Twitter is a highly effective and popular social media tool to market your brand and generate a good number of leads. Despite the growing popularity of Pinterest and Google+, Twitter remains a platform that a lot of marketing can be done with impressive results. Here are four useful ideas on how to make your Twitter marketing efforts more effective.
Build Relationships
Many marketers just keep tweeting promotional material, or are all about sharing insightful blog posts they come across. While this is not wrong, you can only find real value on Twitter when you interact directly with people.
Take your time to get involved in a conversation and answer questions directed at you. Do not shy away from giving your opinion on various topics and debates. What matters is that you interact with your audience one on one; be it with @replies, direct messaging, or mentions, you need to engage with your follows (and those you follow). All these actions are the best way to create relationships with potential customers on Twitter and build your credibility.
Monitor Keywords In Conversations
It is imperative to your Twitter marketing efforts that you monitor keywords that are pertinent to your industry. Start with @mentions and tweets that mention your company and product names. This will help you find the ‘vibe’ around your business and offer responses where necessary. Take advantage of tools such as Salesforce/Radian6 to help you with this if you are dealing with very large numbers.
Monitor tweets that link to your website or those that mention your domain to understand how people are interacting with your products. You may also monitor keywords such as those of your competitors or associates being mentioned, to get better insights on the trends in your industry.
Maintain a good personal profile
You’ve probably come across countless incomplete profiles, the main culprits being those who have not found the time to put up a real profile picture of themselves. If your account is among these, you could be repelling potential leads who want to find out a little bit more about you.
The first step you must take with a new Twitter account is to fill all the necessary details about yourself. Don’t leave out information about what you do – your business or profession. Add links to your blog or website, and links to your profiles on other social networks. Your profile is brief, but it should say a lot about you.
Share Valuable Information
It’s easy setting your tweets on autopilot, but it won’t be as effective for you as a marketer. Try to be as resourceful as you can for your audience. This will not only earn you more followers, but also interest your audience.
The most obvious way of doing this is sharing links to useful content. Your audience will appreciate this. You will also want to share your own blog posts, as long as you think they will be of value to your followers. There’s also a lot of fun you can engage in, including sharing funny pictures, videos, and retweeting witty comments.
As a last note, take your time to build a relevant Twitter following. Find and follow potential customers and industry experts, who will likely be interested in your tweets, rather than having a 50,000-strong following that has absolutely no interest in your business.
