How to Use Twitter to Market Your Small Business: 5 Tips

One of the best ways to reach your target audience and connect with future clients is through social media. However, in order to be effective on these platforms, you’ll need to tailor your writing to the specific social platform you are using.

With a global user base of more than 450 million people, Twitter is one of the top social media platforms for online networking and marketing communications. Similar to LinkedIn and Facebook, you’ll find that it is a useful platform for connecting with your clients, colleagues, and future prospects. While Twitter has a 280-character limit, which means you’ll need to craft your messages wisely.

Follow these five tips to become a more effective writer on Twitter.

1. Create a Twitter Personality

Take the time to get to know your target audience—their needs, interests, and sense of humor—and craft your writing accordingly. Whether you tweet as yourself or as your consultancy, consistency in your Twitter personality can help to forge stronger relationships with your followers. Use this personality to speak to them in ways they can connect with and relate to.

2. Choose Your Words and Phrases Wisely

When composing a tweet, there are a few key elements that can help you craft the perfect message. First, ensure the words you choose are simple, easy-to-read, and interesting. Think action words rather nouns. Second, take advantage of hashtags. Tweets with hashtags more engagement than those without. Hashtags can help provide context and expand your reach to people who are interested in what you’re talking about. Online tools such as Trendsmap or Hashtagify.me can help you find top hashtags related to your content. Just don’t overdo it—one or two is plenty. Lastly, if applicable, end with a short call to action. Ask your followers a question, ask for a retweet, or ask people to click on a link.

3. Post Relevant and Valuable Content

At the risk of being overly self-promotional, don’t just tweet about the content you’ve created. Instead, aim for a good mix of industry-related current events, shared content from other thought leaders, and proprietary content such as blog posts. Be sure to follow other industry experts and retweet and comment on what they are talking about.

4. Think Beyond Text

Sometimes Twitter’s character limit simply isn’t enough to get your message across. But as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. Including links to images, videos, or websites in your Twitter posts increases engagement and makes your tweets more likely to be shared. However, a post that simply contains a link probably won’t gain much attention. The key is to write a creative message that acts as a teaser to capture the attention of your followers and then encourages them to click the link.

5. Engage with Your Followers

Twitter encourages users to interact and directly communicate with the brands or businesses they follow. If your followers reach out to you with questions or comments don’t hesitate to respond to their tweets. Better yet, take the initiative yourself and respond to other tweets posted by your followers. Chances are, they’ll appreciate the communication.