How to Use Twitter for Business: A Beginner’s Guide
The main purpose of Twitter is an exchange of short informational messages the length of which is no more than 280 symbols. Like any other social network, the posts of registered users can be viewed by anyone in the world, except for private accounts.
Nowadays, social networks have stopped being platforms used only for communication. Business workers, marketers, and business owners have quickly appreciated the possibilities of social networks in the promotion of their products and finding potential clients. Twitter is no exception to this practice. It is actively used for business along with other social networks. It helps vendors and buyers find each other.
SEO optimizers have additionally paid attention to this platform. With the help of Twitter, it is possible to make your brand more recognizable, win the hearts of followers, attract them to your site, and make a direct or implied impact on its search promotion on Google.
All large and successful companies have Twitter accounts where they share different news and offers, communicate with subscribers, reply to questions, and announce their products or services. Why not use the advantages of this social network and create an account for your business? In this article, we’ll review how to use Twitter for beginners, how to get a Twitter account, how to set up a Twitter account, and how to use it for site promotion in the SERP.
Advantages of Twitter for Business
Before creating a Twitter account, let us review the main advantages of Twitter.
- Traffic attraction: When using this social network correctly and integrating it with the website, it is possible to considerably increase the number of unique visitors and boost brand awareness.
- Wide audience outreach: Nowadays, Twitter is the most used network to search for potential clients, and spread the news.
- SEO promotion tool: The correct use of keywords in tweets can significantly raise the possibility that your account will appear on the SERP by certain requests.
- Its own search system: A lot of pieces of news are posted on Twitter. Thanks to the use of hashtags, it’s easy to find these pieces of news.
- Means of communication: The interaction with clients in real-time, posting of actual information, getting information when a hashtag/brand is referred to or used is available for the owner of an account at any time.
- Sales increase: As a result of using all the above-mentioned advantages, sales will boost.
Obviously, the creation of a Twitter account for your brand or company is a necessary stage in the promotion of business and attraction of new customers.
Main Specifics of Working With Twitter
To use your account with the maximum efficiency, it is necessary to take into account the peculiarities of this social network. A specific peculiarity is the limited length of the tweet. Users cannot add a long message to Twitter. At first, this may seem like a disadvantage, but in the course of familiarization with the social network, it becomes clear how to turn this into a benefit. How do I tweet? For instance, it is possible to post a long-read to your site and attract the attention of users by writing a short message on Twitter with a link and announcement.
One distinction of Twitter is the rate of tweet success. On other social networks, success is evaluated by likes. On twitter, success is measured by retweets. Developers have been guided by simple logic. If your post is shared by many users, it contains interesting and useful information. Consequently, the more interesting tweets are, the higher the rating of an account is.
Are you wondering how to tweet correctly? To use Twitter to its maximum effectiveness, you must seriously consider the creation of short messages. It is necessary to make sure that there is a logical connection between tweets. For example, if talking about a business account, it should not contain information that is not related to the main business niche.
Sometimes, companies create several accounts that are used for different purposes. For instance, one account may contain news about company activities, and the other account is used for questions and client discussions.
An illustrative example is Google. It has different Twitter accounts intended for different audiences. In particular, here are some examples of channels: Google Developers, Google Webmasters, and Google Trends. Such a separation makes it possible to focus on the target audience and be as useful to subscribers as possible.
How to Set a Business Account on Twitter
Creating a profile, the first thing to do is to choose a username. In a perfect scenario, the name of an account is the name of your brand or company. It may happen that this name is already taken. In such cases, there are some alternatives. For example, if the name of the company is Seoquake LLC, and there already is the user seoquakellc, it’s possible to choose the option seoquakellc__.
Besides, it is possible to come up with a similar username that will contain the company name. It is important to stick to the official style and not to use underscores or hyphens inside the name of a user. This approach is considered unprofessional.
