Perhaps you’ve already been using
Twitter can help grow your brand or your business, but only if you know how to use it well. So instead of spending time researching, here are nine tips from myself as well as my friend and social media expert Adam D. Brown that will help make it easier for you to utilize Twitter for your benefit.
1. Choose your hashtags properly.
Hashtags are not a thing of the past -- they remain extremely important.
As always, you should limit your use hashtags, and choose them wisely. When picking hashtags, make sure they are highly relevant to what you are tweeting. Hashtags generally work well only when a given hashtag is trending.
Adam has had incredible success using hashtags: his political involvement has boosted his Twitter influence to an entirely new level due to the upcoming elections, scoring retweets from Donald Trump and Ann Coulter to name a few Twitter influencers.
RiteTag and Hashtagify are a couple of websites that enable you to pick the most popular hashtags. Using these, you can easily search for the best related hashtags to incorporate in your tweets.
2. Know the best times to tweet.
Just like when posting on Instagram, you need to know when's the best time to tweet to ensure sure that your tweets are actually seen and read by your target audience.
You can base these times on where your prospective consumers are in the world--- which country and city? Twitter Analytics can help you identify where most of your current followers live. Afterward, based on their time zones, you have to determine which hours most of them are online. Tweriod will help you uncover the times audience is online.
3. Utilize the Twitter list function.
Twitter lists allow you to group accounts together by niche or category, making it easy to find valuable content to retweet. In addition to creating your own Twitter lists, you can also subscribe to someone else's list.
Adam explains that utilizing Twitter lists is what helped him amass nearly 20,000 followers and establish credibility within the political verticals.
4. Add value in your retweets.
Retweeting is okay as long as you give credit to the original post. But more than that, it’s essential for you to add value as well. This means that instead of simply retweeting a quote, you ought to include a reaction or opinion. You can even use it as an opportunity to connect it to your brand.
5. Tweet testimonials.
Testimonials are very powerful. When you post actual words coming from happy and satisfied consumers and fans, you will be able to capture the attention of prospective buyers and followers on Twitter. Doing so is also very helpful in boosting your credibility and thus making people trust you more.
6. Limit your links.
Many marketers have gotten accustomed to using links in tweets -- this is why you should limit yours. If you always tweet out links, your followers may begin to ignore them, but if you only include links once in a while, you'll score a higher chance of getting more clicks.
7. Follow and interact with local influencers.
Your local news media always presents a great opportunity to have your story picked up or retweeted. It's important to remember that your local reporters and journalists are people, too.
A good friend of mine, Scott Sanfilippo, recalled seeing a tattered flag outside of a local Red Cross. I tweeted his blog post recanting this discovery and my local ABC station WPBF anchors Felicia Rodriguez and Tiffany Kenney responded almost immediately, sending a news crew to the scene. This story was also picked up by many popular blogs, including Little Things.
8. Use a good profile photo and brand your Twitter page.
A good profile picture, company logo and branded Twitter page help boost your credibility. With anonymity running rampant across the web, many users will simply ignore you if they don't feel you can be trusted. Adam told me a story about one of his followers who recognized him at the mall -- they sat for a few hours and talked. It's a great big world out there, but social media continues to bring people closer together.
Using Twitter for your brand or your business can be useful and fun. Apply theses tips and watch your Twitter marketing collect more followers and new leads too, and don't forget to follow me @joepalko.
