Twitter can be a low-cost but extremely valuable way to build your business. It’s a place where you can form new relationships and gain visibility for your personal brand, product, or small business.
However, simply setting up your account and waiting for customers to fall into your lap isn’t a realistic business strategy. To gain attention in the Twittersphere, you need to put a few simple steps into place.
Here’s how you can begin building your business with Twitter right now!
6 Simple Steps to Building Your Business with Twitter
1. Optimize Your Bio
There are many ways to optimize your Twitter profile, but your bio or “about” section provides multiple opportunities.
It is the first thing anyone visiting your profile will read and is indexed based on your keywords. This makes your Twitter bio a very powerful marketing tool. Take the time to determine how to capitalize on this brief, albeit weighty, word count.
Business vs. Personal
While it is important to add essential details about your business, business does not makeup 100% of your life. Using the 280 characters on Twitter, you can inject fun tidbits about who you are personally and those things that matter most to you.
What do you enjoy doing when you are not working? For example, my bio includes my love of coffee, sunshine, and my two dogs. Those are three things that make me smile.
Let people peek into your life outside of the office. Consumers, past clients, and peers want to get to know you, so let them.
Twitter Bio Tips:
- You have 160 characters of space instead of the 280 you are limited to in a tweet. Make the most of it!
- People connect with people they know, like, and trust. Do not inflate your stats or enhance accomplishments. People can sniff out a lie and eventually end up hurting your credibility and losing any trust they have placed in you.
- Topics that interest you and the details that make you unique help others feel like they know you better. Like I said above, have fun with your bio and allow organic conversations with like-minded individuals to start taking place!
- The words you use in your bio are searchable keywords so keep them specific to what you want to be found for. (e.g. your hometown, company name, and industry or category)
- Add additional ways followers can connect with you, including your company website (make sure it reads like this: http:// and not www) or Twitter profile (e.g. @xyzcompany)
2. Use Twitter Lists
Twitter lists are a way to group users together by some common thread. For example, you might create a list of people who tweet about a topic that you want to follow daily, such as social media. The idea is to make these tweets easily accessible. This allows you to keep up with certain tweeters without the hassle of searching for them every time.
Twitter List Ideas:
- People included in a group that you belong to
- People that are tweeting regularly about a #hashtag that you follow
- Twitter followers that are part of your local area (city, state or community)
- Your favorite authors or celebrities
- Travel tweets that help you plan your next vacation
- Local businesses (e.g. coffee shop, restaurant, etc)
3. Follow people with similar interests
- Find people to follow and connect via Twitter directories such as Twellow and WeFollow. Both sites can introduce you to Twitter users that have the same interests as yours.
- If you belong to industry-specific groups, pay attention to who is actively participating. Read through their bio to determine whether or not you share common interests.
- Follow people that your influencers follow. Again, check their bio to determine if there is a fit or not. Staying focused on your niche will make it easy for you to build a community centered around similar interests.
4. Get in the conversation
Once you follow, begin to engage. Retweet their content, comment on a tweet or share your thoughts on their latest blog post. You will figure out very quickly who is on Twitter to interact and who is simply using it as a one-way bullhorn to build their business.
The more conversation you can create, the quicker you will find your own voice and posting rhythm.
5. Share content and update your status daily
The biggest struggle is always centered around content. The question is where to find tweetable content, what to talk about and how to best curate it. My answer is always the same. You likely have an immense amount of content at your fingertips, and you just don’t realize it. Here are a few ideas on where you might have content hiding and how to share it.
- Dependent on your target audience, you can share anything from customer photos to your weekly product special. People tend to forget that you can share photos on Twitter as well as Facebook
- Links to your latest blog post
- Details about an upcoming event you are promoting or a local charity that you support
- Insider tips that help your customer through the buying process
- Customer testimonials
- Q&A using questions frequently asked about your business or service
Think through what content you have on your website or blog and already created on your current marketing materials, such as flyers or newsletters.
