George Beall — January 21, 2017 Follow @GeorgePBeall
Twitter is every marketer’s best friend. Every successful business you can think of maintains a Twitter presence. It’s is an effective communicating tool for developing brand identity.
You don’t need to be a seasoned business professional to cash in on Twitter’s monetizing potential. Whether you’re a small one-person startup or an established family business, you can skyrocket your goals by engaging on its platform.
If you stay ahead of this year’s social media trends, Twitter will make you money practically on its own. Here are 7 tips for getting started.
1. Build your following.
Before you can use Twitter effectively, you have to build a following. You can do this by following other accounts similar to your business or within your target demographic, retweeting others’ tweets, and cross-promoting your account across multiple platforms.
Set up links to your Twitter account on your website, and create shareable content. Once you’ve got an established following, you can use that influence to monetize, and the exponential growth will take care of itself.
If you’re investing time in your Twitter account, you can be making money. You just have to learn how.
2. Sell something.
Sounds basic, but make sure you actually have something to sell. No matter how big or small, it’s important to have a product of some kind so your reader can engage financially. Whatever service you are providing, promote it regularly. Link to your website, especially directly, to make it easy for people to check out what you do.
3. Maintain a regular presence.
Think of your Twitter account as something you are creating. Twitter, done right, is not just a megaphone for you to link-share. Make your account interesting, multidimensional, and engaging.
Read through your Tweets – are they flat, repetitive, and uninteresting? Get dynamic. Develop your brand personality by being an interesting content provider that produces consistently enjoyable and engaging content. This means posting regularly, especially during peak post hours for your demographic.
4. Announce promotions.
Take advantage of the business you already have, and keep existing followers invested.
People who value your brand will look to your Twitter for updates, deals, and new projects you are working on. Creating regular promotions and sharing them keeps followers feeling personally invested, and will make you a regular voice in their social media circle of trusted brands.
5. Hop on e-commerce directly and start using affiliate links.
Your company site is not the only way you can make money for your brand. Twitter itself is not an e-commerce site, but you can use affiliate links to make it act like one.
Affiliate links are links to other ecommerce sites that pay you when someone clicks on them. Sign up free to join an affiliate program, and get paid to Tweet affiliate links.
Make sure to balance affiliate tweets with other dynamic content so your Twitter voice is still likable and engaging, not just for sales pitching. Your social media personality is the foundation, and after building that, monetizing opportunities like affiliate links become possible. Don’t neglect the foundation of your brand.
6. Try sponsored tweets.
Sponsored Tweets is a platform that connects advertisers with tweeters.
By giving a company access to your Twitter stream, the company pays you. All you have to do is write a Tweet following the general guidelines of the company, and sometimes, they’ll even Tweet it for you.
With Sponsored Tweets, you promote a brand on your own terms, and you can develop professional connections which add legitimacy and character to your brand- as well as additional traffic to your Twitter, and extra income to your wallet.
7. Invest in ads.
Twitter ads do cost money, but they can create a huge return on your investment. Many of the trends you see on Twitter are organic, but many are Promoted Trends put out there by companies.
A Promoted Trend boosts the awareness of your brand by making it appear in the trending section of Twitter. A Promoted Tweet is a tweet that’s placed in the feed of those who fit your target demographic, and a Promoted Account means your account is suggested to those who would not normally encounter it.
Any or all of the above are investments, and could be useful should you struggle to develop a following, or if you find yourself with expendable investment funds and really want to take off to the next level.
Conclusion.
Monetizing your Twitter account is easy, and it’s an opportunity you can’t miss. Developing your brand, maintaining your identity, taking advantage of key features, and exploring e-commerce options can turn your account from a bare formality into one of the backbone elements of your entire business.
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