GETTING DOWN WITH TWITTER

Strategies for BUSINESS EXPANSION

By Jesse and Genesis ONOMIWO

Rants!

A study shows 97% of all consumers search for local businesses online

before making a purchase.

This proves that an integrated marketing strategy, one that incorporates

various social channels, isn’t just good business, it’s a must for any small

business eager to build a solid online reputation.

47% of users who follow a business are more likely to visit the company’s

website

On the burner

Twitter Strategy For A Successful Operation Within The Cyber Space

Developing Content Marketing Strategy

The Concept Of Timing On Twitter- How To Know When Best To Post

What

How To Use Twitter To Increase Patronage For Your Products Or

Services?

Measuring And Testing

1.Twitter Strategy For A Successful

Operation Within The Cyber Space

8 steps that will help you optimize Twitter to maximize small

business results

1) Determine your objectives for using Twitter

Why is your business on Twitter?

If the primary (or only) reason is to drive traffic to your website, you

need to rethink your strategy.

The Twitter community values interaction with real people. If the

only thing you're adding to the conversation is a push to visit your

website, then you’re hardly going to ever have a strong and

valuable reputation on Twitter.

2) Determine your target audience. Pinpointing who you want to reach on Twitter will help you curate content that

appeals to their interests while reinforcing the relevancy of your message.

3) Create metrics/KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and

measure how well you are doing on a regular basis.

4) Create a daily or weekly workflow and measure how

much time you’re spending and what you’re doing.

5) Regularly take a step back on a monthly or quarterly basis to see

the results of your work, and regularly tweak your daily workflow so as

to maximize your effectiveness.

6) Use Twitter Lists

Twitter Lists help you focus on conversation streams.

Not only are they a simple solution to controlling your

Twitter stream;

Lists also let you group your followers and those you

follow together based on a common theme, interest or

industry.

A list allows you to see the tweets from the list

members as a separate Twitter timeline. This

distinguishes them from the crowd so you can pay

attention to what these people say. You can create

one or many lists.

You might create separate lists for:

Customers

Potential customers

Neighbourhood or community businesses

Trade or professional organizations

People who inspire you

People you talk with the most

Vendors

Previous clients

Industry experts

Special interests

You can also make your

lists public or private.

When you create a public list,

list members see when you

add or delete them from the

list, and anyone can choose to

follow your list.

When you create a private list, people don’t know they

appear on it and only you can

see the list’s tweet timeline.

How to Create your list

Go to your Lists page

Click Create list

Enter the name of your list, a short description, and whether or not it will be

public (anyone can subscribe to the list) or private (only accessible to you)

Click Save list

To review the public

lists created by any

Twitter user, display

their profile page.

Then click Lists in the

left menu. Their public

lists appear in the right

column.

To view the tweet

timeline for the

members of a list,

click on the list name.

To add someone to a list,

display his or her profile. Click

the gear icon and choose

add or remove from lists.

Then check or uncheck them

from your list of Twitter lists.

7) Follow people with similar interests

Find people to follow and connect to within Twitter directories such as Twellow and

WeFollow. Both sites can introduce you to Twitter users that have similar interests.

Staying focused on your niche or location will make it easy for you to build a

community centered purely on similar interests.

8) Share content and update your status daily

One of the biggest struggles for busy small business owners is content creation and

curation. The question is always where to find it, what to talk about and how to best

manage it. (tools shared later)

2. Developing Content marketing

strategy

Compelling content will help you attract new followers and

keep them engaged over time.

What content should you share on Twitter?

Links back to your latest blog post.

Details about an upcoming event you are promoting or a local charity that

you support.

Repurposed evergreen content including weekly tips, quotes or how-to’s.

Repurposed traditional marketing materials such as flyers or newsletters into

short quotables.

Email marketing

Company stories

Testimonials and client success stories

Past presentations

CONTENT CALENDERS

The best way to get into the habit

of tweeting regularly is to plan

your content

A content calendar can help

keep it together

Twitter put together a

few sample content

themes to help get the

words flowing

Examples of how you can fill your Tweet

calendar each week

Monday: Promotions

On Monday, you could launch a Twitter-only promotion for your

followers. Tweet an online offer code or a secret word for customers to

use when they visit your business. Build follower loyalty with an exclusive

sale or discount that can be redeemed online or in-store using a special

code.

E.g. Last chance for 25% off ALL CUSTOM CASES! Expires tonight at

midnight PST. Use the code: USAMADE.

Tuesday: Behind-the-scenes

Tweet a behind-the-scenes tour of your

business. Highlight how your products are

made or where they are sourced from.

Tweet a photo or video that showcases

your business operations or work

environment. For example, if you’re an artist that is writing new music, provide a

glimpse into the creative process.

e.g. Apple tweeted this:

One of dozens of steps that go into

every iPad case. #madethehardway

http://ift.tt/1i2TX4C

Wednesday: Helpful tips

Create a regular series of Tweets that are

informative or surprising, such as tips. If you’re

a chef for instance, you could Tweet recipes

or kitchen tips. If you have a fashion

boutique, Tweet ways to match current

trends with vintage items.

