Ways to Use Twitter to Market Your Business

At the time of its SEC filing in early November 2013, Twitter had more than 232 million active monthly users, 53 million of which were in the United States. That makes Twitter a potentially powerful marketing tool -- if you know how to use it.

So how can you leverage the popular 140-character social media site to drive more traffic to your business or website? Dozens of Twitter experts, marketing pros and business leaders who have used Twitter to market their brands, products and services share their top 14 tips for how to successfully market your business on Twitter -- or employ Twitter as a marketing tool.

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1. Optimize your Twitter bio. "Make sure your company identity and voice are branded well," says Jon Ferrera, CEO, Nimble, a provider of social CRM. That means having a bio that tells people who you are and includes a link to your company website or a landing page -- and having "a consistent tone so that people clearly understand who you are and what you do."

2. Find out who the influencers and experts are in your target area(s) and interact with them on a regular basis. "Use Twitter search or a tool like Topsy [or Followerwonk] to find like-minded prospects, customers and influencers/media by searching keywords that relate to your industry," says Stacey Miller, social media manager at cloud marketing provider Vocus. Then follow and interact with them on a regular (daily) basis.

"Make a list of the 100 most influential people in your space -- journalists, thought leaders, potential clients/customers, big-name bloggers and writers, potential partners, etc.," says Shanelle Mullin, the director of Marketing at Onboardly, a provider of PR and content marketing for startups.

"Add them to a private Twitter list and engage with them daily. (Tools like HootSuite make managing this process much easier.)" And remember to "be casual [and helpful], not promotional," Mullin says. "Build a real relationship and then look for opportunities to collaborate."

3. Get colleagues involved. "The first people to help build your brand should come internally," says Amanda Cohen, marketing coordinator, Homescout Realty. "Make sure your coworkers are following you on Twitter and tweeting, retweeting, engaging, etc."

[Related: 15 Big Social Media Mistakes Companies Make and How to Avoid Them]

4. Tweet regularly. "Regular tweeting is a sign of an active, healthy profile," says Sandra Fathi, founder & president, Affect, a public relations and social media firm. "If you only tweet once a week, or once a month, you aren't keeping up with the Joneses [or the Twitter equivalent]. Worse, folks will forget about you," she says.

"I recommend daily postings and engagement so that you are top of mind on a consistent basis," Fathi says. Just be sure you are tweeting relevant or useful information, content your followers will read, click on, retweet and/or favorite.

5. Don't be afraid to ask for some Twitter love. Ask followers to retweet, mention or favorite your tweets -- or to share content with a fresh tweet.

6. Track mentions -- and respond if appropriate. "Track brand mentions and keywords to make sure [you know what's being said about you]," says Vikram Bhaskaran, director of marketing at Freshdesk, a customer support Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution. And be sure to respond in a polite, professional manner if appropriate. "After all, customer service is the new marketing!" And many customers now post their product queries and complaints on Twitter.

"Set up Twitter searches for terms relevant to your brand," adds Ginger Geoffery, director, Social Marketing, The Mac Groups, a social media agency.

"Monitor the conversations in that search and jump in to the conversations when appropriate," Geoffery she says. "For example, say you're a dentist in Buffalo. You could set up a search for the term 'dentist Buffalo.'" Then, when "you then see someone in Buffalo tweet 'I need to go to the dentist but it's so hard to get an appointment,' you could jump in and [tweet], 'We'd love to have you as a new patient.'"

[Related: 16 Tips for Ecommerce Holiday Season Success]

7. Retweet. "Don't be afraid to retweet as this will help link you with and cement your own thought leadership within your industry," says Mark Rushworth, head of Search atBlue Logic Web, a Web services provider.

8. Favorite tweets. "Many people don't know about favoriting tweets, but it can get someone's attention more than a retweet or a mention," says Amy Marshall, COO, Fathom, a digital marketing and analytics agency.

9. Follow trends/hashtags. "Look at the trending topics and hashtags and find a way to make a relevant connection to your brand," says Crystal Cantabrana, director of Operations, Grizzly Group LLC, which provides social marketing solutions. "By putting your business among the trending topics, your handle will be seen when people search tweets regarding that particular hashtag."

