How to Maximize Twitter for your Business

Social media has become a required part of daily life. Virtually every company has a Facebook page, Instagram and Twitter. 

There is a similarity between Twitter and a drill, they are both great tools, but only when you know how to use them correctly. The last thing you want is a Twitter account that just exists, like a drill gathering up dust as it is stored in the garage.

Now is a better time than ever to dust off that old drill and put it to work! 

There are a few steps you can take to reach this goal:

Show your company brand

• Customize your Twitter profile with your business logo, colors, etc. 

• Make sure your Twitter handle relates to the company and is easy to find. Do not own a bakeshop and make your handle, “@musicandbooks”. Do own a bakeshop and make your handle, “@amysbakedgoods”

• For the header, use an image of your company logo or something of the sort. Any photo that is professional, good quality, and directly related to your business. 

• Your profile picture should be of something like your business logo, businesses initials or maybe a photo of the CEO/ owner, if relevant.

• For your bio, you only have 160 words to convince users to stay on the page/ follow your business, don’t waste them. Some ideas for a successful bio are your company’s mission statement, history or maybe a funny caption to grab attention.

Research who you want for your target audience

• Write your tweets and design your header and bio in a way that will appeal to your target audience. 

• Decide who you want to see your tweets. Then follow some members of your target audience to entice them to follow you back. Use hashtags to see who is posting what you are interested in. For example, if you are an advertising agency, look up something such as #marketing or #businessideas.

Drive traffic to your website

• Include your web address in your bio.

• Link posts from the website onto Twitter

Organize a Twitter Chat

• Twitter lets you schedule these as a direct way to interact with your followers and answer any questions that they may have. To host it, choose a topic, set a time and date and create a hashtag for the chat. You can also share the chat info with followers in a tweet, on your website, in your bio, etc. Followers should be able to view all responses, questions, and comments regarding the topic by searching the created hashtag. Followers can respond, as well as share their own comments by adding the hashtag to their tweets. 

Try these out and keep checking out our website for more tips on how to utilize Twitter as a business tool.

Contact us at White Oak if you want to use more tools like this to grow your business, we are ready to help!

Source:

https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/25084/the-ultimate-cheat-sheet-for-expert-twitter-marketing.aspx

Businesses Can Survive the Facebook Nuclear Bomb

Mark Zuckerberg made small business owners nervous a few days ago when he announced changes to the algorithms that determine what people see in their Facebook News Feed.

Zuckerberg said in part, "We built Facebook to help people stay connected and bring us closer together with the people that matter to us... But recently we've gotten feedback from our community that public content -- posts from businesses, brands and media -- is crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other."

He continued, "Video and other public content have exploded on Facebook in the past couple of years. Since there's more public content than posts from your friends and family, the balance of what's in News Feed has shifted away from the most important thing Facebook can do -- help us connect with each other."

He went on with lots more feel-good stuff, then he pushed his big red button to open the bomb bay: "...we're making a major change to how we build Facebook... As we roll this out, you'll see less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and media. And the public content you see more will be held to the same standard -- it should encourage meaningful interactions between people." 

(Read his whole statement.)

On a personal level, I suppose this means I will see fewer opinions on issues I care about from experts and more opinions penned by Bubba from high school.

On a professional level -- as both an owner of an ad agency and a couple of other small businesses -- this means communicating ours and our clients' messages on social media will now cost more. Incidentally, this isn't the first time Facebook has done this type of thing; but it's the first time to my knowledge it has been addressed so publicly.

Before you jump off your small business ledge, though, here is a summary of ways your business can combat the changes -- from an article published in Entrepreneur.

1. Use the Insights page to determine what types of posts get the most engagement.

2. Post livestream videos whenever possible. Live videos get 6 times more views than regular video posts.

3. Appeal to your customers with interactive and personal posts. Shy away from automated posting apps and canned content. (For example, sharing "Eight Awesome Hacks for your Wedding" on your catering company page isn't going to cut it anymore. I've always thought that was lazy in the first place, but that's beside the point.)

4. Ask your customers to check "See First" for your business page in their News Feed preferences. To be blunt, your followers who will not do this probably aren't interested in your product anyway.

(Read the whole Entrepreneur article.)

I can add a couple more ideas myself.

First, our previous blog talked about taking a holistic approach to marketing. We love to slap up a social media post touting our product or service because it's quick, easy and mostly free. Think outside the box with your marketing. If your entire marketing efforts are dependent on your customers seeing you on their phone -- or any other single medium -- you have all your eggs in one basket, and we know that's not the way to do it.

Second, dust off that old email contact list you struggled so hard to build a few years ago. Send an eNewsletter or an email blast offering a special. That way, you're in control of who sees your message instead of a computer algorithm.

Bottom line: the businesses who have a good product or service and know how to promote it will thrive. The others won't.