Twitter is one of the biggest social media sites in the world yet it is also not your typical social media site. Its peculiarity even causes many people to not even use it due to its uniqueness. This is apparent from numerous cases of notable personalities or businesses that have accounts on other social media sites other than Twitter. While the site has its own limitations it does have some exclusive strengths. There is a general misconception that Twitter cannot be used for business – that usually stems out of a lack of understanding on how the site works. Anyways, the tips I shall discuss herein will shed some light on how you can effectively use Twitter for business.

Unique Identification

Here I am talking about your Twitter profile; it must be easily identifiable. One of the tools to use for this is your user name which must be unique, self-explanatory and catchy. Do not take your user name for granted and juts randomly choose any that is not well thought out. The usual approach that is wise is to settle for a user name that coincides with or is actually your business name. Suppose your business is a hair salon called Cute Bunny making your user name @cutebunny makes it easy for people to search for or identify you. Bear in mind that tagging (which makes use of your user name) is a huge thing in Twitter – I shall touch on this later.

Make Use Of The Follow Feature

In Twitter there is a follow feature where you can follow other Twitter profiles. To get the best out of Twitter you must leverage on that feature to network with other individuals or businesses on Twitter. Identify Twitter profiles that you feel are relevant to your line of business and then you follow them. You will always get notifications of who has started following you so chances are there that those you follow can follow you back.

Tagging And Hashtags Can Do Wonders For You

One of the ways to ensure that your tweets get lots of attention is by strategically tagging other Twitter profiles. Let me give a practical example; let us say you are into cattle pen fattening. You want to do a tweet that markets your cattle that are now ready for sale. To draw attention you can do a tweet with some alluring images or short video clip of the cattle and some accompanying text on the tweet. You then cap that off by tagging notable abattoirs or butcheries that have Twitter accounts. Not only will it draw their attention but it will also draw the attention of those following those profiles you have tagged. It is important to make sure these individuals or accounts would like to be tagged as otherwise your tagging would be considered a nuisance. Closely related to tags are hashtags which allow you to locate tweets that have certain tags regardless of whether or not you are following the people involved. This is what makes twitter so powerful as it opens up a conversation to anyone who is interested and not just those in your (sometimes) limited circle. These two features are important but must be used in moderation – do not crowd a tweet with too many of them.

Cultivate A Healthy Balance Amongst Text, Images And Videos

It is the case that Tweets tend to be predominantly text-based. However, the principle of visual content being more engaging still applies even in Twitter. Where applicable throw in some images, some short video clips and URL links to make your tweets more captivating. In cases of long chunks of text that exceed the set limits you can break them down into numbered batches and present as separate tweets, known as threads. As much as visual content is alluring never hesitate to post tweets made up of text only – at times they can be quite engaging.

Twitter Is Perfect For Breaking News

In case you did not know, Twitter is inundated with news content. Interestingly on the Apple App store Twitter is categorized as a news app. I am mentioning to make you realize where Twitter’s strength lies in. It recommended that you must announce your latest business developments on Twitter because the platform is big on propagating news or news-like content. You can always redirect your audience to other landing pages such as your other social media accounts or your website using URL links.

Spark Two-Way Conversation

Twitter was developed primarily based on the SMS (text) framework. This means that Twitter users are naturally wired to textually converse thus you must ride on this. Do not overly focus on promoting products and services as that can annoy your audience. I always marvel at how Elon Musk (the founder of Tesla Motors, SpaceX, The Boring Company, amongst other companies) runs his Twitter page. He has actually been castigated for using Twitter in an unconventional manner that is not befitting for a CEO. I would encourage you to check out his Twitter page to see for yourself. He engages with his audience in fun and casual ways yet getting invaluable insights that are central to his businesses. The rate of engagement on each tweet is so high that you cannot help but admire how he has managed to create such a relationship with his audience. He can literally post a single word and yet get thousands of comments. He has also leveraged on the use of memes to infuse humour into his Twitter engagements.

Evidently Twitter is so unlike the other social media sites so you must really grasp how it works. Do not rule it out completely as most businesses do – particularly here in Zimbabwe. Add it onto your list of social media platforms that you use because it can actually bring in some great results. I highlighted how it is mainly a news content site – this means by being there you can be easily picked up by new media outlets.