"Tagging our posts with one or two relevant and trending hashtags has [helped us] to reach new users," says David M. Burrows, vice president of marketing & PR, Cinsay , an online video commerce company. However, "hashtags should be used sparingly, as they can be seen as 'Twitter spam' when over used or attached to irrelevant content."

10. Offer discounts or special deals to Twitter followers."Run Twitter contests such as: 'The next 50 people that retweet me will receive a coupon for 50 percent off,' or have people post pictures of themselves in the store or using the product and do a random drawing," suggests Marshall.

11. Use images and videos. "Get visual," says John Lee, manager, Brand + Social Marketing, Webtrends, a digital marketing solutions provider. "Photos and videos drive three to four more clicks on Twitter."

"Images, videos and other rich media have proven to receive more views, clicks and shares than plain text tweets," saysMarko Muellner, vice president, Marketing, ShopIgniter, a social performance marketing platform.

"While community managers may be doing a great job engaging followers, a banal post about enjoying the weekend is much less effective than rich, in-stream content in which someone can, for example, view a film trailer and find out where the movie is playing in their neighborhood," Muellner says. "In fact, research shows that rich tweets have significantly lower negative feedback rates as consumers appreciate interactivity and content designed for their social mobile context."

12. Use Promoted Tweets. "Be sure to directly target your audience with Promoted Tweets," says Bryan Shaw, community manager at 3dcart, an ecommerce platform. "Failing to define exactly who you're trying to reach [could] cost you time and money."

Just "be sure that your promoted tweets aren't spammy," says Aaron Endré, a marketing and PR expert helping B2B tech startups. "The goal is to provide value that establishes trust and credibility, not trick people into clicking a link."

And "Keep it fresh," adds Alicia Antoniolli, account manager, Social, 3Q Digital, a digital marketing services provider. "Make sure your promoted tweets don't run for too long." If you want to continue to get that message across, find a slightly different way to say it.

13. Make sure Twitter is integrated with your other marketing efforts. "Twitter, like other social media platforms, is much more effective when integrated with your other marketing activities," says Mark Schmulen, general manager, Social Media, Constant Contact, an engagement marketing company. "For example, if you're running a promotion or contest on Twitter, let your email subscribers know about it, as they are another customer base who have already let you know that they want to receive messages from you," he says. "Inversely, by occasionally tweeting out the link to your mailing list, you can also tap your Twitter base into your email content."

14. Use Twitter analytics. "Use Twitter's native analytics daily to get a grasp on what's resonating and what's not with your audience once you've built it," says Miller. "In the analytics dashboard, you'll be able to tell what your best days to tweet are, the types of content that are more favored and the demographics of the followers that you're attracting," she says. Then you can "replicate what's working and rework or reevaluate posts that aren't."

Tips for Creating a Social Media Plan for Your Business

Do you have social media plan?

Are you looking for an easy to follow guide to formulate a plan for your business?

Keep reading for seven tips to help your business develop a social plan…

Why Businesses Fail With Social Media

Businesses often fail in their social media efforts for the same reason New Year’s resolutions fail: It’s a good idea, but there’s no structure or commitment.

Then, when there are no immediate results, or the goal ends up being more difficult to attain than previously thought, it goes by the wayside.

Has this happened to your business’s social media presence? You aren’t alone. Very few people can simply choose to be active in social media and stick with it.

For the rest of us, we need something to keep us honest. That’s why I advocate youcreate a social media plan—a checklist, if you will—complete with daily maintenance, recurring tasks and milestone projects.

These seven tips will help you design a social media plan that will keep you on track, active and moving forward.

#1: Make a Commitment

Before you even start creating your plan, you have to make a promise. Establishing a healthy social media presence can be a very slow process. You can’t expect your list of fans, followers or subscribers to grow overnight.

You don’t want to start your business’s presence out by posting and updating consistently, only to get bored, lose interest and forget to log in when there’s no immediate gratification.

To prevent that kind of slide, make a commitment. Even if it’s just to yourself—even if you have to frame it and hang it above your computer.

