Twitter is a highly effective social media tool when used the right way.  It encourages interaction between the person posting and the person reading and can be a really quick fire way of building a following.  Like all social media tools it has to be used correctly and in it’s own unique way.  Using a Facebook strategy on Twitter won’t work and vice-versa.

You need to be using the right tools for the right job.  By being lazy and trying to use every platform in the same way you will only create disinterest amongst your followers and turn off your prospects.  What you really want is for them to be engaged with you and wanting to see more of you.

Create Great Content

The first step is to create tweets that are going to give value and also that people are going to retweet (share for those of you that are new to Twitter).  The more retweets you get the further your reach expands and the more influence you can create.  There is a discussion to be had about how many times a day you should be tweeting.  One side will tell you to be consistent daily but not to go too far.  Yet recently, Grant Cardone has instructed his social media team to be sending out a tweet every 6 minutes.  This is one of those times when you have to work out your own strategy through trial and error.  When people start turning off, you’ve tweeted too many times.  If they aren’t engaging at all then you’re not tweeting enough.

The trick of course with Twitter is to create something that people will get value from and want to share within 140 characters.  Links on tweets will soon no longer count as characters giving you more scope to play with.  This means that you can write a great blog post giving tons of value and use the full 140 characters selling the sizzle to get them to click.  Alternatively you could create a great image or infographic and then use your 140 characters to talk around that.

Re-purposing Content

Re-purposing your content is also a great way of maximising your Twitter output without having to sit at your computer all day trying to think of tweets to put out.  Once you have been putting out a good number of tweets, you can check on your Twitter Analytics to see which tweets are getting the most interaction.  The ones that aren’t getting much interaction need to be changed until they start to get some traction and the best ones can be re-used to help spread your message.

When you are doing this you need to be looking at the percentage of engagement above anything else.  What is it about that tweet that is getting you a higher engagement?  How could you replicate that with other tweets to further increase your engagement across the board?

Hashtags

You have to be using the right hashtags on Twitter to get noticed.  One way that you can do that is to find people within your profession and see what they are using as hashtags.  Now most of them will create their own but you have to look at it from a perspective of “What can I create for myself from this?”.  That is what is going to help you get ahead of the game.

What hashtags are your potential clients using?  If your business is based in one location, search on twitter for hashtags relating to that location or people in that location that fit your customer avatar.  What are they tweeting about and what hashtags are they using?  What problems do they have and how can you solve those problems for them?

By solving people’s problems and bring those solutions to them on a platform that they are using you are going to find that people become interested in who you are and what value you have to offer much more quickly.

Creating More Blog Content From Interactions

One of the great things about Twitter is how people interact with you.  They will respond to your posts and sometimes even ask you questions.  When this happens write a blog post that answers their questions and then share it with them.  Tag them in it so that they can see that you are personally responding to their questions.  This helps you to build a community on Twitter where people build trust in you.  Trust is one of the key factors in social media.  People need to be able to trust you to buy from you.

How many blog posts can you create from one question or response?  You don’t have to put all of your blog posts out in one go.  You can write one and then schedule it for a week, a fortnight or even a month later.  Add to your calendar when blog posts are going out so that you don’t overlap.  This then take the pressure off of you to be creating content on a daily basis.  You could get 3 to 5 blogs created one day and then schedule those out.  Do that for 3 days a week and within a couple of months you will have masses of content going out that you can then also re-purpose.

If you have any questions about using Twitter or getting your social media campaign going, just click the Work With Me Tab and let me know what your issues are.