Twitter is just one of an ever growing list of social media outlets for businesses to tap into in order to grow their own personal following, interact with customers, follow the trends in their industry, and grow their sales pipeline. Until recently, little was understood from a business standpoint as to the benefits of Twitter. By taking a little time to understand how it works, Twitter can actually be one of the most efficient social media outlets for achieving results via a social media marketing strategy.

So what exactly are the ways in which small businesses can use Twitter?

1. The most obvious way to think of Twitter is that it’s a hot spot for you to promote your business and even yourself in a creative and interesting way. Additionally, with the 140 character limit, you need to say only very little to invoke interest in your audience and get them to click on a link to that video, interesting content, or advertisement that you’ve posted. Rather than writing paragraphs to get your point across, you can link content you’re posting on other social media outlets.
2. It’s a great method of engagement and customer service – Unlike other social media outlets like Facebook and LinkedIn where posting a certain amount of relevant material a day should be limited to a few posts as to not infiltrate your fans newsfeeds with unnecessary information and customer service questions should be handled privately, Twitter allows you to showcase your consistent and quick customer service to all of your followers, not just the one you’re interacting with. If potential customers can see that you’re active and care about making them happy, you’re more likely to achieve their business.
3. Twitter is a great way to follow industry trends – Unlike Facebook where it becomes a little dicey to “like” and comment on your competitors posts, Twitter provides the opposite opportunity for businesses and even encourages it. It’s a great medium for checking out what others are doing in your industry and even networking with them. Even if you end up choosing not to invest a great deal of time in your Twitter following, if nothing else it’s a great resource for researching what is working for other business
4. Using popular and relevant hashtags increase the likelihood of your business being followed or even potential clients reaching out to you. Hashtags (when they are understood) can a wonderful thing. Simply by looking at trending topics, you can pull up thousands of tweets about a particular event or person. When you take the time to learn what hashtags are popular and relevant for your industry, you open up a door of new opportunities for customers you didn’t even know existed to search for you, tweet at you, and eventually turn into paying customers.
5. Retweets are a great way to spread your news like wildfire – Do you have a big or exciting announcement to make? Is your company having a huge sale or are you releasing an awesome new product? You can post about it on your blog or your LinkedIn profile, but chances are that the likelihood that others will share it, or retweet it, are a lot higher in the Twitter world. A little creativity in your grand announcement may make waves, sharing your newest information with even more folks in Twitterland who could end up retweeting you as well. Twitter is great for that “snowball effect” when it comes to sharing.
6. Searches open up the door for more conversations – Finding others in your industry to follow or potential customers goes beyond hashtagging certain keywords to find people who are talking about what you do. Simply searching for a topic (such as “seafood restaurants west palm beach”), you’ll pull up not only other seafood restaurants in the area, but also could find folks who are talking about seafood restaurants and it’ll give you an opportunity to jump in and share your claim to fame – the best lobster prices in the area.

The beauty of social media is that each medium offers a different, unique approach to customer outreach and new opportunities to target a different audience. Mr. Pipeline specializes in all aspects of social media management and we’d love to help you turn your company Twitter account into a land opportunity and revenue in 2015. For more information on our Social Media Management packages, contact Erin Ernest at info@mrpipeline.com