This week marked the ten year anniversary of when Jack Dorsey tweeted ‘Just setting up my twttr’ to launch the micro-blogging service that in the ensuing decade has become a near-ubiquitous part of modern life. Since that very first tweet, the service has grown to average around 305 million monthly active users and to be something that is at least familiar to almost everyone around the globe.
What began therefore, as a seemingly niche site allowing youngsters to share benign aspects of their day has now turned into a global juggernaut that offers plenty of opportunities to businesses. With such a global reach and widespread popularity after all, there are now numerous ways in which businesses can benefit from the use of Twitter. In order to ensure that you aren’t behind the times and are making the most of Twitter for your business, we will now run down some of the key areas in which the social media platform could help you and how you can ensure that it is.
Making Connections
One of the main reasons why Twitter has become so popular with its users is due to the way it makes connecting with others so much quicker and easier, and that is something that is also potential vital for businesses. Twitter gives businesses who use it correctly a new avenue through which to reach potential customers and to make potentially vital new connections.
For your business to harness this particular benefit of Twitter effectively, it is important for you to optimise what you tweet. What we mean by this is that you must tweet content which your followers will want to share and thus get it out there for others to see and possibly share too. Another good thing to keep in mind when using Twitter to make new connections with potential customers too, is your use of hashtags. Creating your own fun and engaging hashtags and identifying and utilising hashtags which may be trending can help you to connect with new people outside of your existing social media network.
Effective Promotion
Another major area in which a business can benefit from using Twitter, and one which is intrinsically linked to the first, is that of promotion and marketing. The connections and reach that the platform provide, allow for both widespread and targeted marketing and promotion that can deliver real results.
Exclusive Twitter promotions and competitions for instance, not only engage customers and draw them in to your company but also give them an incentive to follow you and to see all your tweets regarding new products and services. ‘Promoted tweets’ too can deliver a kind of targeted marketing that was simply unheard of before social media, by displaying your tweet to Twitter users who themselves tweet a relevant word or phrase and who thus would be those most interested in seeing it.
Active Engagement
The final of our key areas in which your business could be benefitting from using Twitter regards how you can utilise the platform as a new way to actively engage with both current and potential customers. For many after all, social media is now arguably their main avenue of communication and as such is one that your company can’t afford to neglect.
Twitter therefore, can provide a new method of customer service or of other customer engagement and relationship building that could be really beneficial to your business. If you do decide to move down this road however, remember that you need to stay on top of things and reply in a timely and useful fashion to those who contact you – there is nothing more frustrating to a customer than feeling like they are being ignored.
