Even though Facebook is so populated, it can be hard to connect frequently enough to form a relationship with your audience. There’s an unspoken rule of the two big Social Media platforms, and it’s that following someone is fine, but inviting them to like your page is some sort of taboo. It can be amazing for showing off what your business has to offer, but it’s hard to really connect with the people you’re advertising to. That’s where Twitter comes in.

Twitter is the best choice Social platform for really getting to know the people who you’re trying to sell to, it’s personal and unlike Facebook it doesn’t require you to request friends, instead it’s as easy as pressing the follow button on their page. All you have to do then is convince people to follow you back, which isn’t always straightforward. Thankfully, we’re going to talk about a few methods you can use to see your follower count and your brand popularity soar to new levels.

Sharing your blog

Twitter is primarily for sharing. This can be anything from massive news to what you ate on your lunch break. The beauty of this is that no matter what you post, someone will take an interest in it as long as you make it interesting enough when you talk about it.

Every business should have a blog on their website, if you don’t have one yet, I highly recommend that you incorporate one; it’s the perfect source of information for people to discover things about your business and to give them a better understanding of what you can offer them.

The problem is that sometimes your blog doesn’t get the exposure it deserves because it’s not got a platform to be thoroughly noticed on, that’s where Twitter can help you. With it being a social Media platform, you’re able to post links directly to your blog as a Tweet, giving you a lot more exposure to your business with Twitter boasting over 307 million active users following the third quarter of 2015.

Who is your audience?

It’s all well and good posting links to your blog for people to read, but what if you have no followers to read your content? No matter how amazing your content might be, you still need to get a following to take note of it. This is where you need to interact with people. But it has to be the right people.

One of the biggest mistakes people make when first starting out is to tweet absolutely everyone and follow everyone they come across in order to grow as quickly as possible. I should probably tell you now; this doesn’t work as well as you may think. It can be a quick fix to boast a high follower count, but it isn’t all that valuable to your business.

More followers doesn’t always equal more customers. Think about it, someone who has an account dedicated to fishing isn’t 100% guaranteed to take an interest in your blog post about the stock market opportunities of 2016. Your follower count should be a representation of the people you think will take an interest in your business. You could have 20,000 followers but if they never interact with you then what’s the point? It isn’t about who has the biggest number of followers, but whose audience is the most engaging with their brand.  I recommend following around 50-100 accounts daily, as long as they fit into the niche audience that you’re after.

For example, here at LiberoNet, on Twitter we’ve now decided to take a focus upon businesses in our local area in order to see if there are any local opportunities for us to sell our products, as this is an area we have scarcely tapped into on social media yet, we’re hoping to build a local following that is engaging as it is profitable and expand outwards. The more you know your target market, the more rewarding your social media experiences will be.

Put yourself out there

OK, so now you’ve established yourself a good following that is engaging with you and your tweets. What’s next for you? It’s time to engage back! A recommendation on an article I previously read stated that you should use 60-70% of your time to tweet about others and retweet their content and 30-40% about yourself. The beauty of this is that the more you retweet, the more you’ll begin to be retweeted back. Other accounts will notice the interest you take in them and begin to reciprocate this, especially if you followed the earlier point of this article.

It’s also a good idea to post other people’s articles yourself. I know what you’re thinking, why would you do that? Well, it actually makes a lot of sense! If you tweet an article, then you also have the chance to tag the author of the article in that post. Not only does this show respect, but it also gives you a chance of a retweet or two from a person who’s a leading source of knowledge in an area you and probably your target audience have an interest in. So a retweet to their followers can give your business a lot more exposure in your field.

Don’t be a bot

Just imagine, you put all this time and effort into following the right people, retweeting all accounts and giving people exposure in return for it, then it comes to your tweets and they’re simply just, dull. There’s nothing worse than a dull tweet, how is it possible for someone to engage with your tweet when your tweet doesn’t make anyone want to engage with it?

It’s a really simple fix with this one, just be human. The best way to be engaging is to make your tweets feel like genuine sentences and conversations, the more genuine they seem, the better the responses you receive for them will be.

Whilst it’s great to have fun, you also still need to be able to be professional. This is your business after all, social media is amazing to engage with people all over the world, but you still need to make sure you know when to spot the opportunities to further someone’s interest. It’s like if a customer came into a shop and spoke to the manager for 20 minutes about their day, only to not show an interest in the product. It’s all well and good that they spoke to you, but did you gain anything from it? Now, I’m not saying try and make sales all the time as this will push people away from your brand and this could reflect poorly on you. You don’t want to lose this following you’ve tried so hard to build. You just need to make sure you know when to integrate those tactics that will push people to another level with your business, turning them into customers and not just followers.

Conclusion

Twitter is primarily for branding purposes, every company should know that. But giving your brand a good image on social media goes a long way. It doesn’t guarantee immediate sales, but just like with anything else, the more you take care of it the more you will begin to see results. Patience is most definitely the key with social media, the more patience you have the more success you’ll come across.

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