Did you know that Twitter recently announced a hundred million active users? Does this include your business? Your staff? The USA is way ahead of the game with businesses recognising Twitter as a very powerful marketing tool. Most US based businesses already having thousands and thousands of followers... so, why isn’t the UK following suit?
Now is the time for UK businesses to consider using Twitter more intelligently for marketing purposes. Tweets that include links to your website can drastically improve SEO in terms of link-building and, of course, help to drive traffic to your website, which, in turn, can boost your site’s search engine ranking. The use of keywords in your tweets can, also, enable new users and, of course, potential clients to find your business’ Twitter page or company website. It is important, however, to understand that, whilst Twitter can be a fantastic marketing tool, it is, essentially, a social networking site – and that is how it should be used. Sure, you can go for the hard sell and, maybe you’ll get a few leads out of it once or twice. But, Twitter users are a fickle crowd. And they can get bored very easily. Instead of the hard sell, engage potential clients or employees in interesting, relevant conversation, demonstrating your industry knowledge and expertise. Okay, so you may not see an immediate ROI, but, when those potential clients that you have been chatting to (and secretly wondering if it’s all just a waste of time) need services that you provide, you can be sure that they’ll associate your brand with what they need.
Some other interesting points I picked up on after reading an article from Jared Newman from PC World were that 40% of Twitter users do not even tweet but still log on, on a daily basis. So I can only assume they just enjoy soaking up the content produced by the Twitterers (sorry, I got caught up) that they are following. So just because your followers aren't tweeting or interacting with your tweets does not mean they are not listening or reading your tweets on a daily basis.
One style of tweet which has worked well for me lately is requesting your target audience to RETWEET your tweet if it is of interest to them; this works well because the target only has to click one button. I’m also interested to hear from other businesses using twitter: What style of tweeting do you gain the best response from? Feel free to contact me with your thoughts @andrewmullings.
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