Think about Twitter as a bridge between your online followers and your physical shop. In order to take advantage of this “bridge”, you must go through a day-to-day study and practice. You must ask yourself, how do I use Twitter? Am I creating connections? Do I sell? When all these questions receive an answer you may start leveraging Twitter’s full potential.

Hashtags and keywords may be used to track people that may be interested in what your Business has to offer. A quick example regarding the use of hashtags: In case you wish to attract new customers to your newly opened pizzeria, you should start monitoring all tweets that contain the word “pizzeria” or “pizza”. Make sure to check the radius of your search, let’s say within seven-miles. That’s it, easy right?

Therefore, in the following article, we will offer you a few tips that may help you get more traffic to your local business.

1. Make Profitable Conversations

Use Twitter to enter into conversation with local and nearby businesses. Follow them on Twitter and re-tweet their business offers to your followers. Make sure to ask them to do the same for your business. Remember to make your conversations public, so people who already know about one of the companies may give the other one a chance.

Try to improve your business public image by conversing with public figures and inviting them over to your shop. Always be friendly to other businesses and influencers that might help you increase your brand awareness.

2. Listen In

Advanced search is a great way of finding people who desire your products or services. You can think about a phrase that people would use in order to express their needs regarding food for example.

Tweets like: “I’m so hungry” or “What should we eat tonight” or “Anyone knows a great place to eat?” This is a great way in which you can use Twitter as a traffic generator for your local pizzeria. When you find these “desperate” people make sure to answer their tweets with the address of your restaurant or the menu. You may even offer them a free meal as a one-time offer, just to tempt them to visit your restaurant.

3. Draw Attention To Your Store

Make sure to attach the shop hours and address to your Twitter bio. In this way, anyone looking for a place to eat will find you much easier. Keep in mind to use videos and pictures of your store on your Twitter page.

Take photos of your window display and make 5 to 15 seconds video tours of your store. Show everyone how incredible your place is. You can even make  3D tours, but those are a little more expensive. Let people know how inviting and interesting your store is and in this way, they will for sure pay you a visit.

4. Tweet At The Right Time

Let’s take the same example, a pizzeria. As you may know, tweets don’t have a long spawn rate. Therefore, in order for your tweet to reach as many people as possible, make sure to do it between the best hours. Tweriod is a great app that will show you when your followers are active. This app will create a chart which displays the best days and hours to tweet.

So, by using this app, you will save yourself from distractions that may occur when using Twitter. Moreover, you will stay entirely focused on improving your business.

5. Use Relevant Hashtags

It’s extremely important to use trending hashtags. By knowing which hashtags are trending at a particular moment, it will make it much easier for you to enter in conversations with other relevant people or companies.

By not knowing which hashtags are used by other people, you will get nowhere, because you will miss your target audience. Therefore, research your hashtags very well before sending the next tweet. You can check the following websites in order to find which hashtags are trending right now:

• Hashtags.org
• Trendsmap.com

6. Never Use All The 140 Characters

The whole point of Twitter is to tweet and re-tweet. So, by using all 140 characters, you will constrain the amount of retweets you may get. Most people when retweeting content wish to add their own messages. In this case, if you use all the characters you will make it much more complicated for others to share your tweets. You should keep your tweets between 100 and 120 characters.

7. Don’t Use Twitter As A Selling Tool

Even if it may seem tempting, don’t make the mistake of using Twitter as a selling instrument. If you really wish to use Twitter smart, use it only to increase your client’s loyalty. You may do this by offering them valuable content.

Don’t try to shove aggressive promotions down your client’s necks. This will only make them stop following you or even worse, damage your reputation. Ensure that you’re perceived by your followers as a fountain of valuable content, and not as a sales machine.

8. Use Pictures As A Vehicle to Attract Followers

Using pictures to draw attention is extremely crucial. And this applies not only to Twitter but to all social media platforms. Just recently Twitter added the option of using pictures in tweets, so don’t make the mistake of not taking advantage of this incredible opportunity. If for example, you are advertising your menu, make sure to add pictures of all your dishes. Make people crave for your products.

9. Don’t Believe You Are Too Good For Other People

Don’t be that kind of person who believes that his time is much more valuable than other people’s time, only because you are famous or wealthy. It’s understandable that you will receive a lot of tweets, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take the time to answer them.

Your followers will feel appreciated and their loyalty will increase. If for example you are extremely busy or your company is just too big, make sure to get a team which will handle your fans and followers’ tweets and e-mails. A well-managed relationship with your clients and followers is the key to a fruitful business.

10. Study Your Competition

Do not use Twitter just to boost your business. Use it to check on your competition as well. Monitor every action they take and compare it to what you are doing. By doing so, you will get a lot of insight regarding your competition while improving your own marketing strategies.

Studying your competition will help you discover their clients while finding out more about their expectations. So, you will even get the chance of converting their followers to your own business. Getting to know your enemy is always a great idea as it puts you one step forward.

Takeaways

Twitter is an extremely useful tool for anybody who wishes to create a brand or simply get more traffic to its business. Even if Twitter limits your tweets to 140 characters, that shouldn’t be a problem. Powerful messages are always short and concise. And Twitter is about that, creating a strong impact with only a few words and a stunning picture.

Related: 9 Resources To Find Ideas For Shareable Content

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