A Guide to getting the most out of Twitter for your business
A lot of people I speak to are always a little bit nervous about using Twitter. It can be quite daunting, starting a new social media channel that you’re not familiar with and you can often feel a little bit exposed.
But people are now using Twitter like Google.
That’s how I found both my business coach and my presentations skills course! If you’re not on Twitter you are missing out on an opportunity to be found and gain new customers.
Getting Twitter right can help drive visitors to your website, facilitate conversations with people you wouldn’t usually get in touch with and eventually could lead to leads too (my last client was through Twitter!) so if you’re thinking about jumping on the band wagon with this social channel here are my top 3 tips to getting it right…
Your Twitter Profile
The first thing you need to get right is your profile. You have two image slots to fill – both your header and your profile image. I’ve have seen some howlers even at this stage! Try to make sure that any image you use here isn’t pixelated once you upload it, it will look unprofessional. If you don’t have a header image that fits the required dimensions you can use free image libraries such as pixabay to find the right image and size for your header.
Also if you are thinking about putting your company’s logo in the profile image make sure it doesn’t get squashed or distorted! I would even suggest not using your logo and making it more personable and using a picture of yourself. I hid behind my logo for a long time – people want to see who you are and connect to you!
Once you have sorted your images out you should create a bio. This is the written section under your profile picture. I would try to inject a little bit of personality here about your company and you. You don’t have much to work with in terms of word count, so make it count! Also use this opportunity to put some hashtags in your bio, this will help amplify your message to people searching on certain terms like #Yoga or #BusinessConsultant. This will just give you another opportunity to be found!
Lastly and this is quite obvious but often forgotten – don’t forget to put a link to your website in the website section under your bio. I have often seen this forgotten about. The whole point of Twitter is to drive people back to your website so try to remember to add this!
Your Twitter Content
Once you have set up your profile there is that pesky task of actually starting to tweet. It’s a bit scary but just jump in with both feet.
In terms of content the general rule is 80% share valuable information, blogs and stories and 20% should be on self-promotion/your blogs and services. That way your Twitter feed becomes a more valuable source of information to people following you.
If I was to change the rule slightly I would say 70% share valuable information, 20% self promotion, 10% more personable tweets about where you are, what you’re doing. I sometimes tweet off the cuff when I am watching TV or have an opinion on things and they tend to do well, it just shows you’re human and makes you more approachable to connect with.
One thing people worry about is having to sit on their phone or their computer having to constantly tweet. You don’t have to do this. You can use a social media scheduler and I spend about 30 mins a week scheduling all my social media in for the week. My preference is Buffer. They have a free version but I pay £9p/m for their awesome plan and it is awesome!
Your Twitter tweets
When you do start to create your own tweets there are three things that you need to have to make the perfect tweet:
- An image to accompany the tweet – this will make your tweets more visually engaging and likely to get noticed.
- Hashtags – try to include 3-4 as this will get your tweet seen by people that are searching for those hashtags. If you are not sure what hashtags to use go and take a look on hashtagify.me for some ideas!
- A link back to the story you are sharing or your content on your website, without linking back to something you are wasting an opportunity!
Hopefully the above advice will help provide a solid foundation for you to start your Twitter journey but if you have any questions please feel free to contact me.
Helen Cox owns Helen Cox Marketing, a Social Media and Marketing Consultancy based in Kent. Take a look at her website or sign up to her mailing list.