For example, from @Sightglass comes this

Tweet:

Making coffee at home? Check out our lovely little

brewing guide videos:

http://www.sightglasscoffee.com/resources

Thursday: Customer spotlight

Jew-ish @giveittothejew

@lyft is awesome! Getting picked up from the

airport and feeling welcomed in a new city is

great! #keepitup

Lyft ✔ @lyft

@giveittothejew So glad you're loving Lyft! :)

Retweet a few positive customer reviews.

Or tweet some industry-related news your

followers might find interesting. Respond

to questions or highlight a positive review

to show your customers how much you appreciate them. And be sure to mention

the @username of the customer in your

Tweet.

For example, here’s one of such

exchanges between @giveittothejew and

@lyft:

Friday: Feature industry experts or news

Twitter Small Biz ✔ @TwitterSmallBiz

#FF (Follow Friday): Check out @MCS4Biz - Ms.

Contreras-Sweet is the 24th Administrator of

@SBAgov

Give customers a glimpse into your

workplace culture. Tweet photos or videos

of your colleagues and employees hard at

work or having fun.

You can also encourage followers to learn

more from industry influencers. Or you can

Retweet content from them that is relevant

to your business.

See a good example,

Saturday: Community or industry spotlights

Rock/Creek✔ @RockCreek

Less than $20k left to acquire the Hospital

boulders! Donate to @SEClimbers today:

http://bit.ly/1jiJiaQ

It takes a community to build a business.

Call out neighbourhood events, charities,fundraisers and non-profits that you support.

Check out this example:

3. The Concept Of Timing On Twitter

Know When Best To Post What

How to find the best times to tweet

Your social analytics can give you an indication of when your audience is

engaging with your content,

But it’s not enough to just know when your visitors are online, but when

they’re engaging online (i.e. clicking, sharing, emailing, and even printing).

If you want to know something a little more specific to your audience, you

can try a tool like Tweriod, SocialBro or Followerwonk that analyzes your account and gives you some key times to shoot for. You can then integrate

those times right into your Buffer account.

Optimal times can vary depending on the timezones, interests or habits of

your followers, so how can you know for sure? And when you do know, how

can you use this information?

Sample screenshot from Followerwonk

The highest points on thegraph represent the times ofthe day when your followeractivity is at its peak.

So if I choose to tweet 5times a day, I’d pick the 5highest points which Imarked out above as 1 pm,3 pm, 6 pm, 7 pm and 9 pm.

As time goes on, thediversity and tweetinghabits of your followers willevolve, so it is advisable youconduct this analysis atleast once a week

Timing it right

Try weekends for B2C (Business-to-Consumers), weekdays for B2B

(Business-to-Business)

Every business and audience is different, so it’s best to test multiple days of

the week to see what works for you. If your brand speaks directly to

consumers , Saturdays and Sundays may have a higher engagement

rate as that is when most people are not at work and therefore have more

free time. Twitter engagement has been shown to go up by 30 percent on

weekends, probably because more people are on their computers,

smartphones and tablets.

And these users just might be the ones you’re looking for for your business –

they’re 44% more likely to click on links and 66% more likely to retweet than

an average user. They also tend to follow more brands and they’re 53%

more likely to recall seeing an ad on Twitter than the average Twitter user.

A study by Salesforce discovered that Twitter engagement for brands is 17% higher on Saturday and Sunday compared to weekdays, but that only 19%

of all brand Tweets are published on weekends. Weekend engagement

rates are particularly high for sports brands, fashion, entertainment and

publishing brands.

For those working with business-to-business brands, you may want to stick

with weekdays or start with a smaller experiment on weekends. An Argyle

Social study says that weekdays provide 14% more engagement than weekends for B2B.

4. How To Use Twitter To Increase Patronage For

Your Products Or Services?

What do people want

from brands on Twitter?

To know how to use Twitter to increase patronage for your products or

services you first have to know what people on Twitter are really looking

for. It has been discovered that Twitter users follow a median of 6

brands on Twitter, looking for things like interesting and fun content,

news and updates, discounts and promos and more.

A Twitter research

Leads, or potential customers that have expressed interest in your

products or services, are what drive your business forward. On

Twitter, you can generate leads by collecting email addresses from

these potential customers.

Once you’ve captured these new email addresses, you can then

begin to nurture these potential customers through regular email

marketing campaigns.

5. Measuring And Testing

Metrics to explore

Follower growth

Follower quality and engagement

Reach

Clicks

Conversion

Impressions

Testing: How To Test Headlines,

Hashtags And More

The more you tweet, the faster you will learn about what

works and what doesn’t.

You can test different headlines, days and times, types of

media and more to isolate what resonates most with your

followers.

All you need is a way to track the metrics of all the Tweets you

are sending. You can do this either through a URL shortener

like bit.ly or with Buffer’s built in analytics. Tweetreach is

another tool used to measure the impact of hashtags,

mentions, and so on.

A Few Tools to Help Your Twitter

ExperienceTwitter has a whole world of available support applications you can employ to gain the most of the service for your business.

Socialoomph

Twitter for Facebook

Bit.ly

Twitter Analytics

CoTweet

Kurrently

Commun.it

Hootsuite

Buffer

Feedly

Tweetreach

Hashtagify