Twitter is one of the most popular social media platforms in the world. Its user base is ever growing, making it a great platform for showcasing your business in front of a large audience. Tweeting great content and choosing the right Twitter Handle is all great advice but it’s important to implement a more specific and detailed social media strategy to really get the most out of Twitter for your business.

If you market your business successfully on Twitter,  there is huge potential to drive traffic, build brand awareness and generate sales. Below are our 5 top tips for helping you successfully use Twitter to benefit your business:

1. Use Twitter lists to benefit your business

Twitter lists are a great way to help you find, monitor and interact with the right people. Whether you’re looking to connect with industry leaders, monitor competitors, stay on top of trends or maintain customer relations, creating Twitter lists will help you manage this activity successfully.

So what is a twitter list and how do you create one? Twitter lists can be found in the drop-down menu when clicking on your avatar.

Image from Rose Media group Twitter 

If you’re looking to create a new Twitter list simply click ‘create new list’. Then name your Twitter list, add a description and set the privacy. If your Twitter list is set to public this will allow other Twitter accounts to follow your list. Once your Twitter list has been created you can start to populate it with content by adding the relevant Twitter profiles to your list.

Now you’ve created your Twitter list, you can start to monitor and engage.

2. Use #hashtags to help Twitter users find your brand

Are you looking to increase engagement and exposure for your tweets? Try using hashtags. Certain hashtags can generate an overwhelming number of tweets every day, which will help your tweets gain more exposure.

Maybe you’re already using hashtags but you’re not seeing the benefits, here are our tips for using the hashtag (#) successfully on twitter:

• Create a company hashtag. Generate a buzz around a marketing campaign or simply monitor people talking about your brand by creating a relevant hashtag.
• Use a maximum of 2 hashtags per tweet, these tweets receive 21% higher engagement than those with 3 or more.
• Monitor what’s trending. Trending hashtags are determined by what’s being talked about the most at that current time. When you see a trend that relates to your business, add the hashtag to your tweet.
• Find content. Use hashtags to find people talking about specific topics or industries and get engaging.

3. Use GIFs to help make your tweets stand out

What’s a GIF I hear you ask?

It’s basically a compilation of lots of images used to create a short video clip. When used on twitter the animated image will play automatically.

Want to catch people’s attention? Use a GIF. Want to convey emotion and information quickly? Use a GIF. GIFs are extremely popular on Twitter, so much so that GIFs are now an integrated feature on Twitter, making it super easy to find and post the perfect GIF to go alongside your tweet.

4. Get the tone of voice right

Many companies make the wrong assumption when it comes to the correct tone of voice to use for Twitter. People want an authentic conversation with brands that tweet as we would expect them to speak. Keep the tone of voice relaxed but always on brand. It’s important to create a relationship with your customers. Social media is not only about generating leads or sales but it’s also a great tool for building positive relationships with your audience.

5. Use Twitter as a customer service tool

Customers who need help with product or service enquiries will frequently turn to Twitter for a real-time response. There’s nothing more frustrating than going to contact a company only to find an email address which takes 3-5 working days to respond, people want a resolution and they want one quickly. Twitter solves this issue for many brands and has now become the go-to platform for customer service issues.

Asos are a great example of a brand who have a really good reputation of great customer service on Twitter:

Need support with using Twitter for your business?

If you’d like more support for using Twitter for business then why not get in contact and we can help you with every step of the process, from face to face or online training to social media strategy development and management.