No matter how silly an exercise it may seem, acknowledging and agreeing with yourself that building this presence could take upwards of a year (and then some), and then promising to invest time, energy and resources into it no matter what, will keep you committed and prepare you to be active and engaged even when you feel like your presence is stagnating.

#2: Find Your Best Fit

If you’re just getting your business’s social media efforts up and running, part of creating your plan revolves around seeing if you already have a fanbase out there.

Search for your business on sites like Yelp. Thank customers for their good reviews, and apologize to customers who gave bad reviews. You could turn that bad experience into a loyal customer and a better review.

So do some searching. Are there lots of people posting videos to YouTube of themselves using your product? Does your company have a bunch of mentions on Twitter? Do you have reviews on Yelp?

Although it’s important to establish a presence on a giant like Facebook, make sure you also set up shop where you’re already visible.

#3: Schedule Engagement

Now that you’ve identified the social media platforms you’re going to focus on, it’s time to turn your attention to the ways and frequency with which you’ll engage with your users.

Infrequent interaction is one of the main reasons businesses experience social media failure.

Those who are most successful in social media know that you have to engage steadily.

Funny, engaging and prolific, Taco Bell's Twitter feed provides fans with frequent news, entertainment and engagement—a model for other companies.

Think of creating and responding to comments, tweets, posts, etc., as simple daily maintenance. It must be done. You need to start the conversation with your users, and anytime they reach out to you, you need to be prepared to respond.

Remember that the timetable for creating and responding to content is platform-specific. Twitter moves so fast that tweets can become irrelevant within the hour, whereas Facebook status updates and posts have a few hours of staying power, and videos are great because of their longevity.

#4: Create Expert Content

Your fans and followers don’t want commercials, they want conversation. They don’t want to hear how great your company is, they already like or follow you. They don’t want sales numbers, they want industry news and thought leadership.

A good rule of thumb is to talk about your customers and your industry 80% to 90% of the time, and then discuss your own business. That means you need to start a blog, write white papers, explore trends, release case studies and create infographics.

Post frequently and do it consistently. Your ideal goal should be some kind of content every couple of days or so. Avoid going longer than a week without posting.

Thorough, in-depth articles and papers will position your business as an industry expert and thought leader, and keep your fans and followers (and even competitors) looking to you.

MailChimp's more than 30 Guides cover a range of topics—from email marketing best practices to papers on how to use MailChimp most effectively—positioning them as a leader in email marketing.

#5: Run Contests and Promotions

Contests and promotions keep fans and followers excited, interested and coming back. Most importantly, they’re a covert way to get your business or brand in front of more people. That doesn’t mean you need to run one all the time.

If you’ve always got some kind of giveaway going, they’ll soon become more social background noise. This is especially true if you’re giving away not-so-great prizes.

Run a contest or promotion every couple of months, and make sure the prize is something to get excited about.

Falken Tire's Porsche Giveaway is gated to fans only. And when the prize is as great as a Porsche, their fanbase is sure to be active and their fan count is sure to go up.

#6: Broaden Your Horizons

Every social media plan needs to start out the same way, with a commitment to the long haul and a focus on the basics like interaction and content. But once your presence is established and your users are engaged, you’re free to open things up to experimentation.

If you’ve built a solid fan following on Facebook, create and install some custom apps on your page, start posting videos on YouTube or interact more frequently by hopping on Twitter. Try things out for a few months, and then go back and see how they’ve performed for you.

Not every platform will be a fit, so if your business isn’t performing well on one for an extended period of time, don’t be afraid to pull the plug and explore different options.

Rosetta Stone's numerous custom apps help them better engage their fanbase of over 1.1 million.

#7: Delegate Tasks

If you’re at the point where you’re looking at expanding to new platforms, congratulations! You’ve likely got a healthy presence. But don’t let all of this growth overwhelm you. The larger you grow, the more in danger you are of failing to engage (point #3), because—let’s face it—social media is a lot of work.

So look into adding some more team members. Graphic artists for your infographics, writers for your blogs and white papers and even some interns to manage the day-to-day social media conversations and information-gathering. A talented team can give you a richer, more robust presence than you could ever achieve on your own.