As the function of social media for B to b clients continues to grow, many companies are re-evaluating the marketing potential a Twitter profile offers to their business. Leveraging Twitter for your business marketing means the option to reach a pin-point targeted list of potential clients, with whom you can connect daily promoting your blogs, press releases, and customer service information. When used correctly and regularly, Twitter can be a highly effective tool.
Branding
Like all social media profiles, Twitter allows for an extended reach to your branding efforts. Your profile page can be customized to promote your brand, allowing your followers to become familiar with your log and business initiatives with each and every tweet you send.
Customer Service
Companies like Comcast, Ford and even Microsoft have leveraged their Twitter accounts as customer service tools. By providing an easy access point for customers to reach out to a dedicated customer service team in short communications, these brands have seen a significant return in customer loyalty.
PR and Industry Experience
Promote knowledge of your industry to help build your brand on Twitter. By promoting your press releases and blog posts to your followers, you reinforce your truest value as an industry leader as well as give your followers insight into your unique perspective in your market. The goal of any marketing is to differentiate your business from the competition, so be sure that your tweets include information and data of interest to your target market.
What to Tweet?
When considering what to tweet, the content is key, just like in any other aspect of your marketing plan. Your twitter followers need to be able to relate to your content within the allotted 140 character space, and be driven to click the hyperlink that you may or may not have included.
To get the most of your tweets, do not use the space as a place to solely promote you business. A good gauge is to keep you promotional tweets to about a 25-30% ration of your daily content. The other 75% or se need to engage your followers with a relative topic or industry news.
Use hash tags within tweets that relate to a specific topic or current subject matter, like #Twitter if your tweet is about using twitter for business. This not only helps interested readers find your tweets, but can expand your followers based on your tweet topics.
Options for the “New” Twitter
Twitter is in the process of a massive rollout of new design options and functions that will take effect over the next few weeks. According to their home page, some of these new options are:
- New design – You will now find @mentions, retweets, searches, and lists just above your timeline – creating a single, streamlined view on the left of the screen.
- View photos, videos, and other media content. This new function allows for embedded photos directly on profiles, for easier sharing.
- Discover related content – read a tweet that spikes your curiosity, affects your target market or your industry? Click it and you’ll see a current list of related topics, authors or geo-targets to broaden your knowledge and insight on the subject at hand.
- Mini profiles – You can click a @username to see a mini profile without navigating from the page, which provides quick access to account information, including bio and recent Tweets.
It’s Not a Numbers Game
Keep in mind that success with Twitter does not necessarily mean having the most followers. Like all social media profiles, the goal of twitter is brand building via engagement. It’s the conversation that counts, how many Re-tweets or mentions your Twitter profile gets is more important than the number of followers you have. Be consistent, be mindful of your target’s interests and respond to messages you receive, and you’ll reap the benefits that Twitter offers your business.