5 Effective Twitter for Small Business Marketing Tips

Many businesses aren’t aware of the impact that twitter can have on their business. In fact Twitter for small business can be a game changing tool for sparking up conversations with your customers, carry out customer service or conduct and gather research and intelligence for new and existing customers. It can also be a complete time drain and result in deafening silence if you get it wrong.

These 5 Effective Twitter for Small business Marketing Tips: will help your small business make the most out of this exciting new communication channel.

1. Make it part of your overall Small business marketing strategy

Twitter is a social media networking service. it should be treated by your business like phones, email or any other form of two way communication medium between you and your customers that already exists. The most profitable small businesses, the ones that get the most value from Twitter are those who first figure out exactly how to fit it into their existing small business marketing strategy.

2. Pause, Listen and Learn

Don’t just jump straight into the twitter mix. Firstly take some time to browse around click on twitter profiles of your competition and if there is one of your local area. Find out what people are talking about, the language they are using and what type of comments, questions or phrases get the best response. Take a note of the ones that elicit the best engagement and think about how you can adapt those to suit your business needs.

Secondly, Twitter uses different symbols and phrases such as RT, #, #FF to mean different things. Don’t be put off by this, simply spend a few minutes learning what they are so that you can then incorporate them into your tweets to give your messages a greater impact and also make you look like a novice and not a beginner.

Click on the following link to understand what these terms mean and to learn how to use twitter for business marketing .

3. Quality Trumps Quantity.

You have 140 characters to get your message across to your audience. That is not a lot, so you need to make sure your message interesting and entertaining. The secret to creating a large community and get your message spread loud and far is by simply providing great stuff that people feel compelled to share with their own following and friends.

4. Engage

At the beginning of this post I mentioned in order to get the most out of twitter for small business marketing it needs to be incorporated into your existing marketing or small business social media strategy. And that you should treat it like a phone or email conversation.

One of the biggest mistakes that small businesses make is that they treat their social media platforms as an opportunity to shout at their audience. Don’t. Think about it like having a conversation.

You want to ask question, put thought-provoking or maybe controversial comments that invoke a response. And most importantly when someone takes the time to send a tweet to you then you need to respond. That applies to negative comments as well. A message that starts with @YourTwitterName my name for example is @james_debono (Click on my twitter name and you will be taken to my twitter profile where you can follow me and send me a question or a comment about this post)

5. Customer Support

As stated above is someone is asking a question or has a query about you or your business take the time to respond. It may not seem 100% relevant to you however the eyes and ears of the world are watching. Including your competitors and the last thing you want is negative feedback that you don’t respond to.

On the flip side if your customer response is great and gets a positive response from that individual then think about how powerful that can be. If they have 1000, 50 or 20 people who follow them then those people will be able to see the conversation, if your response is met with gratitude and praise from that one person then everyone can see it. That Twitter conversation acts as positive word of mouth marketing for your small business

My final thought on Twitter for Small Business is to be willing to share other people’s tweets. The more you share the greater the spirit of community you will create and the greater the chance you have of people taking their time to engage and share your content with their following. That after all is the true power and potential of Twitter marketing for your small business.

Leave your tips for marketing on Twitter in the comments box below; What works for you? What doesn’t work? Does a particular type of message guarantee a response? Let me know.

About

James Debono is a small business owner and Internet entrepreneur. James dedicates his time to helping other small business owners leverage the power of the Internet to drive business growth and positive change. Click here Join James Debono on Google+

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