Top tips for getting your business started on Twitter

Twitter is an excellent platform for businesses to launch their social media presence. It can help raise your profile, win new customers and connect with your target audience. But with around 6,000 tweets being sent every second of the day it’s important to make yours stand out. We’ve already shared how to create an effective Twitter profile, now here are our top tips on how to tweet about your business on Twitter.

Twitter basics – how to tweet

Tweets are 280 character messages that you share with people who follow you. On top of your 280 characters, you can add photos, videos and website links to make your tweets more interesting and useful.

When you want to have a conversation with another profile you have to use its Twitter handle – a  unique username prefixed with @. It’s possible to tweet more than one profile at a time and even people who don’t yet follow you. You can use the search bar to find profiles either by using their Twitter handle, their real name or keywords that relate to them or what they do.

If you see an interesting tweet in your newsfeed you might want to share it with your followers. This is called a retweet or RT and can be achieved by clicking the circling arrows underneath the body of the tweet. You’ll also see an arrow pointing to the left and a heart. If you click on the arrow you can reply to the profile that tweeted the post and the heart allows you to like the tweet. You can also see the tweets you’ve liked on your profile page.

Now you know how to tweet it’s time to think about what you should be saying.

Balance what you share

As a business, it’s important to avoid becoming too self-promotional on Twitter. This will turn your Twitter followers off. Think about balancing the number of tweets you share about your products and services with handy tips and useful information. Check out our content marketing post to find out why this approach will win you more business.

Including quality pictures, video and links in your tweets will also guarantee they receive more interaction and shares from the people who follow you. Images are more eye-catching in newsfeeds than text alone and give people a visual clue about what you’re trying to say.

The best size image for Twitter is 1024px x 512px. Either add an image to your tweet with these dimensions or make sure there’s a picture of this size on the webpage you’re sharing. Images of different dimensions will be automatically cropped by Twitter.

If you’re including a video make sure it’s set to auto-run so it starts rolling when your followers scroll down their newsfeed. They are more likely to stop and take a look if they see moving pictures.

Have conversations

People like to know there’s a real person behind a Twitter account to respond to questions and ask questions. Your Twitter account can become an extension of your customer services and help you build relationships with clients and potential customers online.

Use hashtags

If you want to reach a wider audience you can include hashtags in the text of your tweet. Add one or more keywords behind the # symbol (for example #TwitterTips) and your tweet will become visible to anyone searching for the same hashtag using Twitter’s search bar.

Spend a bit of time searching Twitter for topics that are relevant to your business or your customers. See if they have a hashtag. If they are tweeting about the #sunholiday they just booked then maybe you can join in the conversation and give them some skincare advice. This will help other people find you and may lead to new followers and customers. Find out more about using hashtags effectively.

Build a Twitter following

One way to build your Twitter community is by following accounts that are relevant to your business. These might be business partners, industry experts and even competitors. Don’t buy followers. While this will make your profile appear more popular to begin with, these fake accounts are being shut down by Twitter all the time and you’ll get no interaction from them.

If you’d like more advice getting your business started on Twitter, Amplify PR offers training and support with creating a bespoke social media content plan for your company.