Engaging the Twitter community

Many people think that if they set up a Twitter account, they will magically get business. It’s true that Twitter, alongside other online marketing activities can be powerful tool in promoting a brand, making business contacts and generating sales. But it won’t happen by itself and it won’t happen overnight. You need to firstly engage the community.

Listen

Follow interesting people and businesses. Follow those you admire. Follow your competitors. Then listen to what they’re saying! How do they use Twitter: do they share opinions; ask questions; post links? What tone of voice do they use? How often do they tweet? Who are they talking to? Get involved in conversations – reply to people and offer your insights.

Use hashtags

The # symbol, called a hashtag, is used to mark and track keywords and topics in a tweet. If you click on a hashtag in a tweet, it will shows you all other tweets in that category. You can also search for hashtags in the search bar.

For example, if someone is tweeting about Brighton, they may choose to include #brighton. By categorising the tweet, it will show more easily in a search.

One of the most common hashtags you may see is #followfriday which is often abbreviated to #ff. This is a weekly tradition (on Fridays, funnily enough) where users recommend people that others should follow on Twitter.

Respond to news stories and trending topics

If you’re struggling for content for your tweets, have a nose around the Discover section. Here you’ll find links to popular news stories as well as trending topics. Trending topics will be a mixture of subject matters and hashtags.

Create goodwill

Retweet interesting tweets by people you follow and ‘favourite’ really great tweets. These show your appreciation for the tweet! Plus, when you retweet, you’re sharing someone’s tweets with all your followers which opens it up to a larger audience. This is where you can see Twitter’s real-time viral nature unfold – there is potential for your tweets, if retweeted, to be seen be thousands of people.

Live tweet at events

If you’re hosting or attending an event, live tweeting is very effective. It’s really important that if you have a smartphone you install a Twitter app. You can tweet your thoughts on the speakers’ content, take photos and communicate with all the other attendees that are tweeting too. Find out more about integrating social media with live events.

Alternate your tweet days and times

Scheduling tweets in really effective in track interest levels from your followers. For example you may find that when you tweet first thing on a Monday morning, you don’t get much response in the form of replies, retweets or clicks on your links. This could be because people are busy at work, catching up on the weekend’s emails. However, you might find that on Friday afternoons, when perhaps people are starting to wind down for the weekend, that you get a better response!

Of course, social media is only effective if you have a digital marketing strategy in place. In order to devise a strategy, you first need to understand your value proposition and your customer segments. We’ll help you do this and grow your business with digital marketing in the process.

Posted on: Monday, 9th July, 2012 | Posted by: amy | Posted in marketing, social media, social summer | No Comments »