Using Twitter 101 for Small Business Owners
Twitter possibly is the most powerful tool today in the world of social media. Twitter is unique because it doesn’t depend on trusted connections but the importance of the content and text that is shared. 140 characters may seem astonishingly less, but perhaps this character limitation is Twitter’s strength. It is no more a secret that Twitter is one of the most important social media tools out there, and probably the most misunderstood as well. Let us take a look at how Twitter can be used to drive traffic to your website.
What Does One Tweet and How?
Though it sounds obvious, many people tend to forget that it is important to have the Twitter button visible on every page of the website. It is also equally important for people to be able to retweet or share your blog posts, each time they are published. Several plugins are available which help you to place a Twitter share button on every article that is published.
Twitter allows only 140 characters to be tweeted, and this includes the shortened URL as well. This forces you to make sure that you use the choicest of words to describe what the link is all about, and what the twitter user can expect when he/she clicks on it. The idea is to be honest and descriptive, short and concise and attention grabbing. You must also make sure that your tweet contains relevant keywords pertaining to the content found in the link you share.
Consistency, Timing and Scheduling
While the same tweet can’t be tweeted again, you could probably change the text and the header, while keeping the URL same. However, you need to do this only 2 or 3 times a day, unless you don’t want to be seen as a spammer. It might also be a good idea to promote your older posts and content once in a while. The idea is to repeat your tweets, but not to the point of attracting criticism.
You need to tweet consistently and not be erratic in sharing your links. It helps to use tools like Buffer and SocialBro in order to schedule your tweets. It does not make sense to tweet all your posts within a span of few second and forget about it for a week. It is important to remain consistent, and maintain a discipline. SocialBro and Buffer help users to analyse what could be the best times to tweet. It depends on your audience and your followers. It makes sense to tweet more often when most of your followers are online. Usually evenings and morning hours are good timings to tweet, but that depends on your location. The best way to engage in smart scheduling of tweets is to use Buffer app and SocialBro.
Effective Networking Is important
While it is tempting to gain more followers than the number of people you follow, it makes sense to follow people and companies who are related to your business. This helps you to identify your industry, groups, and interests. If you are being interesting enough, authoritative Twitter users shall follow you back as well. This increases your credibility, number of followers and the number of clicks on the links you share. All this leads to more traffic to your website or blog.
This can only happen when you engage with authoritative Twitter users in your industry, in an honest manner. You would need to make sure that you constantly engage with their conversations and eventually they would retweet one of your links. A single retweet by an authoritative person with a large number of followers is enough to help you gain a lot of attention. Thus, gaining influence on Twitter is hard work, but pays off eventually.
Be Social, Courteous, Helpful and Participative
It is important to engage people in conversations, and not just share links. You need to answer questions, help people genuinely, send Direct Messages if information needs to remain private and follow basic etiquette. Courtesy attracts trust, and trust attracts more clicks on your links, leading to more traffic.
Like any social network, Twitter can be used to collaborate with other web designers, SEO professionals and look for clients. It can in fact act like a free text messaging service, albeit very professional and powerful. It is very important to be yourself, and not pretend to be something that you are not. You must tweet stuff that matter to your industry, and that portray your own professional opinions and beliefs. These tactics ultimately lead to social trust, which pays off in the form of clicks and traffic.
