Nine tips for growing your business on Twitter
If you’re struggling to know where to start with Twitter, or have set up an account but have no clue how to get involved in conversations and feel like you’re just watching from the sidelines, you’re not alone.
We’ve all suffered from Twitter block at some stage, including Karen Attwood from Nine Media. At one time Karen lurked around Twitter, wondering what was the point of it all – but she soon learned the ropes and today teaches other businesses how to make the most of the social media platform.
To help you learn to master Twitter and use it to help grow your business, Karen shares her top nine tips.
Nine tips for growing your business on Twitter
At its core, Twitter is an amazing, free tool to establish an online voice for yourself and your business. All you need is a little confidence and social media sense to make it work for you.
To help you build followers, engage and have fun, I have put together my nine best Twitter tips.
1) Create an interesting profile
If you are using a corporate logo make sure your biography is friendly and approachable as people like to interact with people. Make it clear what you do but add a bit of personality in there too – detail is everything.
2) Engage with your followers
Instead of just tweeting about your products or your commute to work, start conversations with interesting people on Twitter. It’s an open forum and much more informal than real life – so don’t be afraid to join in and get chatting with new connections.
3) Use the 80/20 rule
This means your Twitter feed should not be a whole list of promotional tweets – there is nothing more dull (and it won’t get results, either).
Treat Twitter like a dinner party with lots of different courses. For example, some Tweets can be retweeting interesting articles and pictures, some can be conversations, some can be commentary. But only allow one in five tweets to be a sales pitch.
4) Always be polite
Although Twitter spats are great fun to watch when other people are involved, it’s not so good when you’re involved yourself – it’s deeply unprofessional.
So stick to the same rules of etiquette that you would use if you were speaking to somebody face to face. And never retweet libellous material, hearsay or gossip.
5) Tweet from live events
If you are at a closed event, for example a product launch or conference, tweet what is happening live to your followers. This needn’t be a blow-by-blow account detracting from your enjoyment of the day, but simply a few quotes from keynote speakers or a picture showing the atmosphere.
6) Live tweet
Live-tweeting during television shows is also a good way to pick up followers that have similar interests. Tweeting during Newsnight has become a national pastime, similarly during big shows such as The Great British Bake-Off, there is no more entertaining place to be than Twitter…
7) Retweet interesting articles
When you read interesting, amusing or shocking articles online you should retweet these to your followers adding a comment with your own opinion.
If you tweet on a particular topic you can quickly become the go-to person on that subject. Inject in some humour and you’re onto a winner.
8) Approach journalists
Don’t be afraid to approach journalists, authors and key opinion formers on Twitter – everyone is there to join in the debate and if you complement them on articles they have written, all the better.
9) Host competitions and parties
Host competitions or Twitter parties that will engage more followers in your business. And most of all have fun!
Nine Media have trained staff from companies as varied as Macmillan Cancer Care, Betty TV, RBS, Pfizer and the National Childbirth Trust on how to use social media successfully for work.
