Ben, our Online Marketing Instructor, shares with us why your business needs twitter. Twitter has become such a powerful tool for personal use while Twitter for business can bring you more customers and greater understanding of the market.
Twitter For Business – 5 Reasons your business should use Twitter
If you haven’t noticed, there is a little online tool called Twitter, it’s used by 100 million people worldwide and its one of the fastest growing sites at the moment.
BUT, what is twitter?
Check this video out for a plain English explanation.
In its infancy it was used predominantly to let a user’s friends (or followers as they are known in the Twitterverse) what they had for breakfast or when their last bowel movement was (think a facebook status update on steroids).
Now Twitter for business has developed into an extremely useful and informative tool to help a business gain some traction in this increasingly cluttered internet information superhighway.
So why should you invest time into another social network when just keeping up to date with your facebook friends is enough, well here is 5 reasons why.
1) Keep up to date on industry news and trends
One of the best things about twitter is that it’s totally user generated material. Twitter for business can be a treasure trove of all the things on the internet that you may never get the time to hunt out. So, in the interests of time management, let others find that info for you.
By choosing carefully who you follow you can let the industry leaders direct you to articles and news that is relevant to your industry.
I for example follow Blue Train Seo . They make it their mission to provide relevant information for my interest in SEO… (funnily enough) that way I can stay on top of what’s happening in my field.
My friend follows leaders in the fashion industry so she can stay on top of the new Paris fashions and get real time updates of what’s treading the catwalks of the fashion centers of the world without ever having to leave her desk.
2) Allows real time communication with existing and potential clients
When your users are twittering about your brand, you have an opportunity to engage with them instantly by having a search running in a program like Tweetdeck. You can see any twit as soon as your brand is mentioned.
For example, I was once having trouble with a social media analytics program Alterian SM2 so instead of sending an email I simply twittered their name and the problem I was having and no later than 10 min later I had a representative twittering me back with a fix. That is simply brilliant customer service, I am now an advocate of their service and respect their brand, imagine if you could turn a negative into a positive in a matter of minutes.
3) Assists in building the holy grail of Google ranking, Back links
Every time you write a new piece of content you can twitter the link with a short snappy outline of what it is all about and then if you have targeted followers there is a good chance that they will not only read your content but, they may repost it on their blog (or similar).
You may get a link to it from their site and we all know that one of the best ways to rank with Godoogle is to have a lot of good links.
The key here is to make sure that your twitter demographic is relevant and interested in what you’re saying, that way they may really help you in your ranking efforts.
4) Builds your brand 140 characters at a time
One of the best ways to give your brand personality is to sit down and write out a list of what you want your brand to be interested in, just like a person has interests (Arsenal Football team, 1928 ford hot rods, Surfing and eating corn chips naked in bed).
Your brand should have interests, that way you can develop a personality for that brand. How you can do this, is have your twitter account set up in your brands name and post links and updates that relate directly to your brands interests.
That is going to give your target market something to relate to, you will need to pick your brands interests carefully though, you don’t want to alienate potential customers by being interested in something racist, homophobic or sexist. I know that you’re smart enough to not do that, but a warning is always good
5) Develop a better understanding of your demographics personalities.
When you develop a decent following of clients and potential clients you can start to get a really good idea of what your demographic is interested in by occasionally checking out what they are tweeting, what they are sharing and looking at and what they are talking about.
What better way to create appealing marketing messages for them if you know what makes them tick?
Think how well a campaign would go if you said ‘Web courses Bangkok loves eating corn chips in bed so join us for a corn chip Bed-In
6)Tools for Managing your Tweets and Peeps
- etc etc etc
So that is 5 ways that using Twitter for business can grow your brand using this simple and short sentence tool. I twitter so feel free to twitter along!
