Boost your Business on Twitter

Written by Aprill on May 13, 2010

Do you use Twitter to spruik your business? I bet you could get more from it. Twitter has revolutionised the communications game. If you play the game right you can run your PR campaign in 140 characters or less.

Find your crowd

Search for your keywords to find the people who are talking about products or services like yours. Follow them. Then search for your location to find the people that live, work, or shop in your neck of the woods. Follow them, too.

Pimp your profile

Don’t stick with the vanilla Twitter template. Use the opportunity to get your logo in front of people and upload a custom background image. At the very least, think carefully about what you put in your Twitter profile so you can motivate people to follow you back and click on your link.

Respect the limit

Brevity and I are good friends. That’s why I love to use Twitter. Be concise with your message and leave a bit of room for people to retweet.

Engage with your crowd

Don’t just sit and watch the world go by and don’t just retweet any old junk, either. Get in on the conversations that are going on in front of you and only forward on the useful links and articles that come your way.

Repeat-tweet for timezones

If you have a product or service available internationally, be mindful of your timezones. I did a quick Twitter poll yesterday and found that most people do scroll back to past tweets but a lot of people don’t. And the people that do, are only scanning quickly through, so are less likely to follow links or retweet.

If it’s business related and not time-sensitive, repost your tweets 2-3 times throughout 24 hours to get in front of more people. Vary your headline slightly to avoid being overly repetitive. That serves a second purpose of allowing you to test which headlines work best at getting more clicks.

The more people around the world who are awake to read your tweet, the more people there are to see your brand–and the more people there are who might retweet.

Twaitter, Objective Marketer and SocialOomph are all tools to help you with scheduling tweets and measuring clicks.

Do more with search

Search is for more than just finding followers and keeping up with #masterchef or #qanda. Try searching for your brand or product name. FInd out what people are saying about you so you can reply personally. It’s just good customer service and it creates a real buzz.