Today we’re chatting about how to get more engagement on Twitter.
As a social media consultant, I am constantly advising my clients to use Twitter. In fact, if I had to pick one social media platform to use, Twitter would be my number one choice. Many of you know me from my blog, Social Media for Law Firms, and I built my brand (and company) mainly by networking on Twitter (and blogging on a regular basis). Twitter engagement isn’t rocket science, it’s digital conversation in 140 characters or less. It’s not all about what you ate for breakfast or what color nail polish you’re wearing. It’s about finding your target market online, listening to them, engaging them and taking the conversation offline. Here’s how to get more engagement on Twitter
Find Your Target Audience
Who buys your products and/or services? How old are they? Where do they live? What brands do they wear? What other products do they buy? Create client personas and be as specific as possible. Now, create a Twitter account and find your target audience. An easy way to do this is to find your competition’s Twitter accounts and see who they follow and who follows them. Create a private list of all your competitors and monitor their Twitter habits. Follow the same people if they fit your target client personas. Simple right? You can also use social media monitoring tools such as Sprout Social to find your target clients on Twitter based on location too.
Listen and Engage With Your Potential Clients
Now that you found your potential clients, listen to them. How do they interact online? Are they a consistent bunch? Do they log in often? What do they talk about? Listen to them for a couple weeks so you get a good idea of their online habits. The trick here is to jump in when you can add something of value to the conversation. This will definitely get you more engagement on Twitter. Don’t just jump in and ask Jane Doe to buy your product, it won’t work. The social media crowd is a critical bunch and they are used to brands trying to sell to them. Offering tools is a great way to engage your target audience according to One Social Media as well. Also, it’s a good idea to add a face to your brand. If you have to have a logo for your Twitter account, make sure you add your initials to the end of each post (like this ^SC). It’s a good idea to also offer something of value to your potential clients. Do you have a useful white paper, how-to article, coupon? Make sure it’s relevant to your conversation.
Take the Conversation Offline
This is the critical step on how to get more engagement on Twitter. How you do this will depend on what your product or service is. For example, I’m very familiar with the legal world. Many of my clients took the conversation offline after offering something of value. After giving away a white paper, they would follow up a couple weeks later and suggest they have a meeting at a coffee shop to discuss the subject further. Or, they would suggest they meet at a conference, etc. You get the picture. Social media is useless unless you take the conversation offline in some matter. The point is to get more sales, more engagement, more brand recognition, etc.
I hope you enjoyed my article on how to get more engagement on Twitter. Do you have any tips to add? Please feel free to share them below. Also, if you’re interested in learning more about how your company can use Twitter for business development, please feel free to email me directly at samantha@shiftdigitalmedia.com.
Thank you,
Samantha Collier
Director of Social Media & Content Development
www.shiftdigitalmedia.com
