Twitter and Your Business: K.I.S.S. Marketing
Most businesses present themselves on social network sites for expanded customer exposure, but many business owners are lost when attempting to figure out how to properly, legally and kindly exploit Twitter. The fast pace of this social networking environment can add to confusion, but when properly managed, Twitter can offer quick market research, easily build relationships and enhance business profiles.
Conjoined Efforts
Consider Twitter a K.I.S.S.–Keep It Short and Sweet—method of press release publication, customer survey announcements, sales bulletins and business-related commentary. As you update your website, be sure to enable automatic tweeting of the changes, updates and additions. Whether you add an article to the base site or add an entry on your business blog, have Twitter send an message to your followers. Allow readers to tweet from those pages or blog entries.
Allow on blogs a rolling list of your site’s recent tweets, doubling your “new content” count for search engines. After all, it’s original and new: Both count toward search engine attention, and every bit helps. Those automatic tweets can give a back link to your site if you are able to avoid a URL-shortening site. If you can’t avoid it, use the shorter URL. Twitter allows a limited number of characters in your tweets, including punctuation and spaces and URLs.
If you use sites like bit.ly.com or tinyurl.com to create an abbreviated URL to your site, you could get indirect back link credit, which counts a little, too.
Give What You Want to Get
Follow every customer, viewer or business with whom you deal. Retweet interesting tidbits they publish, but make sure it relates in a clear way to your business.
Keep personal opinions out of your business tweets, but don’t be afraid to make them personal: People like following people, even if it’s a business person. They often read more closely and reply to the personal business message—one with “I” or “we,” for example—more often than “the business” message. Opinions that relate to your business are fine, but step far away from “Yes, that dress makes you look fat” opinions. Those are killers and not in a good way.
If you want Twitter followers, be a Twitter follower. Follow people and follow businesses.
Tweet Timing
Most customers work during the day, Monday through Friday. To gain their attention and increase your chances of getting retweeted, schedule most of your tweets from 11am and 1pm and from 4pm to 7pm and later. Catch them as they are leaving work and after they get home. Most people don’t search for all the tweets in a day from someone or something they follow, so make it easier for them to find your messages.
On the weekend, keep tweets casual but regular. People prefer a more relaxed tweeting environment on their days off than they do during their work week; they want to relax, and that trend follows in Twitter.
Twitter Lists
You can create lists on Twitter—groups of like followers. Create a list for individuals and one for businesses. Send tailored tweets to them. Your individual customer probably isn’t interested in your B2B sales pitch, after all.
You may not get followed by every entity whom your business follows—but it helps.
Use of Symbols and Signs
When you use the pound sign, the # mark, you are identifying a commonly used saying or well-known person. For instance, the Twitter entry #mamasays creates an index of every Twitter comment by all users that include that exact # sequence. Other # inclusions are possible, so be careful and deliberate when you use it.
The “at” symbol, @, means you are responding to a particular Tweeter or including another entity in your tweet. Those @ messages are also search-enabled as “mentions.”
Use them in favorable lights, and you can keep a high-road profile for your business.
This post was written by Sara Woods of Coupon Croc. Next time you book a business trip, use a Travelodge discount code to save on your professional travel plans.
Great point about releasing tweets between 11am and 1pm, I didnt think of that.
Thanks for the useful tips, KISS also known as -keep it stupidly simple which is the same when using twitter
Sara,
This is my first time visiting and I must say your site has a very different look…I like it! I use Twitter but I have to admit that I learned a lot from your article as I did not understand how to really use Twitter to promote my business. My favorite was “schedule most of your tweets from 11am and 1pm and from 4pm to 7pm and later” as I sometimes tweet in the morning and always wondered why I did not see a lot of activity based on my tweets. Thanks again.
Justin
Sara,
Not too long after coming across this post I read about a company that tried to gain exposure using hashtags but they didn’t realize they were connecting themselves with a negative trending topic. The exposure they gained was not beneficial. I think we should add that the point of social media is to participate in a two-way communication, not to manipulate the network. It always pays to educate yourself before attempting to use a tool.
Your post includes great tips and you managed to keep it simple and understandable.Your post have the information that is helpful and very informative. I would like you to keep up the good work.
You know how to make your post understandable for most of the people.Thumbs up and Thanks
I think one of the most important thing about using twitter, facebook and other social media interaction sites is simply this – don’t let go of common sense.
Twitter can be very powerful in connecting with customers and clients but it can be equally powerful in shooting oneself with the mouth (err … keyboard).
The number of absolutely dumb tweets by companies, celebrities and experts is simply mind blowing.