Techblog
8 simple steps to build your Twitter audience
Before you start talking about your products on social media, it's important to first build a sizeable audience that is interested in what you have to say. Here are a few easy steps to start growing your Twitter audience.
Ask any successful entrepreneur and they’ll tell you that building an audience for your product should precede your marketing and selling efforts. Even Joe Pulizzi, the “godfather of content marketing” has the same advise for business owners today.
The same principle holds true when embarking on social media as a tool to talk about your business. Here are some simple steps to get your started on building your Twitter audience.
1. Create a consistent, focused message
Twitter should be an extension of your business, delivering the same professional brand experience you'd give a customer on your website, in a brochure and any other space. While the platform offers an opportunity to engage with your audience in a unique space, you should maintain the same personality and tone that you use in the store, your brochures and marketing materials.
Also remember to be concise in your messaging, even though the platform is considering increasing tweet lengths from the standard 140 characters to 10,000. This is because the audience on Twitter, like many other social networks, prefer short, bite-sized content.
Whatever unique tone of voice you have for your business, Twitter is the place to help further establish it. It might help to write down a few bullet points that define your voice and remind yourself of them when composing a new Twitter post.
2. Build, organise and curate your Twitter experience
On Twitter you can do more than just communicate with your customers. You can also engage with industry insiders, businesses and people who inspire you as well as trends that may be applicable to your SME. Twitter lists allow you to manage, sort and categorise this information so that it doesn't overwhelm you. Use lists to stay up to date on trends and engage with an audience beyond your own followers.
3. Variety is the spice of life
Remember that today’s Twitter audience is not one that favours monotony or complexity. They are used to more content than just text posts. The medium now supports rich media including images as well as links to full articles, infographics, videos and more. Your audience will appreciate a colourful variety of updates, including speciality content such as coupons or other deals.
4. Use tools to automate and simplify
Building an engaging Twitter audience from scratch can demand a lot of attention, but there are tools to help make the whole process easier. Services such as Buffer and Hootsuite enable scheduled posting, so that you can continue to captivate fans around the clock even when you're offline or asleep. Hootsuite, for example, has even helped countless SMEs identify opportunities and increase leads with customised streams, targeted posts based on geolocation searches and other advanced tools.
5. Take advantage of Twitter Analytics
Once you start engaging with your Twitter audience, it's important to spot opportunities and trends through your content. Twitter Analytics is free and allows you see individual and aggregated performance across all your tweets. That way you can discover what works and get real data when you try new forms of engagement.
6. Engage with other audiences and influencers
Twitter is a social space. It can be a place to engage with not just your followers. Something as simple as convincing a celebrity to visit your bakery or shop can cascade into new sales and partnerships from a single satisfied customer. One British bakery offered a box of brownies to a comedian, which led to a fruitful friendship with the celebrity plus new customers.
7. Experiment with paid promotion
We've talked about the ways that you can grow an audience on Twitter with nothing more than know-how and elbow grease. But like every other social media platform, Twitter offers paid promotional tools too. It might help to start small and set aside some money for a test campaign to see how it performs in building your audience, attracting new visitors to your website and other opportunities.
8. Utilise Twitter for two-way engagement
Bear in mind that Twitter is a place to engage with your audience, not just share promotions and business updates. Once you have a sizable following, keeping all those followers depends on more than just scheduling tweets. Twitter allows you to post polls, ask for feedback, reply to people and retweet other tweets you like. All of this should be in your arsenal when communicating, as it builds customer loyalty while strengthening your digital presence.
You know your audience better than anyone else, and Twitter is just another way to help you build that audience with any one of its many powerful engagement tools.
As you build your Twitter audience, do remember these tips:
- Bring your unique voice to Twitter just like you do everywhere else.
- Keep things interesting and use various content types.
- Use all tools at your disposal, including analytics, third-party apps and paid promotions.
- Once your audience starts growing, start interacting with them and go even further by reaching out to celebrities and influencers.