Twitter can be one of the best online tools to draw customers or visitors to your business. Though it is easy to set up an account and send out tweets now and then, it takes a truly devoted marketing person or team to draw attention to your business, event or product. Without taking the time to set up an account and interact with your followers, your Twitter account is just a waste of time.
First research your niche. For example, if you are tweeting about a restaurant, look at what successful restaurants post on their Twitter accounts. Add their followers to try to grow a following and use the hashtags shared with their followers. Often these are the searches people use to find accounts like yours. Before devoting time to tweeting, complete your entire profile to look legitimate.
Write down what you want to achieve with your Twitter account. Do you want to build traffic to your website? Connect with your customers or readers? Show you’re an expert in your niche? Build a brand? Depending on your goals, you need to tailor your tweets to fit this goal. Regardless of what your purpose is, networking with your followers is important. If you don’t network, your account looks dormant.
One way to interact with your followers is to not only post a link to your blog entry or website, but you should also to propose a question. Ask your followers their opinion on a subject or start a conversation related to the content of the link. Not only pose the question on Twitter but ask that your followers leave a comment with their opinion and share the link with friends. If it’s controversial or interesting, people will share their opinions and check back for future conversations. When your followers share their thoughts, it’s most important to respond to their messages, even if it’s blog comments.
When you see your followers tweeting interesting and quality links or content, retweet these messages. If you are known as someone who will share tweets, your followers are more likely to share your information with friends. It’s also important to keep in mind that you should think before your tweet. Do not send links to information that is not informative or interesting, make sure that the content is informative and beneficial to your followers.
Those who aim to build traffic to their website or blog should ask followers to not only retweet their tweets but to “stumble” your content. Those who are big stumblers have the easy access toolbar downloaded. Viewers simply have to “thumbs up” your page and it’s submitted into the content pool on Stumble Upon. When people use Stumble Upon when bored, they may wander upon your site. The more people who “thumb up” it, the more likely it will appear in the content pool.
Once you learn to effectively use Twitter for marketing, you will see your numbers increase quickly. The important factor is to continuously use this tool. If you stop networking with others, your followers will not pay attention to your tweets and content. Your traffic will then quickly decrease over time.
