Starting A Twitter Business Account: Does it Make Sense?
When Twitter started, it may have seemed like a fad. However, it has rapidly proven its staying power. Perhaps beyond any other form of social media, it has progressed to affect a greater variety of groups. Politicians use it to convey their messages (in fact, some members of Congress were criticized for tweeting during the State of the Union). Actors, musicians and other general celebrities use it to take advantage of their fame and maybe even just to create some headlines of their own. Businesses, too, take great advantage of Twitter. Not only is it a superb forum to engage with your fans and customers, it is also a great place to earn new fans. Below please find a brief primer on the social media site that is Twitter.
Getting Started With A Twitter Business Account
Twitter accounts are exceptionally easy to start. All it takes is an email address, and you can get rolling. Simply go to the Twitter website and start creating an account. With a little bit of information including the domain name of your business, you can be up and running with a Twitter account.
Acquiring the First Followers
None of the effort of getting started matters without starting to get followers. Some will come naturally, mostly by people starting to follow them. However, to start speaking and communicating with your customers, you should start by targeting them. Some businesses will offer a promotion to their existing customer base to start building their follower base. Once the base has begun, it can be time to communicate.
It's important to tweet regularly with quality content. People/businesses aren't going to be willing to follow you if you're content isn't valuable. Also, don't worry if the number of people that you follow is larger than your followers, follow anyone that you feel is offering quality content. As a matter of fact, many followers come from following other people.
Interact With Other Local Businesses
Building a following with a local business on Twitter can often require some collaboration. The businesses of an area have to stay together to help each other thrive. Twitter can be a great example of that. It is one of the best practices of the social media website to retweet (re-sending out a message that another user originally sent). By re-tweeting pertinent messages from another local business and having them do the same, it can build both brands and help build up the follower base of both.
The Trouble of Communicating in 140 Characters
The defining characteristic of Twitter is the mode of communication. On the site, communication is limited to only 140 characters. This can create a problem in communication for those who are not creative. For some perspective, at this point in the article 2,318 characters have been used, the content of almost 17 tweets. Some of the sentences used here are even longer than the limit of a tweet. Proper communication on Twitter is all about the creativity in coming up with messaging. Some use the common web and text abbreviations to fit the space. Others use tweets with short but engaging content paired with a link with further content. The goal here is to engage the client base, enticing them with something interesting and encouraging them to find out more by clicking on the appropriate link. Twitter is all about engaging the social media crowd and helping strengthen the brand identity of your business.
My Thoughts On Twitter Business Accounts
Although I use Twitter for WebsiteSpot, I don't have a high ROI from it. When I say ROI, I'm not talking about a financial investment, I'm speaking more about time. I generally will put together a Twitter CSV file and upload it to Hootsuite once a week to take care of regular tweets on top of the ones that I manually add. It's important to tweet information that you're target audience will find valuable.
In the end, it's certainly worth giving Twitter a try, you never know, you may have that product or service that people would love to engage with.