Re-purposing your content is the name of the game. Do not feel compelled to reinvent the wheel.
6. Integrate Twitter with other social networks
Integrate your social networks into your website and blog through social plugins and the Facebook LIKE box. When you post to your blog, make sure you tweet it out to your followers and not just once. Tweet it throughout the week, but change the verbiage and monitor your results.
Nice post. I learn something totally new and challenging on sites I
stumbleupon every day. It will always be exciting to read through articles from other writers and use a little something from other websites.
Hi Rebekah,
I was wondering in your 6th step for building your businesss with twitter you mention the Facebook like box. How do you set up a Facebook like box for your Twitter account?
Thanks,
Nick
Hi Nick – What I was talking about was integrating your social sites with your blog or website. The Facebook LIKE box was an example of a plugin you could add (if you use WordPress) to better promote your page.
Great post, Rebekah! Timely as I just started revising my lists today 🙂 Great minds, as they say. Well done!
I was doing the same thing yesterday so great minds indeed!
Hi Rebekah, nice post with some great tips.
I must be honest and say I went from constantly on it, to not logging in for a long time!
I do like Twitter, but found it can be a big time sick, if not careful!
Do you have any tips for that?
Posted By Jon Barry @ http://JonBarry.co.uk
I found this post to be one of the best on working with Twitter. Thanks Rebekah! I especially liked #5…Sharing your content. Some really great tips I haven’t heard about. Have a wonderful day and keep writing those great posts. I enjoy your blog.
Rick
Thank you Rick! I’m so glad you found it helpful!
Some great Twitter tips. I know I should use Twitter more. Things go by so fast I get lost in all the tweets. I need to make some lists and do better getting into the conversation.
It can be an overwhelming amount of tweets if you’re just hopping in and out on a daily basis. Lists are a great way to stay up to date with the people and topics that matter most to you. Thanks so much for your feedback Melodie!
Hi Rebekah,
Thanks for sharing these tips I realize I have been doing all this already and this makes me smile;)
I am still learning how to use twitter to build my mailing list as you say it take focus on our target market avoiding to be distracted by people that engage with us and that are very far from our ideal clients circles.
That should make you smile Patricia! Losing focus on our niche is one of the top reasons I see social media efforts fail. It’s easy to lose sight of our goals when we don’t spell them out and take the time to create a strategy behind it.
Hi Rebekah what a cool way to spell your name wow. I’ve been using Twitter to market since 2007 and everything I have created with Blog Engage has a lot to do with my success with Twitter and relationship building. For example even today I’m looking for new connections via Empire Avenue, I find you, I check out your Twitter and I’m amazed buy your amazing blog. Connections and hard work are one and one, you can’t have one without the other. So glad I meet you 🙂
You’re absolutely right Brian – you can’t have one without the other. Such a small world connecting via Empire Avenue! Great to meet you as well and look forward to following your blog!
Very timely post thanks Rebekah.
Gave me a better insight about Twitter, although I don’t get to spend that much time on there, after reading this I def need to.
I’m looking forward to seeing more of you on Twitter George! 🙂
Thank you for a super informative and easy to apply article! I just reworked my Twitter profile and now going to work on some lists. I will refer to this article many times over the next few days in order to get my Tweeting started off in the right direction.
I’m so excited for you Paula as you step in to the world of Twitter. You are going to love it!
Awesome post! I am an avid believer in the power of twitter lists. Not only does it allow you to better organize the people you are following but they also act as a resource list for those who follow you. Another way to provide value to both sides.
Excellent point Craig about the list being a great resource to the people that follow you. It really is a win-win for everyone and the amount of time it saves when you are quickly moving from one task to the next is fantastic!
Great list Rebekah, Things I need to start doing!
Thank you Craig! I look forward to hearing all that you do with Twitter in the coming weeks. Ramp it up! 🙂