How to Use Twitter for Business

Twitter was founded in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone and Evan Williams. It has become the place to find out about what’s happening in the world right now. Whether you’re interested in music, sports, politics, news, celebrities, or everyday moments—come to Twitter to join the conversation!

Twitter is more than a newsfeed, of course. It is a service for friends, family, and coworkers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent messages. People post Tweets, which may contain photos, videos, links, and up to 280 characters of text. These messages are posted to your public profile, sent to your followers, and are searchable on Twitter search. The platform is public and therefore every Tweet and conversation can be viewed by anyone, except if you changed your privacy settings.

What differentiates Twitter from other social platforms is its fast-paced, real-time nature. It is also very conversational because of the real-time dimension of a user’s timelines. Of course, hashtags also make it much easier to discover new content in the social sphere. 

Twitter is an excellent real-time platform to quickly spread news, engage in customer service, or contribute to other relevant conversations on topics related to your business. Twitter is especially effective for engaging B2B buyers and B2C consumers with thought leadership content and helpful advice or insights on topics that are of interest to them.  As a marketer, you need to be part of the trending conversations.

What Twitter is Not

Even though Twitter is one of the leading social media platforms, some common misconceptions persist. 

Misconception 1: Followers are the only success metrics

Brands can achieve much more than just getting their maximum follower count. It’s about community management, building relationships with your followers. Some brands might have a few followers, but if they’re very dedicated and engaged, that means way more than if you have millions of followers and they don’t care about what you’re doing or not engaging with your brand. 

Misconception 2: Users only tweet

Actually, users are coming to the platform to find out new things, to engage with things that interest them, and then to tweet and share the content. 

Misconception 3: Twitter is only for business and tech people

People on Twitter are interested in a huge variety of news and politics, pop culture, sports, live commentary on events. Anything under the sun. People from all backgrounds are represented on the platform and not everyone uses Twitter for the same reasons.

Misconception 4: Tweets are only text

Actually, the best tweets that get the most engagement include photos, videos, gifs, you name it. So, if you really want to get people talking and engaging with your tweets, think beyond text and be sure to include images and video.

Who Uses Twitter?

While everyone experiences Twitter differently, here are a few key areas of interest that people look for on Twitter. 

• News and politics: People want to find out the latest in local and global news, watch political events as they unfold, and interact with communities and social movements. 
• Sports: From the Olympics to the NFL Draft, you can get real-time updates, see what the star players have to say, and connect with fans around the world. 
• Pop culture: You can find out what your favorite celebrities are up to by following them on Twitter and joining in on the conversation. 
• Influencers: You can see what thought leaders and experts in your industry are saying, and connect with creators, artists, and celebrities. 
• Utility: Twitter provides a lot of utility. You can get commuter info and updates, receive disaster updates and support, and reach customer service agents without even having to call. 
• Customer service: A lot of people use Twitter for customer service, so brands need to be paying attention in real time to service those customers.

These are only a few categories of interest that make up the major conversations on Twitter, but you can actually find a conversation for anything that interests you. With so many people and interests, brands can use these conversations to understand and share content to their target audience.

Moreover, Twitter is born in the live dimension, with people tweeting and reading Tweets as they go, as they see it, as they think it. The platform is the pulse of the world, evolving as time goes by with new 280 character messages every second telling more about what is happening around us. Because of this live dimension, Twitter is mostly used on mobile where people can share and read in an instant.

Why Should Marketers Use Twitter?

Twitter can be a strong platform for marketers, once you know how to use it. 

Discover trends

You can first use the platform to discover what’s happening around you. Brands need to stay up to date with world news, trends, and customer interests. So, Twitter is the perfect place to see these things as they evolve and take note of how your brand fits within this evolving landscape. For example, if you are a retail brand and you’re looking for inspiration or insight on what your customers love, Twitter’s a great place to find out what people are interested in, from celebrities to colors to services, so you can target your tweets accordingly. 

Manage the brand

You can use Twitter to manage your brand’s reputation. Twitter is a place where people share all their feelings. So, it’s a good place to keep track of what the sentiment is around your brand, and manage any negative commentary before it spirals out of control and becomes a social media crisis. 

People love to talk, and on Twitter you can find out how they talk about your brands. You can curate the tweets around your brand in order to assess the global sentiments and reputation you have, and use it to give a direction to your next marketing choices.

Increase awareness

Twitter is also a great place to increase your brand’s awareness. Because of the discoverability factor, Twitter is a great place to put your content forward. Users are active and curious, and will listen. Brands in this environment are not considered as noise or spam but, with good content, can appear as real experts in their category or area of interest. As long as you’re providing great content, it should be a great place to engage people with your brand and to spike interest.

Provide customer service

Because Twitter is based on Live, and tweets flow instantaneously, the platform offers a great way to interact with customers who need answers instantly. It also helps you manage those negative comments and prove your capacity to handle your customers with care, increasing your brand sympathy. 

People are on the move, and experiencing your brand throughout their day to day, and so they’ll use Twitter as a way to get immediate customer service. So, it’s important to be checking these tweets and comments on a regular basis, so you can service them in real time. 

Research competition

Every major brand is on Twitter for the reasons mentioned above. That  makes it a great place to watch what the competition is doing, and research how they speak and what they focus on. This in turn will help you to better differentiate from – or level up to – your competition.

Connect with others

Twitter’s also a great place to connect with customers, brand advocates, and influencers. These influencers tend to have really large audiences. So, if you win them over, you’ll win their audiences over and it’s a great way to humanize your brands and remain authentic.

Once you understand how to effectively use Twitter, the platform can help you to promote your brand and increase your reach across multiple social media platforms.

The key to mastering social media is to understand how to find and engage your audience and how each platform works. A great way to do this is to take the time to enrol in a social media and marketing course that will teach you everything you need to know to drive business success.

Related

• 8 Twitter Hashtag Research Tools
• A Guide to Twitter Hashtags