How to Use Twitter For Your Small Business

by Tim Campbell-Smith
Twitter main image
Twitter is a very fast paced social media platform that allows users to like and follow each other, while putting out "Tweets" (Twitter posts) that are no more than 280 characters. Twitter is about fast information and perspective sharing, and a great way to connect with people, companies and brands one would normally struggle to connect to.
Twitter has 187 million active monthly users, with the largest demographic of users being 25-34, predominantly male (70%) and in North America. More than this though, major companies, brands and businesses a) use Twitter in their business and b) as a tool for engagement and customer service more than anything else.
Translation: While small, it is mighty and Twitter is a great place for business!
Source for Twitter demographics
So how can you grow your following and your business on Twitter? Some actionable steps:
  1. Make sure your profile is optimized! In this case that means your profile has 
    1. a picture
    2. a header image
    3. username
    4. display name 
    5. bio (with hashtags, to increase discoverability)
    6. pinned tweet
  2. Actively follow and unfollow people as needed (do not unfollow because someone does not follow you back, that's shady) 
  3. Be sure to include 2-4 hashtags per tweet (where it makes sense, not for hashtag sense)
  4. @ Tag people in discussions so you're getting in front of their audience (and vice versa), as well as for the sake of having conversations 
  5. ReTweet as often as you can (with commentary, don't just blind retweet all the time)
  6. Tweet as often as you can (the half life of a Tweet is only 18 minutes according to Moz)
  7. Watch the analytics for your account and top performing posts -and replicate as needed. 
    1. To see analytics for your account, from desktop or a browser for desktop go to Twitter, go to your profile, click options, click analytics.
    2. To see analytics for each individual post, pull up the Tweet and in the bottom right hand corner click the little graph icon, click "see all engagements" and scroll to see all data.

Twitter account analytics image

Image of where to click to see twitter analytics on individual post

Sample of Twitter analytics for individual post

Image of Tim Campbell-Smith, social media marketing strategist 

Intrigued by this, but need a little more or want to continue the conversation? CLICK HERE to send me a message and keep the conversation going about hashtags. Feel free to also email me, tim@timcampbellstrategist.com 

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