Jimmy Rodela
© boygostockphoto / Dollar Photo Club
As a marketing tool, few can rival the benefits Twitter can offer. Apart from helping you significantly improve your market visibility, it gives you the opportunity to personally interact with potential customers.
Personal interactions do more than just build loyalty. It also builds lasting relationships.
But before you work on building lasting relationships, there is one challenge you need to tackle: getting more clients.
Sounds overwhelming?
It doesn’t have to be. It’s actually quite simple if you know your way around that platform. And that’s what I’ll share with you. These 10 tips will help you get more clients from Twitter.
1. Get listed in Twitter directories
Remember the Yellow Pages?
Twitter directories can be likened to an online version of the Yellow Pages.
Apart from helping you increase brand visibility, directories make it very easy for you to find influential people and connect with potential customers.
Top Twitter directories you can use:
Wefollow
Created by American Internet entrepreneur Kevin Rose, Wefollow is by far one of the most popular directories there is. Once you register, you will be classified according to tags and listed based on the number of followers you have.
TweetFind
This directory allows you to easily find potential customers based on categories. You can get listed for free so you get more exposure without having to spend a cent.
Twellow
With an impressive listing of more than 25 million, this is the best directory to go for if you want to find people who share your interests and industry.
2. Use Twitter search
One of Twitter’s most powerful (yet surprisingly underused) tools is Twitter search. If you want to find new customers effectively, consider this tool as one of your most invaluable allies.
Here how it works:
Tweets that are sent every week can be easily sifted through and searched using twitter.com/search-advanced.
The rest should be pretty straightforward:
- Search for words that are related to the product / service you are offering. For instance, if you are in the pet grooming business, you can search for ‘smelly cat’ or ‘dog shampoo’.
- When searching, consider terms you think your customers will likely use when they discuss problems, issues or concerns that your product or service can solve.
- Once you are able to identify your potential customers, send them a polite tweet letting them know how you can help.
3. Get quality followers
Getting a lot of followers is one thing, getting a lot of ‘quality followers’ is another.
If you are an entrepreneur, it would work to your advantage to choose the latter over the former any given Sunday.
Let’s define quality followers.
People who like what you are doing and are interested in what you have to say are quality followers. These people are not just potential customers but they can also be likely promoters of your business.
They can help spread the word about your business either through word-of-mouth or their Twitter and other social media accounts.
Now, let’s answer a very crucial question: how do you get quality followers?
Follow influencers.
Find people who are considered authorities in your industry. You can also look for people who share the same interests. A simple search using location, phrases or topics should get you off to a good start.
Engage in relevant discussions.
Do not hesitate to participate in conversations that can help showcase your expertise and highlight what you have to offer. It is not only an effective way to get noticed, it can also help you gain followers as well.
Invite existing customers to follow you.
Let your current customers as well as your site visitors know that you are on Twitter. You can do this by using a Twitter account widget that will take people who visit your site directly to your Twitter account.
4. Keep things interesting
Let’s say your persistent effort has helped you amass a decent following.
Now what?
If you want to reach out to potential customers while retaining the old ones, you have to find ways to keep them coming back for more.
While you may be limited to only 140 characters, it should not hinder you from getting the conversations rolling.
How can you effectively pull this one off?
- Tweet about the latest trends in the industry. It will give your followers the impression that you are in the know.
- Ask questions. It is an effective way to get your followers to engage.
- Posts tweets consistently. You wouldn’t want to bore your followers with long gaps between tweets, don’t you?
- Include links in your tweets. People very seldom click on random links so always provide a short description as to where they will be led to.
Extra tip: Innovative tools like ow.ly and bitly can shorten the length of your links so use either when you need to save some of the 140 characters you are allotted.
5. Connect with influencers in the industry
While not many are aware of it, Twitter is a good venue for you to engage in ‘influencer marketing’.
In essence, influencer marketing works by targeting a type of individual or a specific individual who possess influence over your target customers.
Influencers can include but are not limited to journalists, broadcasters, analysts, professors and even athletes – basically any individual who is considered an authority in your industry.
