In an age of competitive digital marketing, having a responsive website and creating good content is only half the battle.
When people take time to read your content and like it, they could potentially propel it to viral status. However, what guarantees that an article or other piece of content will gain massive readership?
Remember, you need to have an engaging audience to make this happen, and even the best-written evergreen content can be dead in the water without an audience to send it to.
How, then, do you maximize your reach so that it reaches both your existing and potential customers?
Established brands and marketers do this by harnessing the full power of social media and other syndication channels.
There are plenty of ways to go about this, but in this article we’re going to focus on Twitter.
Twitter is somewhat underrated as a business platform and perhaps that’s because it doesn’t boast as many raw users as Facebook or have a specific niche as Pinterest. If properly used, though, Twitter can be of great value to your business.
1. Define your Twitter goals and objectives
Focus on a single goal and break it down into actionable items that are specific and measurable. Let’s say, for example, that your goal is to boost visibility so that more people can discover you. The next step should be to outline a clear plan of how to accomplish this.
For example,
- Use Twitter to reach out to prospective clients within 2 or 3 miles of my location.
- Share my Thursday night dinner special on Twitter.
- Inform my customers about an upcoming community event 2–3 weeks in advance.
These objectives describe what you’ll specifically do in order to bring about the accomplishment of your business goals. Keep in mind that some of your plans may need adjusting at one time or other, so try to remain flexible.
2. Curate your posts on Twitter
If the overall Twitter strategy involves posting content that is used elsewhere — such as your blog or website — then some of your tweets will have to be dedicated to promoting that content.
Remember that you only have 140 characters to work with, so every word has to be well thought out. Each post should include a sharp title or lead-in and a link.
It will also help promote your cause when you learn to use images and videos to promote your posts, as these have been proven to achieve higher visibility.
Another way you can promote your Twitter posts is by including other types of social posts e.g., brand updates, live tweets of speeches during special events, personal comments, etc.
This won’t directly increase traffic to your content, but it will go a long way towards building visibility of your brand, which will ultimately draw new visitors to your account and more eyes for your promoted links.
According to a Twitter survey by Adweek, users are more active on weekdays, so prioritize posting Monday through Friday, and commit to posting at a good frequency. Afternoons are better for getting people to engage.
3. Create a list to organize your Twitter community
Twitter allows users to create lists that make it easy to segment a customer base into several categories based on your objectives. This makes it easy to identify key influencers to engage with, and you can open these lists to check content from specific groups of users, therefore giving you some perspective especially when creating content that needs to tap into a loyal audience.
The best part about any social media platform is they make it easy enough to use, particularly when building a brand. So the more time you spend using it and engaging with followers, the more powerful the platform becomes for your brand.
Bonus tip: Create a winning conversation strategy
The most straightforward way to guarantee attention and engagement is to talk about topics that interest your target audience: this will give them a reason to engage with you.
Ultimately, you will introduce other elements such as your company history, goals, products, discounts, coupons, practical tips, and customer assistance, among others. The key is to balance all this information so that your followers almost always have fun when they read your posts.
Remember, people can read through your posts and tell how passionate you are (or aren’t) about a topic of discussion. Spend time thinking over a conversation strategy and use a fun and vibrant speaking tone and implement it before you go about expanding your network.
The more time you invest into each post, the more you improve your chances of building a loyal following, especially if you also have a responsive website and great content. These are simple tips that anybody can apply when using Twitter for business.
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Originally published at www.bookmark.com on November 8, 2016.
