A tweet is a powerful tool...every week billions of tweets flow through the popular social network, Twitter. A wide variety of people, businesses (both big & small) local & international, utilize Twitter to get their messages to their customers and make their presence known. If you are new or unfamiliar to Twitter, we can help!
Who do I follow?
The fact is, your customers are already tweeting about your business, therefore you must join in on the conversation. To "Follow" someone is to subscribe to their stream of messages (tweets) and receive their tweets on your timeline (& vise verse). Start by following reporters and news outlets that cover your topics. Search.Twitter.com is a useful site to find keywords associated with your business and to find related hashtags (#) that are associated with similar businesses. Once you begin to build your audience, use your followers to get more followers. Hint: It is a good idea to follow those that follow you (these are your customers)!
What do my followers want to know?
Determine your unique voice and engage with your audience - Twitter will help you improve your two-way communication with your loyal (and non-loyal) customers. Listen first and then decide what your customers want - offer an incentive, a special promotions or discount, share photos/videos and talk about what's new in the community. Reply to those that tweet about you, favorite and re-tweet positive messages and always thank those that praise you. Hint: Some conversations are better kept offline so in this situation, ask your follower to Direct Message (DM) you.
When is my audience tweeting?
There are many helpful websites such as Tweriod will tell you when your followers are listening & the best times for you to tweet. The cheapest way to determine when your audience is tweeting is by experimentation - post tweets periodically throughout the day to see when you receive the most responses. Hint: Hootsuite & Tweetdeck allow you to schedule your tweets in advance!
Follow OldCity & OldCityWeb to help get you started!