Get influencers to engage with you by:
- Asking questions. Every once in a while, reach out by asking a question. Ensure your query is answerable in 140 characters or less and can give them an opportunity to showcase their expertise.
- Participating in Twitter chats. Undoubtedly, this is one of the most effective ways to make connections. No idea how to find relevant Twitter chats? This master list will help.
- Keeping the dialogue open. Once you have established a connection with an influencer, keep the dialogue open by reminding them every once in a while that you are following them and that you enjoy their work.
6. Advertise
As a marketing tool, Twitter offers a lot of advantages that are hard to overlook.
Apart from giving you the perfect medium where you can network with other companies, it also provides you with the opportunity to promote what you have to offer.
But what if that is not enough?
When it comes to getting new customers, it pays to never leave anything to chance.
What’s in it for you?
- You can easily catch the attention of prospective customers. With promoted tweets, you are given the opportunity to have your tweets displayed prominently so you are able to position yourself better than your competitors.
- You are able to target a specific area. With tweets that are targeted, you can promote a special offer for your Swedish followers without bothering your customers in the U.S. Isn’t that just grand?
- You can host a viral conversation. Twitter users are often constantly in the lookout for trending topics. With promoted trends, it becomes a lot easier for you to create some buzz for your brand and attract new customers in the process.
7. Make hashtags work for you
Hashtags are literally #everywhere.
Apart from Twitter, you can see it on Instagram, Pinterest and on movie trailers and even commercials.
And that’s no coincidence.
First used in 2007, its main purpose way back then was to create groups within Twitter. Fast-forward 2015: Nowadays, clicking on a hashtag will give you access to public posts that use the same hashtag.
What do you get?
Apart from exposure to a wider audience, you also make it very convenient for people to find you.
A good example is a tweet that Timothy Armstrong made about DUI in Florida.
“The Penalties For #DrivingUnderTheInfluence (DUI) In #Florida http://ow.ly/NRj8M “
Since he added a hashtag on the keyword “DrivingUnderTheInfluence”, his post will appear when users type in the same keyword on Twitter’s search engine.
Case in point: A user who searched for a hashtag you used can see your post and maybe even check your profile. If they like what they see, you can convert a user to a follower, then to a customer just like that.
8. Optimize your profile
If you think creating a Twitter account alone can get you more customers, think again!
With over 500 million users, (and growing!) standing out can be challenging at the very least.
Stand out and create a favorable first impression by making sure your profile is properly optimized.
- In your ‘bio’, insert the URL leading to your website. Doing so can significantly help drive more traffic (and more customers) to your site.
- Upload an image that is in line with what can be seen in your site. Your business logo should be perfect.
- Populate your account with inspiring, substantial and insightful tweets. It will give your followers (and potential customers) the impression you are there to help, and not just sell.
9. Diversify your content
How can you effectively keep the attention of your current followers while enticing potential customers to take notice?
Simple: mix up your content choices.
Apart from making sure you provide content that’s relevant to your industry, you also need to ensure you will be posting something that can be of interest to your followers.
Images, articles, videos are just some of the attractive choices you have at your disposal so use them to keep your content from getting stale.
10. Give special offers
Sure, this method might seem like a given, but you’ll be surprised to know this is something many entrepreneurs tend to overlook.
You see, what many fail to realize is, part of the challenge of getting more customers is figuring out what they want in the first place.
A Nielsen research conducted revealed the many reasons why individuals follow brands.
Here are a few interesting statistics:
- 52% follow because of promotions or special offers
- 55% follow because they prefer the brand over the others
- 51% follow because they would want to stay updated
The bottom line: Most people love freebies and discounts. Armed with that knowledge, use it not just to gain more followers, but also to entice potential customers to take notice of your brand and check out what you have to offer.
Over the years, Twitter has earned quite a following and with good reason. The ability to reach out to prospective customers on all ends of the earth using a 140-character phrase is an amazing thing in itself. However, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. When done right, this highly innovative marketing tool can easily take you where you need to be – a step ahead of everyone else.
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