We’ve had Lily in the office for the last few weeks completing a PR & Marketing internship with us. Lily has just completed her English Language degree at the University of Birmingham, so she’s got an eye for detail and a strong knowledge of the power of words. She’s put these skills into action and turned her hand to writing a blog for us on the top things she thinks you need to know about Twitter for business. Check it out!
A social media presence is so important for businesses now, particularly on Twitter. Tweeting is ingrained in the daily lives of most of us, so if brands can be successful in infiltrating our Twitter feeds, with good content, they can be successful in selling us their brand.
If you’re a beginner at using Twitter for business, here’s our 5 top tips to help you get started.
Quality not quantity
You could assume that simply having a presence on Twitter is enough to build upon your marketing strategy. However, it’s not quite that simple. Take this for a comparison: you don’t enjoy someone’s company simply because they’re always there, you enjoy it because when they are there, they interest you or make you feel happy. In a way, this applies to social media posts too. There’s no value in sending out 10 tweets you’ve put no effort or time into, which don’t engage or interest anyone, when you could send out 3-5 a day that you’ve worked hard on.
Your followers don’t want to see samey, empty content – they want quality, enjoyable or interesting content that they can see you’ve put some effort into. Otherwise they’ll see right through your marketing methods.
But… also quantity
In saying that, it’s important that you don’t go completely AWOL on your followers at any point – you need a steady stream of content otherwise people will forget about you.
Taking the comparison again – you can’t enjoy someone’s company at all if they never show up…
To help with this, try to pre-schedule a base-level of content using a social media tool like Hootsuite (click here to read about more social media tools) when you start the day and then spend longer coming up with the bits of gold dust that will keep your audience coming back for more. Remember, if you disappear off their feed, they might disappear off your follower list.
Interaction is key
When you start using Twitter for business, you will quickly learn that posting your own content is only a part of it. Before you can begin to receive consistent responses to your content, you need to get involved in the content of others. Interacting with individuals – following them, liking their posts, commenting your thoughts, sharing something with them – is the best way to build a network of people who will take the time to read, and hopefully enjoy, your original content.
You can’t expect others to engage in your content if you never engage in theirs – it’s a two-way street! Once you have interacted with others, their followers will see your interactions and maybe become interested themselves, creating a chain reaction.
Visuals are a priority
If you think about it, scrolling through your various social media outlets when you wake up, on your daily commute and in short work breaks probably doesn’t take longer than 10 minutes at a time. When you’re scrolling so quickly, you probably only properly read the posts which catch your eye, right? Those being the ones that stand out visually. For this reason, images, GIFs and emojis are your best friend when using Twitter for business.
On Twitter, all the posts are short and sweet and so people tend to scroll through it very quickly. Use visuals to catch your audience’s attention and keep it there. Read up on how to do this here.
Don’t obsess
Spending a great deal of time on your social media output can take a bit of a toll on an individual, so it’s important not to obsess over it. Not every Tweet will smash it out of the park, and that’s ok. Try not to sit and stare at your follower/like count going up – not only is this more boring than watching paint dry, more mind-numbing than watching love island and not healthy at all, but it’s also completely unproductive.
Social media success is not something that happens overnight (well, unless you’re #SaltBae) and that goes for your ability to create good quality posts as well. You’ll get better at Twitter for business over time, learning what your audience responds well to and what it couldn’t care less about. Either way, don’t overthink it.
