Curious about the tweeting habits of the best business tweeters?
Add People, a digital marketing company studied the tweeting habits of 3000 best business tweeters in the UK and came up with a top 20 Twitter business tips list. Their wholesome advice to business owners and marketers to stay ahead of the competition?
“Be authentic and helpful”.
And I couldn’t agree more with that! With 271 million monthly active users and 500 million tweets being churned out every day, your Twitter marketing strategy needs to be much MORE than just firing off tweets about your products or services/campaigns on the hour.
Here are the 20 tactics you can follow to make the most out of your business’s presence on Twitter.
Plus a top 20 Twitter marketing tips for businesses infographic which you can download and save as a reference or share on your website.
1. Help others with problems by using the hashtag for your industry term.
Remember, Twitter recommends that the best practice is to use no more than 2 hashtags per tweet. The use of more than 2 hashtags drops the engagement by an average of 17%.
2. Share tips related to your business and work-life balance.
3. Share photos of conferences, travel, products and other interesting finds.
Tweets with images are 94% more likely to be retweeted.
4. Provide selected highlights from a conference or event.
5. Report industry, company, world and other news that’s related to your business, together with some commentary.
6. Link to articles and content posted elsewhere with a summary of why it’s valuable.
7. Post original thoughts on your topic, industry and business.
8. Join industry and topic Twitter lists related to your business.
9. Feed your tweets into other social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn.
This should be done rather sparingly. Feeding your tweets into other social channels repeatedly is not recommended. It is okay to do so once in a while if you have something interesting/important to share.
10. Participate in Twitter chats related to your industry or business on a regular basis.
11. Research prospects before meeting them. You can gain a lot of valuable information just from scanning their tweets, profile and contacts.
12. Give referrals via Twitter. What goes around comes around.
13. Spread your tweets throughout the day, rather than posting them all at once, as people check Twitter at different times of the day.
I recommend researching what times and days work best for you to post on Twitter by using a tool such as SocialBro or Followerwonk to get the maximum exposure.
14. Respond to tweets that relate to your industry.
15. Publish your Twitter ID on all marketing collateral, including business cards, email signature, email newsletters, websites, and brochures, so prospects can learn more about you.
16. Post discounts and offers on Twitter.
Once again, this should be done sparingly. Your priority should be to share quality, “non-promotional” content. Promotional content should only be shared sometimes. Remember the 80/20 rule?
17. Use keywords on your profile and a fun fact to earn trust, add personality and enable you to be found.
18. Ditch the default Twitter avatar. Use a photo of yourself or a suitable image.
This also applies to your Twitter header image.
19. Follow experts, companies, competitors and leaders in your industry.
20. Be authentic, genuine and real. In other words, be yourself.