Next, it is necessary to analyze your activity and describe it fully and precisely in several sentences. This is necessary to fill in the bio information. A lot of large companies skip filling out this section. However, experience proves that accounts with a duly filled in bio have more subscribers. It’s not surprising as it is possible to briefly list the benefits of cooperation with the company for clients.
Besides, the bio is perfectly suitable for the use of the relevant keywords that will positively influence the promotion of an account. Below, is an example of the Motorola account with a correctly filled in bio.
It is then necessary to add the logo, create the style of a page, and fill in the profile as thoroughly as possible. The style of Twitter business pages is very important. It has to correspond to the general company style that is used in ads, on other social networks, and in Internet resources. This will increase the Twitter account recognizability and importance. Only true information should be provided in the profile. Quite often, users refer to this information to better understand a company activity, to check its website or office location.
Beginning of Interaction With the Users of Twitter
After creating an account, continue taking active steps. A lot of users on Twitter are making the same mistake. They do not analyze their audience, do not use keywords, but instantly promote their brand, products, or services. This is not always effective.
At first, it is necessary to carry out the analysis of potential customers. Search for mentions of a promoted brand and its discussions. If you have managed to discover discussions that are worth being joined to in the process of analysis, try this. This should be done unobtrusively without explicit advertising intent. It is unnecessary to immediately demonstrate all of your offers to users. It is enough to understand what is discussed, write about possible advantages that can solve certain problems, and offer your professional assistance.
Authoritativeness. Followers and Readers
It is important to win a good reputation among potential clients and participate in discussions in the role of an expert. Of course, you should be well informed about all the promoted offers. To lead a discussion, it is necessary to consult users, offer them your solutions. You should be able to consult potential clients and make sure they pay attention to the advantages that they will get from cooperation with you.
This position often leads to the return of unsatisfied clients. When participating in discussions where users are openly expressing their discontent, it is necessary to offer your assistance and consultation. Often, this approach helps to change the client’s opinion when they receive attention and are sincerely helped with their problem solution.
Meanwhile, it is necessary to track your potential clients. For this, define your target audience. To find certain people that are interested in the promoted offers, it is possible to make use of the Twitter accounts of competitors. One can logically assume that competitors subscribe to accounts that are interesting for this business. It is worth reviewing users they are subscribed to and subscribe to them as well.
Besides, it is no less important to check the readers of competitors. Among them, you can find a lot of potential customers. It is necessary to analyze their page and subscribe to them. In many cases, users often subscribe in return.
The most important note is to be beneficial to users and always participate in discussions and conversations professionally. This will establish trust in the promoted account and will contribute to its development as well as the whole business.
Creating Tweets
A tweet is a short message acting as a profile status. Because it has a limited length, it has to be as informative and useful for the followers as possible. The main purpose of creating a tweet is to get as many retweets as possible. This will make it possible to expand the target audience and increase the account authoritativeness on this social network.
All the short messages have to be relevant. In these messages, it is possible to share news along with interesting facts and links to useful resources. In tweets, the announcements of useful materials with the link to the site are often posted. Users can visit the site by clicking on the link. A potential client may find more details about an offer or get more information.
Regular updates of the profile status encourage new discussions. Followers will comment on new tweets and, probably, retweet them. The main rule is to always be an active participant in discussions and follow the above-mentioned recommendations during communication.
Quotes in Tweets
Quotes in the profile status are a great tool for getting additional retweets and comments, however, many underestimate them. In a perfect scenario, a quote should be somehow related to the business niche. Nevertheless, you can use non-thematic quotes.
For instance, if there is no possibility to find a suitable thematic quote, you can address famous people who are in a certain way engaged in the promoted services. If these are sports services, these can be famous sportspeople, in the case of IT services, these can be famous programmers and owners of large companies, in the case of medical services – famous doctors and pharmacists. Adding their expressions to your tweets, you can induce discussions and retweets, which will positively influence the development of your Twitter account.
Tweets with Ads. Spam Mail-out
A lot of Twitter beginners make the same mistake. They post new tweets too often. In this case, they are guided by simple logic. If you need to get as many retweets as possible, update your status several times an hour. Actions like these are likely to backfire.
