Today’s guest post is from Charles Henry. Charles shares what I think might be the most important secret to a successful Twitter presence.
For many people Twitter is not much more than a way of following their favourite celebrities. They get a glimpse into a life they would not normally be privy to, and that is reason enough for signing up. To others however, it is a whole different ball game. With millions of people using the social networking site throughout the day to converse with friends, to keep up with the latest news all over the world, and to find out what is important to the people that matter to them at every second of the day, the twittersphere can be a great place to get heard in business. Below we explain just how to promote your business and grow your brand with the aid of a few well placed 140 character tweets!
The first rule of Twitter as a marketing tool is that you have to be heard. Part timers look away now, because chipping in with a tweet or two a day, followed by an absence of a couple of days will not cut it. Individuals and companies who successfully use Twitter as a marketing tool tweet regularly without fail.
Quality is a real watchword with Twitter. If you just talk, it’s just noise. Obviously you have to assess your own market, and try to understand what your potential followers want to hear, but above all be interesting. You want anything you say on t witter to be informative, interesting and relevant to your niche, whatever that may be. It’s not just what you tweet either. If you are providing links for your followers, make sure you are sending them off to something that is going to engage them – otherwise they won’t come back!
It’s always important to strike a balance between give and take. Naturally, having a twitter account is going to be about improving your business in some way, but it is important that you offer value for people. You can’t constantly tweet about how wonderful your offers are, or just how fabulous the ingredients are in your products. As well as telling your followers how great your company is, you also have to give something back. Try to be a helper, an advisor or a leader. If you can do any of these three things, people will thank you, rather than berate you for being spammy. Pushing yourself too hard is twitter suicide, so try to show that you are participating in twitter with the goal of finding friends and sharing your knowledge, as well as promoting your company. For every tweet that clearly self promotes, a handful should follow that do not.
Offer unique deals through your twitter account. As a business, you should be rewarding your followers on Twitter. Of course, a special offer is always likely to drum up business for yourself, but any followers who are presented with a voucher that can only be redeemed by Twitter followers are at the least going to feel valued as your followers, and on many occasions they will actually take up your offer and spend their hard earned cash!
Using a URL shortening service will allow users to track any links placed in a tweet. This means that the special offer you decide to flash up on Twitter can be closely studied, allowing you to see whether or not your marketing approach is effective.
Follow the right people. Twitter is as much about being heard as it is about hearing what else is going on around you in the marketplace.