Twitter Marketing 101: How To Promote Your Small Business Using Twitter

Twitter is one of those phenomenal social media channels that people never thought would succeed. After all, you can only type so many characters in a tweet. But did you know that it is one of the most viable areas where you could promote your business?  

There are 330 million users in the world, and it serves 145 million daily active users. That is a lot of people. And you could take advantage of that market to improve your revenue.

But how? Today, I will share with you what I call Twitter Marketing 101. I will provide tips on how to promote your small business using Twitter. By the end of this tutorial, you should use some of these techniques to jumpstart your Twitter marketing campaign.

1. Research your market

The first thing you have to do before tweeting is to research your market. You need to understand who you are serving and who your target clients are.

How do you do this? How do you know who your market is?

First, you have to create a customer avatar. It is like a mascot that represents your target market. You have to give it an age group, a name, a list of likes and dislikes. You must give it a personality, and you will base all your marketing decisions from there.

You also need to think of hashtags that your target consumer is using. No tool can help you do this. You need to list down different hashtags related to your business, and then you have to check if those hashtags will serve your marketing purpose.

You also need to find out what they are interested in. If you are selling political attire, like t-shirts and caps, it will do you well to follow other Tweeters dedicated to specific presidential candidates.

These are the Twitter handles that you want to be connected with—respond to their tweets, and you will see people piling up to comment on your tweet.

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2. Launch creative posts

Once you are done researching your target market, you now know how to reach them. The next step is to launch creative posts.

Use images and videos on your posts. They are easier to read, and they attract more attention. Start by using the proper dimensions.

The minimum dimension for an image is 600 by 335 pixels. You can also use 1200 by 675 pixels if you want to optimize your images. Do not exceed 15 MB on the file size as Twitter will not accept it. If you are launching ads, the maximum is 3 MB.

Do not copy the tweet of another company. The last thing you want is to be labeled as a copycat. However, you can find inspiration from them.

Here are some ideas:

• Create colorful infographics
• Launch a quiz and include a link to that quiz
• Create polls

You can also mine other content and share them on your profile. I also strongly suggest that you create a series of content. Make sure that this series has a theme. For example, you can launch a new product picture once a week or tweet quotes from famous people.

3. Curate your feed

Once you have a Twitter account, you will be surprised at the sheer volume of your feed’s information. Even for a small business, you will realize that a lot is going on with your niche.

The key here is to stay focused. You do not want to see tweets that are not relevant to your business. You only want tweets that you can respond to.

You can create curated lists for your Twitter feeds. What happens here is that you select accounts that you want to tune in to. This list is from another user—it is not your list.

Here are the steps to do this:

• Go to the profile page of the user
• Click on the menu icon, the one with three dots
• Click on View Lists
• Choose the list you want to subscribe to and hit subscribe

Now, posts from these lists will get top priority on your feed. You can create up to a thousand lists.

So, how does this benefit you?

You can subscribe to the list of your competitors. As such, you will know what they are doing, and you can ride the trend if something is going on.

• Be active and give your opinion

You need to be active to be able to build your own audience. If you want to market on Twitter, you cannot just rely on ads.

Being active tells your community that you are alive and here to serve them. You must also give your opinion on social issues—but be careful not to offend anyone. If you want, you can support political, social, and religious causes.

As you know by now, Twitter is about chatting and talking. You will not be able to market your business here if you do not give it a personality. Even if using images and videos are great, nothing really beats getting into a conversation or starting one.

What you want to do here is to build followers. Followers will only subscribe to your business page if they share the same principles as you do. You need to win over your fans, and you must create a business personality.

You have to show that you are human and that you care. When engaging in hot issues, be authentic and be real. Do not be spammy. People will see through you, and if you do this the wrong way, it will backfire.

• Post regularly

My last advice on how to promote your small business using Twitter is to post regularly. You will not get millions of followers unless you are present in the community regularly.

So, how often should you post?

There is no single answer to this. The number of times you should tweet varies from one company to another. Generally speaking, you have to tweet 40 times a day.

Here are some rules that you should keep in mind:

• Only tweet engaging content
• Keep the content fresh; tweet something new all the time
• Engage with people who like or share your posts
• Focus on the quality of your tweets

Be consistent with your tweets. Take the time to review your Twitter analytics and see what time of day fans are engaging with you or what kind of content they love to have.  

If you cannot tweet 40 times a day, make sure that you tweet three times per day. This reinforces your presence among your followers. The key here is consistency.

Summary: Twitter Marketing 101

Twitter is a place used by people who are interested in hot topics. It is a place where people could talk and express their opinions. If your business is leaning on art and images, Twitter is not the best place to market your products.

If your business, however, is about hot issues, like products that touch political debates, then Twitter is a good place to market your business. Twitter is also a great place for products that are related to pop culture. 

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