First, to publish tweets, you need to carefully select information, as already mentioned above. It is often impossible to find the right topics to tweet several times per hour. This problem is solved at the expense of low-quality information that will not be of direct or indirect benefit to readers. This situation can lead to a loss of subscribers and a decrease in the credibility of the account.
It is difficult to calculate the optimum number of tweets per day, it all depends on the specific enterprise. For example, if you are selling clothes, there is no need to add 50 tweets in one day, ten messages per day will be enough. If we are talking about popular services, then this number may be higher. A good rule is to add tweets only if you really have something to share with your subscribers, and they will be interested in the topic.
You need to be especially careful with advertising tweets. Why not use the opportunity of the social network and add promotional messages very often? After all, someone should be interested in them. In practice, however, this approach negatively affects the mood of subscribers. More often, they simply unsubscribe from overly persistent sellers.
The main task of a new Twitter account is to interest as many potential customers as possible and win their trust. Do not overuse their patience by pressing them with your offers. Put yourself in the shoes of a subscriber. It is unlikely that anyone will enjoy receiving promotional offers from a single company a dozen times a day.
A business Twitter account assumes an official communicational style. When composing new tweets and maintaining discussions with users of the social network, this is the starting point. Therefore, when writing short messages, you should avoid topics that are not at all interesting to people. For instance, don’t write about your mood and daily routine. It is additionally not recommended to indicate the location of the company in the profile status, this information should be contained in a designated place on the profile.
Twitter in SEO
Just like other social networks, Twitter has a big impact on SEO. Today Google takes social signals into account when ranking sites, so a lack of social media for SEO is a big omission. Read the related article Social Signals in SEO.
One way or another, the presence and promotion of a Twitter account will positively affect the search engine promotion of the main site by means of attracting the attention of Internet users to the brand.
One of the ways to promote your business on Twitter is through paid advertising. Profile owners can purchase paid impressions for their tweets and accounts. This way, they will be visible even to users who are not subscribed to the promoted account. The only difference is that the social network will add the word “Promotion” to these messages. The indisputable advantage of paid advertising is the wide coverage of the target audience. This is similar to Google’s paid ads that are shown to users based on their interests.
It’s the same with advertised accounts. They are displayed exclusively to the target audience, which significantly increases the chances to attract potential customers.
Using Keywords on Twitter
The promotion of a business Twitter account isn’t limited to paid ads. One of the ways to promote is by using relevant keywords in tweets, the bio section of your profile, or the image and video captions. In a perfect scenario, Twitter promotion is taken into account in the process of collecting the semantic kernel and clustering. Thus, you can define a whole cluster of searches that will be further used on this social network. Read more information in the article about How to Do Keyword Research.
Twitter’s keyword search algorithm is similar to Google’s. It can perfectly understand diluted key searches, synonyms, and phrases with similar meanings. By adding the necessary keywords to your profile page, you can significantly increase the likelihood that users will find an account by certain requests.
Using Hashtags
Hashtags help in classifying content among a large amount of information. This allows you to significantly facilitate the search and sort the data. The two ways to promote hashtags are by using existing ones or creating your own.
To attract the attention of potential customers, you can use existing trending hashtags. In this case, you need to make sure that they are fully suitable for the promoted account and are up-to-date.
Hashtagify is a good assistant in the searching and testing of hashtags.
With its help, you can analyze the most popular hashtags by a specific keyword. For example, by typing the keyword “Marketing” into the search box, you can see various statistics on the use of this tag. In particular, the tool allows you to see a list of influential accounts associated with this hashtag, its popularity, and the latest trends.
The creation of branded hashtags is the second promotional option. Many large companies have their own recognizable brand hashtags. They will be useful if you have a specific audience. Over time, subscribers will use hashtags like this when they mention the brand in their posts.
