Using Twitter for Business 101

Using Twitter for Business

If used properly, Twitter can drive large volumes of traffic to your website or blog. Using Twitter for business is quite straightforward if you know how.

The big question is how exactly should you be using twitter for business ‘properly’?

With Twitter you can get in front of large numbers of people interested in your niche in two ways;

1/ by having targeted followers who have an interest in your niche

2/ by using relevant #tags

Twitter Followers

Building up your followers is the first step to having a Twitter account that works for you, generating income. The more like minded followers you have, the more of them will see your tweets and respond to your offers.

To build your follower, find someone in the same niche as you and follow some of their followers. The bulk of their followers will be following them because they are interested in the subject, so this is a good way to find like minded followers for your account.

Use Twitter Advanced Search to find people in your niche with large numbers of followers.

Twitter has follow limits on the numbers of people you can follow at any time, so you will reach a point where all of the people who were going to follow you have done so. At this point, you need to un-follow the people who haven’t followed you back in order to make room for new potential followers.

It is important to point out at this stage that aggressive following / unfollowing is not something that Twitter are very keen on, so you have to be subtle about it and don’t follow or unfollow too many people at any one time.

A good twitter for business tool for unfollowing people is Twitter Karma with which you can highlight everyone who isn’t following you (but that you are following).

****DO NOT BULK UN-FOLLOW PEOPLE****

Once you have your list of people who aren’t following you in Twitter Karma, you will need to manually click unfollow below each person. We have never experienced any problems doing this, because we do it slowly. If you bulk un-follow your account WILL be suspended.

Once you have made some space for new people to follow, repeat the search process above to find another similar niche account to yourself and begin to follow their followers once more.

In time you will build a large following of niche followers.

Twitter for Business – Traffic Using #Tags

#Tags are a way to organise conversations and topics of conversation into threads. To use Twitter for business generation, you need to find and use appropriate tags for your tweets.

#Tags cover many subjects, and are a convenient way to position your posts in front of people talking about a particular subject. This is especially useful for newsworthy trending topics as they are occurring.

All you have to do is to include #business, #marketing, #London etc in your Tweets.

To find #tags that are popular, search for #tags you are thinking of using, as you begin to type, suggested popular tags will appear. Successfully using twitter for business marketing will depend on the #tags you choose. Choose popular #tags rather than what you think might be popular as you will receive more traffic.

It will all depend on the ‘authority’ of your Twitter account as to whether your tweets will appear in a #tag list or not, even if you add them. As you work on your account, your authority will increase and you will gain more exposure to #tag traffic. This is fundamentally how twitter for business works at its best.

When a #tag list initially appears, it is the top tweets that are shown, so only the most authoritative twitter accounts, the ones who are using twitter for business effectively. You can select ‘view all’ or ‘view people you follow’ as other options, but the ‘Top’ tweeters is the list you want to aim to be included in.

Your account authority is based on your followers, follower to followee ratio, how often you tweet, your mentions, retweets, etc

Accounts that are being used well will make it into the ‘Top’ Tweeters list.

Only use one or two #tags per tweet, otherwise you will look like you are trying to force your way in front of lots of people. You are of course, but we don’t want to alert Twitter to the fact!

When you find #tags that you like and want to appear in, you can save them by clicking on the cog button indicated below. Then, they will automatically be added to a drop down under the search box when you type #

The aim of building your followers, and actively using your account is to get your tweets into the big traffic #tags that will drive new people to your blog or website. It may take you a little time to build your account up so that it does this for you, but it is well worth the time and effort.

The next part of the jigsaw is to write compelling tweets that will make people click through to your blog or website page.

Write Compelling Tweets;

There are a few basic formulas for achieving this.

Get [desired benefit] in [short amount of time]

Example: Lose 5lbs by Friday….. is more compelling than…. Weight loss program sign up today

Secrets to [desired result]

Example: Discover the Secrets to 5 day weight loss….  is more compelling than…. Here’s a guide to losing weight

How [world class example] Got [desired result]

Example: How John Chow made $30,000 from one Email… is more compelling than…. Email marketing tutorial

2 + 2 = 5 contradict the usual

Example: Everything you thought you knew about X is wrong – here’s why….

[Number] [Something common] That [Threaten an undesired result]

Example: 7 web design practices that will get you banned by Google

Tease People into Action

If you are going to attract lots of clicks through Twitter to your blog posts, you need to understand the tease.

You need your followers to click away from Twitter in order to get more information and to ultimately buy something from you.

So, you need to tease them.

The process looks like this:

TEASE > CLICK > FIND OUT MORE > TAKE ACTION

For a report download it would look like this:

TWEET > CLICK > DOWNLOAD > PHONE CALL

The one constant is the CLICK.  Therefore, it becomes vital to understand how to get people to click on your teaser tweets.

• The topic – Links to content rather than promotions will get more click-throughs.
• The tags  – Tag popular on topic people with the @ sign and popular #tags to get even more exposure.  Use PLS RT to symbolize please retweet and VIA to name the originator of the tweet.
  
• The timing -   A tweet has a very short lifespan.  Aim to optimize the publishing time of your Tweets so they get seen by as many people as possible.

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