When you feel inundated with social media apps, virtual places to hang out, chat, swap stories, ideas, broadcast how you feel, who you love and what you do – you often end up asking yourself, why Twitter, do I need to post here too?
I wondered that myself from time-to-time. I’m not the type of person that likes to be ‘out there’ for the whole world to know and see. However, we are talking business here, and if you’re not engaging with your audience on various/multiple social channels, you won’t see many conversions (sales).
The answer is [bctt tweet=”If you have a social media platform they will come. If you don’t, they won’t see you or find you; plain and simple!”]
I have learned that you must have something exciting to draw people to, and you have to let them know about it, if you want them to do business with you.
There have been plenty of stellar computer applications, gizmos, gadgets and grand ideas that did not take hold because they were not marketed well. Nobody knew about them! Ever hear of the Franklin? Not many did – so the first Apple clone went out of business and Apple has stood alone in their field ever since.
So what is Twitter? Twitter is a series of quick information bursts, a search engine of sorts, like the old ticker tape from the stock market – current, up to the moment data, that keeps scrolling through. I’m here, this is how you find me, this is what I do, go here to read more. You can think of it like buckshot. Not necessarily targeted, because people choose to follow you. However, if your followers see and like something and they find you via search (i.e. #hashtag), retweet your post, then their friends retweet their posts, suddenly your one blast of buckshot has become a fireworks display. People are pouring into your space to get to know you. Once they know you and your product, they will love your product.
How do you draw them in? One thing to do is use a slick little tool called Tweriod – that monitors your followers posting times so that you can send out your microburst advertising minimally every 30 minutes at peak times. Couple that data with Buffer, a social media scheduling tool, and you won’t be up at 3 am, tweeting for your Japanese followers.
When formatting your tweets, TitleCase is a great little tool for your title field, and hashtags are a must. Hashtags are your keywords in Twitter, like threads in a giant spider web, if you click on a hashtag, you will see all the other tweets that use that keyword. It’s a great way to find things in Twitter, but don’t overdo it. Use Hashtagify and Google Keyword Planner, to get the attention-grabbing hashtags to use.
You won’t be inserting a full article into Twitter – you only have 140 characters – so it needs to be punchy, fast, and timeless. A picture says a thousand words, so couple your tweet with a punchy, fast, dynamic picture! One of the most important things to do is use content that is always going to be relevant to your audience – in the industry, this is called evergreen content. If I posted an article on how to code in HTML in tables, it would be very dated – if I tweeted @marcialking White Space in Web Design #awestruck #webdesign, with a link to my blog piece, and an awesome picture of a web page the article will be useful for years to come. Evergreen content will help you establish and maintain your authority in your field, and allow you to integrate new content easily – without having to refresh old pieces continually.
So are you ready to take the Twitter plunge? Follow the simple action steps to get those fireworks started!
Action Steps
- Create a spreadsheet of Evergreen Content
- Use Twitter and Google analytics to see which posts perform well
- Use Tweriod to determine best times to share
- Set a tweeting schedule
- Use a scheduling tool
- Use hashtags and images appropriately