Twitter Marketing – How To Grow Your Small Business By Leveraging Twitter

Can Twitter actually be used to bring in leads, opportunities and sales to your small business? YES! My clients and I do it every day.

You can’t use Twitter for your business the same way you use it for your personal life – you need a clear social strategy in place before you’ll see results. This isn’t hard to do, and can easily be achieved in 10 minute sessions a few times per week. Automate your status updates, then go to your Twitter page to stimulate discussions and answer questions.

Here are some of the most common questions my clients ask me about Twitter marketing:

What are your favorite Twitter marketing tools?
Two of my favorite marketing tools are Hootsuite.com and Tweetdeck.com. These tools allow you to schedule updates, post your social media messages across several social media sites, like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn at the same time and organize your Twitter accounts and activity.

What are some easy Twitter marketing tips?
Always make your Twitter photo a picture of you. When you use your logo people feel like they are talking to a corporate 1-800 number. When you use your picture they feel like they are talking to a person. Another tip is to think carefully about your Twitter bio, it’s short but not much to go on when choosing to follow you on Twitter. Your bio is a huge deciding factor if somebody decides to follow you or move along to someone else.

How can I create a professional Twitter presence?
Keep your tweets appropriate but don’t be scared of small talk either. Most people err on the side of being too corporate which creates a boring Twitter account that no one wants to follow.

How can I automate Twitter marketing?
Use Hootsuite to schedule tweets ahead of time for free. Sometimes it’s hard to be on Twitter consistently, we tend to be more active one day and then off Twitter entirely for several days or weeks at a time. Instead, it’s better to use Hootsuite to schedule out a tweet whenever you have an idea or come across a link or resource that you want to tweet about.

How many times a day should I update Twitter?
There’s no “perfect” answer for how many tweets you should send out every day. Your volume could seem high or low depending on the other people that your followers are reading. In general, you can never send out too many @mentions. Mentions are the main tool for conversation on Twitter, and the more conversation the better. As far as regular tweets or status updates, 1-3 times per weekday is great. If you can’t sign on to Twitter every day, use a tool like Hootsuite to load up tweets in advance.

Should I have separate business and personal Twitter accounts?
No! Just create one Twitter account. I see so many entrepreneurs make the mistake of having multiple Twitter accounts, then struggling to keep up or figure out which update to post to which account. Double the Twitter accounts is double the work. Start out with one account, and then if you feel that you have the time and energy to upkeep a second account you can always add that in. But remember, on Twitter you’ll generally have a much easier time amassing followers as a person not a brand.

How can a B2B business use Twitter?
For B2B, Twitter is most useful for staying in touch with prospects, previous clients, and referral sources. In most B2B scenarios, you don’t need to amass tons of Twitter followers so you can stop stressing about that right now! Instead, use Twitter to stay on the radar of those that refer your work or potential partners.

What does it mean to follow someone on Twitter?
Following someone means that their tweets show up in your “tweetstream” (the feed of updates that you see when you login to Twitter.com) New tweets from the people you follow are added to your Twitter.com home page as they are posted in real time. On Twitter following is not mutual – meaning anyone can follow you, and you can follow anyone. You just follow who you want, you don’t agree to follow each other.

How do I know who I’m following?
When you follow someone, the follow button will change to a green check mark next to the word “Following” with an actions button on the right when you view their Twitter account. (The option to un-follow a person is in that “following” menu if you no longer want to see their updates.) You can also see a list of who you’re following by clicking on the number of people you’re following on the right side of the Twitter homepage.

How do I know who is following me?
Click on the “followers” number on your Twitter homepage to see a list of everyone who follows you. Twitter automatically sends you an email when someone new follows you, which you can modify in your email preferences. I would suggest that you either turn this feature off, or filter all the emails into a special folder that you only check weekly so that your workday isn’t continuously interrupted by Twitter follow notifications.

What’s the difference between an @mention (also called a @reply or “at reply”) and a direct message?
A @mention is a public message that you can send to anyone, whether or not you are following them or they are following you. Mentions are public and you can include as many mentions as you’d like in a tweet. A direct message is completely private, and can only be sent to those that follow you.