For instance, Google’s brand hashtag:
When creating your own hashtag, consider the following recommendations:
- Conciseness and simplicity: Since the hashtag should be memorable, it should be kept as simple and short as possible.
- Uniqueness: A branded hashtag must be unique and recognizable.
- Using the brand name: The best option for small and large companies is to use the brand name in the body of the hashtag. This contributes to the popularization and promotion of the company.
Links in Tweets
It is worth to separately mention the use of links in short messages. They can be very helpful in business promotion when used correctly. The general rules for using links in tweets do not differ from the rules for using them on your own site or any other social network. Links should be high-quality and lead to proven and reliable resources. Otherwise, users may feel that they are being deceived and unsubscribe from your account.
Links to your own site play an important role. Once you reach a certain level of popularity on Twitter, using links can directly lead new traffic to the promoted site. In turn, this has a positive influence on behavioral factors.
Besides, the link length is important on Twitter. This is obvious since the message length is limited. Short links are also easier to read and remember. There are special tools to shorten the link to any page. For instance, one can consider an option with a shortened URL Google. An example of a shortened URL address is shown in the below picture.
Google Carousel and Twitter
Google carousel is necessary to attract the attention of potential customers. With the right Twitter account management, you can achieve the SERP search by a brand name that looks like this:
Many owners of business Twitter accounts believe that only large and well-known companies can get into the carousel. This is another misconception. It is quite possible to achieve this without being a well-known and popular brand.
Let’s review recommendations that can be followed to get into a carousel in the SERP.
- The number of subscribers: On the contrary to popular belief, to display tweets in a Google carousel, there is no need to have too many subscribers. The main criterion is the interaction with subscribers. Of course, if there are too few, the interaction will not suffice. Practice shows that a few hundred subscribers are enough. It is better if most of them actively participate in discussions and retweet tweets.
- Participation in discussions: It is important to not only write tweets with links to other resources and promotional messages but also provide information that is interesting for users and that they would like to discuss. Besides, communication on other pages will also be a plus. The main thing is constant interaction. This is good even if they are not coming from subscribers. They may be potential customers.
- Regular update of tweets: Only relatively recent tweets can be displayed in a Google carousel. Therefore, it is important to regularly update the status of your page. A few updates per day will be enough. Retweets will be also taken into account by algorithms as they prove the popularity and benefits of messages.
- Use of hashtags: It is necessary to analyze the already existing hashtags on a topic similar to the promoted account. If there are any, it is necessary to participate in the discussions. This will increase engagement and your tweets will get into the carousel faster.
- Images and videos in tweets: Adding videos and images to tweets is a great way to engage followers in discussions. Statistics show that social network users are most often interested in tweets that contain pictures, videos, and animations. Remember that the media content should correspond to the general business topic or at least be indirectly related to it.
These guidelines do not contain any new unique rules for getting tweets into the carousel. You just need to properly maintain an account, communicate with subscribers and potential customers, and post interesting and useful content.
Useful Tools for Working With Twitter
Today, there are many services that provide convenient tools for working with Twitter such as analytics, account monitoring, interaction with subscribers, and much more. Naturally, you can do without them, but third-party tools can significantly save your time and make the promotion of your account much more effective. Let’s review some of the most useful services.
- Twilert: This is a useful service for businesses that provides users with many additional tools for analysis and allows for a convenient grouping of users. Also, the service will send you notifications if someone tweets about a certain brand or uses the specified keyword.
- TweetReach: This is a professional tool for analyzing your existing audience and potential clients. Besides, the service allows you to view detailed statistics of tweets, specifically their distribution on a social network.
- TweetDeck: This is Twitter’s own tool to effectively manage and monitor an account, schedule tweets, and more.
There are lots of useful services and tools for running a professional business account on Twitter. You can search all of them on Google if necessary.
Twitter is a fun social network that allows you to find your audience and promote your own business. By regularly updating the page and following simple recommendations, you can find clients in a short amount of time and bring your business to a new level.
Use every opportunity to promote your own brand and you will definitely achieve success.
