Twitter can be an excellent platform to get creative for your business to get established in the sphere of social media marketing. Knowing creative ways to use Twitter for business can help you to form a community which will help you meet your business goals.

Knowing ways to use it effectively can help you to form a community of relevant people but being creative with it is what makes a lot of difference. Twitter has a wide user base, and getting it right is really important.

Here are some ways to help you unleash your creativity and get started.

Twitter is a free social networking microblogging service which allows you to broadcast short messages called Tweets up to 140 characters to other users who Follow you on Twitter.

Moreover, you can include images, videos, gifs and external links to any web content as well in your tweets allowing you to engage better with the audience.

Twitter allows its members to follow anyone unlike other social media platforms such as Facebook, Linkedin or Instagram, where members have to request and get approved in order to subscribe to other users.

Twitter’s core strength lies in its real-time nature. Other social media networks are not even close to Twitter’s capacity to feed live and real-time information on what’s happening at the moment around the world.

Twitter has a wide user base, and making the most of it is really important. Here are some ways to help you unleash your creativity and get started.

Making a perfect profile on Twitter is the first and most important task to start with. Following are the key guidelines for building a strong profile and using Twitter for business:

1. Twitter Bio: Twitter Bio is a brief introduction of your profile. Following are the things you need to keep in mind while writing your bio.

• Use the most relevant and targeted keywords at first: Focus on those particular keywords which describe you the best. For example, if you want to make a professional profile then you can start with your designation in your organization. You can start your introduction like CEO at XYZ company or GM @pqr.
  But, if you are making a personal profile, then just write what defines you the best. Lots of people define themselves as Father, Teacher, sports enthusiast and so on.

• Use relevant Hashtags:  You can find highly searched and relevant keywords through the tools like Hashtagify. Using popular hashtags will help you increase your reach. Make use of 1-3 hashtags in your bio.
  Hashtags like #Entrepreneur #Blogger #Traveller #Foodie are the most common.
  You can also put hashtags which define your work like #SMM #SEO #SocialMedia

• Include relevant username: If you are an employee of a company then it is better to include the @username of the company rather than just writing its name. It will help people to reach you when they are searching for your company.

• Put relevant email ID: Using the email ID which you use regularly in your bio makes it easy for users to contact you quickly.

• Bios should be small, crispy and comprehensive: Although you are allowed 160 characters to write bio but it’s not necessary to use all the 160 character.Keep it short and simple.

2. Profile Picture: Your profile picture will be used to identify you. It appears next to everything you post so don’t be sloppy with it (using a blurred image or no image at all).Statistics from Hubspot show that Twitter profiles with profile picture have 10 times more followers as compared with the profiles that don’t have. But make sure your profile picture and cover picture suits your niche.

• Stay interesting by updating profile pictures regularly.

• Use images that will make you approachable for your followers and associate with your business.

3. Choose Your Cover Image Carefully: Create a custom graphic that provides information about your brand and use it for your Twitter cover image

4. Website URL: Twitter provides the option to put the company website URL. Don’t forget to add it.

5. Location: According to PARC Research study, only 66% of Twitter users accurately complete the “location” field of their profile. The other 34% are missing out on the ability to be found by those searching for their services in their locations. Make sure you give the proper location of your business on Twitter.

6. Theme: Customize the theme which suits your business profile.Profiles make you more discoverable by Google, which will increase your “find ability” and increase your brand’s reach.

When you follow people on Twitter, you start reading their posts on your Twitter stream. Just in case, if you don’t know how to follow people on twitter. Here are the steps:

1. Go to the user’s profile
2. Click on the Follow button

The following is the list of accounts you must follow on Twitter:

1. Your Competitors: Follow your competition to know what they are up to

• know what kind of tweets they are posting
• learn about new products they are going to launch
• know how they are responding to audience tweets
• keep a track on their audience engaging activities
• know how they are responding to their followers
• know how people are communicating with your competitors

2. Your Customers: Follow every company and individual which is your customer or a potential customer. Active users are the best to give the live updates of the industry. Here is the simple way to find out your potential customers on Twitter:

• Search for the most relevant hashtags and find the top contributors who are posting content with those hashtags.
• Look for the accounts which are following your competitors. They might be your potential customers as well
• Look for the followers of your industry’s top influencers

3. Key Market Influencers: People with lots of followers and attitude to change the industry opinions can be considered as Influencers. They have the ability to make or break any brand.

4. Friends, family and well-wishers: Follow them and ask them to follow you back

5. Follow Twitter accounts which are related to your business domain and interests:
This will introduce you to a large number of accounts to follow. You should be very selective while following people. If you follow irrelevant people, it will bulk your timeline with useless tweets.

Before start following the Twitter accounts recklessly, take care of Twitter’s aggressive following policies.For more information, read Twitter’s Following rules and best practices.

Begin by devising a strategy to manage who you follow by following Twitter users relevant to your business like customers, competitors, associated businesses, suppliers and so on.

