How to use twitter to grow your business

Can Twitter help grow your business?

Knowing how to get the most out of promoting your brand and business via Twitter is key to growing your business.  Most newbies to Twitter feel that their efforts aren’t paying dividends and even may be a complete waste of time.

On the face of it, Twitter looks like a good inclusion into your digital marketing strategy with over 500 million tweets per day!  That’s a lot of tweets per second!

However, it’s not all good news as monthly users of Twitter are on the decrease, however daily users of Twitter have been constantly increasing since 2016.  Now that’s good news and a definite reason why you should include Twitter to grow your business in your online marketing strategy.

As with all digital marketing endeavours, you’re going to want to set measurable goals before you get tweeting.  So, it’s a good idea to outline exactly what it is you want to get out of using Twitter. Completing a digital marketing course will also keep you up to speed with Twitter trends and hashtags.

Why is Twitter different

Indeed, Twitter is a social media platform, yet it is quite different to Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram in subtle ways.  In fact, Twitter has been called a micro-blogging platform and is more than just an instant messaging platform.

Twitter continues to grow with five to ten thousand new users joining its platform each day.  With impressive stats like this, Twitter is doing something right.

Your online posts on Twitter are called ‘tweets’ which are limited to 140 characters per tweet and you can tweet as many times as you want.  Following others on Twitter allows you to see their tweets and vice-versa, meaning people who follow you can see your tweets.

To follow or not to follow

Following the right people or business on Twitter is key to help grow your business.  Choosing which people to follow can be very important to the success of using Twitter to grow your business and to grow your niche followers.

But the question is – how to find the right people on Twitter who can help drive your online presence and grow your business.  There are tools available which can help you find the right people to follow and connect with your target audience. You can also use Twitter’s advanced search option where you can even set parameters for the search you wish to carry out.  You can also include hashtags and keywords to accurately find relevant tweets.

Twitter support applications

There is quite a few support applications available on Twitter to help you gain the most exposure for your brand or business, which include:

  • TweetLater – Do you want to schedule tweets?  This is a powerful application that allows you to schedule your tweets and it also allows you to follow similar tweets and trends.
  • TwitterFox – This handy tool allows you to view your tweets in the FireFox web browser, which eliminates the need to constantly go onsite to Twitter.
  • Twitter for Facebook – With this application you can forward your Twitter updates directly to Facebook as your status updates, saving you a lot of time.
  • Ping.fm – This site allows you post updates across ALL of your social media sites – all in one easy to do step.

Track your Twitter progress

Once you’ve identified your Twitter goals, and started tweeting, it is a necessary part of your Twitter online marketing to track your progress.  It’s a good idea to keep track of your tweet response rate, direct interaction and retweets.

It’s simply not enough just to have thousands of followers on Twitter, you need your audience to actively engage with you, after all Twitter is used to talk to one another and engage in debate and dialogue.

Understanding that ever photo word, video and follower can have an impact on your Twitter success rate. This is where Twitter analytics comes in to help you understand how to use Twitter to grow your business.

Actively track your tweets by using some of the following Twitter analytics tools:

  • Your account ‘home’ – Insight into your top performing Tweets.
  • Activity dashboard – Analyse the metrics on every one of your tweets.

Audience dashboard – This holds valuable information on who you follow on Twitter.