every Wednesday and Sunday and #Etsy hour on Thursday evenings. If you’re a cake maker, check out @cakehouruk!
If there isn’t an ‘hour’ for you, think about setting one up using Twitter Lists.
14. Use hashtags?
Unless you have a little influencer tick, use hashtags.
Hashtags help your content be found by other people who are interested in your niche topic.
Don’t add more than 2 or 3 though to a post.
Hashtags on Twitter are often used ironically to add value to your comment.
15. Engage with your community
Twitter can feel like a tsunami of content at times, but if you build a community that knows that you add value to discussions you will be rewarded much more and have real, engaging conversations. So when you do post, people will be on the lookout to chat with you.
I grew my personal gardening account to over 1k followers in just 5 months with this organic strategy.
I love my gardening community and I want to talk to them so it’s easy for me to engage.
If you value and engage with your customers in the same way, Twitter can be great for growing your business.
I also engage with people in my specific niche community and tweet content just related to my niche. I don’t get tempted to go off-brand and start being all political or talking about crafting for example. Everything I tweet is related to my audience. That definitely helps, as people know what to expect from you and look out for your posts.
It’s also great to get people involved with your business. Asking questions about product design, new ventures etc.
16. Tweet frequently
Do what works for you. Tweet at least once a day, so you are showing up for your community. If you have more to say, that is VALUABLE, tweet that.
Sometimes I’m bursting with information and hilarity, and other days, zip!
Twitter, gets so much more community engagement than the other apps, so give it a try.
If you genuinely like chatting with your customers and sharing your thoughts, then this platform will work for you.
But if you just dump and run, well #twitterfail.
17. Use GIFs
A GIF can convey a thousand words. But even better if you use a GIF that features a trending clip.
18. Promote your core content
Twitter is great for sharing your core content, like blog posts, podcasts and video.
Why not try sharing quotes from your blog, snippets of audio from your podcast, or video clips?
19. Cross-promote your Twitter account
Your community may not know you are on Twitter. That’s why it can be helpful to promote your Twitter profile on your other marketing platforms.
Why not add your Twitter handle to your email or cross-post content and add your handle to your Instagram and Facebook accounts.
Or you could add your Twitter handle to your marketing materials, brochures, business cards and on to your website.
20. Encourage User Content
If you are running an event, use a branded hashtag and encourage visitors to post content with that hashtag.
Or if users have posted content related to your brand, product or service, share that on Twitter and use it as social proof!
Conclusion
Hopefully, that’s given you some inspiration on what to tweet, how to tweet and how to grow on Twitter.
Why not pin this for later?
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