The more people you follow, the more are the chances of missing out the important tweets.

Twitter lists can come to your rescue. You can group important people you follow in different lists. This can help you focus and decide on whose tweets you want to see.

Here are the steps to create a Twitter List:

1. Login to your Twitter account and go to your profile page
2. Click on Lists on your profile page or select Lists from the drop down menu by clicking your profile icon on the top right.
3. Click Create New List
4. Enter the name and description of the List
5. Choose the accessibility of the List as Public or Private
6. Save the List

Steps to add or remove people from the Lists:

1. Go to the user’s profile and click on the three vertical dots next to the Follow button
2. Select Add or remove from Lists
3. Check or uncheck the List you want to add to or remove from respectively

There are many Twitter auto follow tools available but one should use the tool which provides complete followers management.

Buzzlogix is one such Twitter followers management tool which can be used to filter out right Twitter accounts to follow.

Listen by reading tweets. Find tweets and look out for mentions and direct messages and keywords people use to talk about your business and follow them.

Start with the basic points:

1. Get a grasp of what your Twitter community thinks and feels and you can respond accordingly.
2. Get connected with your customers by taking note of who talks to you and who mentions you.

Careful listening on Twitter will not just make you know about the public sentiments about your relevant domains but also keep you updated about what happening around in those domains.

Having conversations on Twitter is a bit different from other social media platforms. On Twitter, you Tweet, Retweet, Mention, Reply or simply Direct Message somebody. Here are the basics:

Tweet: A tweet is a message you post on Twitter which can be seen by everyone who follows you.

Reply: A reply is a tweet sent by a user that begins with your @twitterhandle as a response to your tweet.

Retweet: A retweet occurs when a user directly shares your tweet with their followers.

Mention: When a user includes your @twitterhandle in their tweet it is counted as a mention. This differs from a reply where the tweet begins with @twitterhandle itself.

Direct Message (DM): A direct message is a private message that you send to somebody. Nobody can see this message other than you and the receiver.

If you follow people who are interested in what you do, who inspire and challenge you to give excellent output, Twitter can become a great place to stay engaged for your business.

Get started with twitter lists by following the below points

1. Create conversation lists categorically of your choice like people you give out-of-this-world ideas or those who inspire you with their awesome minds.
2. Jump into any of these lists directly on days you’re out of ideas or just need some motivation.

You can also join existing public conversation lists which may be focused on a particular topic to engage in the discussion and get more ideas. Just click on the subscribe button below the list description.

For instance, the Startups NYC list in above snapshot can be a source of ideas for upcoming entrepreneurs. You can jump in the ongoing conversation by tweeting or replying to someone. You can also follow the members who share the same tastes as you to start a conversation.

People love it when they don’t have to read to get your tweet. They love it more if they see it in the form of a picture or a video rather than a text. So get into the habit of adding media of your business activity that you can share with your followers.

Tweets with text only:

Tweets with images receive 150% more retweets than tweets without images. Source

Tweets with GIFs

Post tweets with videos. The equivalent of 110 years of live video is watched on Periscope every day. Source

With Twitter analytics you can get key insights of your competitors. You can use excellent third party tools such as ExportTweet to extract the intel of competitors’ accounts and track their activities on Twitter in real-time.

Twitter Account Analytics

Get Details Of All The Tweets Of Any Account

Download details of the tweets of any account in Excel spreadsheet for offline analysis. Here is the snapshot:

Know At What Time And Day Your Competitor Is Engaging The Most

Optimize your Twitter posting schedule according to the patterns of latest tweet activities.

Device Source

Know which devices are being used most by your competitor to tweet

Keep an eye on your competitor’s most popular tweets

Get Detailed Analysis Of All The Followers Of Your Competitors

Extract comprehensive analysis of all the followers of your competitor or any Twitter account under various metrics such most popular followers, followers language analysis, followers activity graph etc. Here is a snapshot of the account analysis of @pepsi.

You can also get the detailed followers analysis in a downloadable Excel spreadsheet for offline analysis.

Monitor and track all the posts of any hashtag which is related to your business. A Twitter hashtag may be of your own business campaign or could be of your competitors or even any topic or event which could be related to your business.

Benefits of Hashtag Tracking:

1. Monitor the trending hashtags and know which ones are frequently mentioned or talked about in a given day, week or month.
2. Find relevant individuals or accounts you can follow to or ask them to share information about your business.
3. Find out how your tweets or Twitter campaigns are performing by analyzing metrics such as impressions generated, estimated reach of the tweets etc.
4. Know the top contributors tweeting with the tracked hashtag. Engage with them according to the sentiment of their tweets. If you see negative public reactions, you can converse with them in a manner to soothe the situation or you can amplify the positive reactions you come across during the hashtag tracking.

The hitch is Twitter itself doesn’t provide Hashtag analytics or tracking but there are excellent third party tools for the purpose. Hashtag Analytics available at ExportTweet gives you in-depth insights about how the hashtags are performing on Twitter.

Use Twitter advanced search feature t