4 Small Business Twitter Tips To Boost Engagement!

Whether it’s a product or service, I’ve found that Twitter has been a great all rounder when it comes to boosting my clients brand presence, PR and connecting to potential partners.

Facebook and Instagram have their place of course, but I find that instagram can take a good few months to build a decent length feed to add credibility to your brand whereas with Twitter, you can start retweeting content from influencers in your field immediately and connecting to your audience.

So Here Are The Top 4 Twitter Tips I Use For My Clients Small Businesses

Use A Profile Picture – Unfortunately, it is believed there are as many as 48 MILLION fake Twitter accounts!  As a small business starting out on Twitter, I found my clients received MUCH more engagement and follows when we switched their profile photo of their company logo over to a profile picture of the actual founder. We still had their cover photo with the necessary branding, services and contact details, but people responded better to an actual person, especially when we only had 100 followers to start with!

Use Trending Hashtags ONLY If They Are In Your Niche – Unless it’s a motivational Monday tweet, avoid using trending hashtags that have NOTHING to do with your market. After all, you may get extra views, but what is the point if these viwers are not your target market? It looks spammy and can also cause a backlash. After all, who can forget habitats 2009 tweet that used the #MOUSAVI hashtag, taking advantage of what was going on in Iran at the time.

Retweet Brands That You Wish To Promote You, NOT Just Because It’s A Good Article – Ok this sounds fairly obvious but I actually have two separate twitter lists on my Hootsuite feed. One is for the sole purpose of sharing content relevant to my niche, the other is certain brands I wish to work with and retweet just for the possibility of them also retweeting my tweet to their audience base, my potential clients. I see one list as a way to connect to other bloggers in my field, and the other purely as a sales tool. Another tip is to use Tweetchup to research your competitors and see who they are retweeting the most. all potential partnerships and customers you can engage with. 

You don’t HAVE to use hashtags in your bio – Did you know that every key word in your bio is searchable on Twitter? There for, you do NOT need to overload your bio with relevant hashtags that fit your business. It takes away from the client message you wish to get across and it can look spammy.

So there are 4 simple yet effective tips that have really started to drive engagement and interest to all my clients Twitter profiles.

Are you looking for Twitter management solutions for your small business? Check out my social media packages!

5 EFFECTIVE Social Media Marketing Tips – Small Business

So my slight obsession with digital marketing books is finally starting to subside – Thank god.

I’ve come away with literally hundreds of tips and techniques to boost traffic, SEO and to generate leads. Some are so simple we tend to dismiss them and underestimate how much impact they can make – trust me they do. ALL have been tried and tested by myself. So here they are!

The Same Branding On ALL Platforms 

This also includes usernames such as @vikingwanderer. If you use a profile picture on Twitter which I tend to prefer more than a logo as it looks more personable, then make sure your Twitter cover matches your Facebook cover and website branding.

I have stumbled across multiple social media accounts for small businesses all using different branding, Twitter handles and photos and it’s confusing and doesn’t look very professional. The aim is to be easily recognisable as a brand across ALL social media platforms.

Making Twitter Lists Of Your Influencers

I think Twitter lists are VERY underrated. It’s vital a business finds influencers in their niche so they can easily retweet appropriate content to their followers and boost their following.

If you wish to follow influncers outside of your business niche or friends, then create an alternative personal account but avoid mixing work and pleasure! Are you interested in influential marketers? Check out this Forbes list!

Social Share Buttons

Social share buttons are an effective way for others to share the content they find on your blog. There are multiple social share plug ins that are free to use on WordPress. Below are the shares from a recent blog post. 

These have definitely increased my traffic over the last 5 months and it also saves me having to re-share old content. Click here to see 9 of the best social share buttons for 2017!

Interact With Followers

Fairly obvious you may think, but you would be surprised by the amount of businesses that use the tweet and hope method, then wonder why they didn’t receive any likes. 

I create a special feed for all my followers on Hootsuite and then spend a few minutes a day going through the feed and liking their posts with the odd comment. It’s really increased my engagement. It’s important to be wary of autolikes, I’ve heard a few horror stories of autoliking and commenting on the most inappropriate content!

Follow your competitors feeds

Rather than see competitors as a threat, I followed most of my competitors in the London area and made a Twitter list for them. This way I can get ideas about what promotions they are offering, which potential customers I can engage with and who to follow. 

Most of my competitors have been in the freelance marketing scene for a number of years which makes them the PERFECT candidates to learn from. I check which of their posts received the most engagement, which blog posts had the most shares and look to recreate that using my own products.

Cheeky? yes. But they are the best in the business for a reason and the sooner you realise that rather than tear them down, the sooner you will see growth.

NO engagement on your social media accounts? Are your competitors miles ahead and youre still trying to work out how to hashtag? Get in touch! 

3 Simple Reasons NO ONE Is Reading Your Business…

I know how frustrating it is to spend a good few hours crafting what you believe to be the ultimate blog post, only for it to slip away into the mire within an hour of posting.

You check regularly on Google Analytics to see how it is performing, but after 24 hours, it’s still only had a dismal 3 hits, and that’s probably from you!

Blogging was the sole reason I managed to double my last client’s traffic within 6 months, but there ARE some major turn-offs for readers, and here’s 3 of them.

Over Promotion

I recently came across an ingenious blog post on Duvets. Yes, really. The blog post was aimed at travel bloggers and gap year students and had the title, ‘Which country are you sleeping in tonight?’

The duvet actually had the world map on it. It was funny, inventive and I actually looked into buying one!

This was followed by a blog post below with an image of a printer and a massive price tag in font 50. It was just the usual promotional garb. It wasn’t unique, there was no humour involved and need I say, I unfollowed them on Twitter.

Take Action – Scan over your past blog posts. Have you offered at LEAST 3 helpful tips as to why a person should buy your service or product? Have you offered them any solutions? Or is it just pure self-promotion, an image, price and link?

Bulk Paragraphs

Neil Patel is a genius when it comes to crafting marketing blog posts over 1000 words. He uses spaces between every 2 sentences at least and also uses bucket brigades when the reader is about to leave the page such as,

Did you know that?
What’s the real story?
How could this work?
It gets better/worse
Want to know the best part?

After all, who wants to read an endless blog post, with no breaks in it or images? I’d rather be scanning the Daily Mail on my afternoon lull with 10 minutes to spare….. the shame….

Take Action – Take a look back at your old blog posts. Can you try to break up the content? Add spaces and bucket brigades not forgetting a good quality image! Please no photos older than 10 years here, we want your blog posts to be fresh and dynamic – Unless it’s a photo of Arnold Schwarzenegger –  You can click on this link for free images.

Sharing On 1 Platform Only

I hate to tell you this, but when I started creating 3 blog posts a week for my last client, I had to SHARE them on multiple social media platforms, NOT just my clients Twitter and Facebook pages. You have spent a whole morning creating a masterpiece. Don’t you want people to actually SEE it?

Take Action – Here are my top Facebook groups and Google Plus groups for business. This is where I share all my content. I also use Triberr where other Twitter users in my niche SHARE my content to their followers for FREE. You can find more about that here.

Any questions just comment below!