If you don’t you should and this is a 2 part series on how to use Twitter as a local owner and really gain business from this amazing social network.
There are over 300,000,000 people active on Twitter and in the United States alone over 88 million people visit Twitter each month.
That means almost 40% of the adult population (more than 1 out of every 3 adults) are using Twitter here in the United States alone.
With those kind of numbers, Twitter for business owners locally smells like a lot of opportunity to me.
You see the great part about Twitter, unlike some of the other social platforms, is that you don’t have to have someone following you for you to engage with them (that is huge).
Simply find someone that you’d like to start engaging with and you can message them directly by simply @mentioning them in your Tweet.
Pretty cool, right?
So let’s go over some awesome strategies in the exact order your should follow as a local business owner.
First though if you’re wondering why you should follow these suggestions and does it really work, let me tell you what it did for me as a local service based business owner.
From 2007-2012 our local cleaning company was actively using Twitter. We were doing $20,000 a week in sales and not only attracted new customers regularly from Twitter, but we also lowered our business churn (losing customers) by utilizing Twitter.
Want to know how?
Let’s get started, but make sure to follow this exact order.
1. Twitter Bio
This is mentioned number 1 because your Twitter bio is the first thing a new potential follower is going to look at next to the second tip to follow.
Don’t make your bio boring.
Standout and give someone a reason to want to follow you. You can be humorous, share your company mantra, be personal (my favorite), highlight your accomplishments and many other ideas. Make sure to tell a story and don’t just stuff your Twitter bio with keywords associated to your business.
Lastly a bio does NOT need to have hashtags.
Seriously, you look like a Hash-Hole by sticking them in your bio and it does you absolutely no good. If you’re doing it because you see other people doing it, don’t.
2. Twitter Profile Picture
You’re a local business and your face is part of the community.
People don’t care about that pretty logo that you spent all your time having created.
People like to do business with people they know, like and trust…..so show your beautiful self.
3. Twitter Cover Photo
Your Twitter cover photo should be a great clear picture that either represents your local community or preferably your business.
If you have a team of employees, get them together for a group shot at work. Even better is to take a photo somewhere local that’s popular so everyone looking at your Twitter cover who’s local will connect with you immediately.
One of my favorite tools for making a Twitter cover is Canva.
Canva is free to use and has the exact dimensions set for a Twitter cover to fit perfectly.
Lastly make it easy for people to contact you by including your company contact information in the corner of your cover nicely. If creating graphics isn’t your thing, consider jumping over to Fiverr and having a Twitter cover done for $5. It’s a great site for quick work.
4. Location, Location, Location
Fill out your geographic location in your Twitter profile for 2 reasons.
First though to do this simply go to under your Twitter bio on your profile home page and in the location area fill that out. As you type in your location Twitter will help you by either targeting it to the state or your city (which I recommend).
The reason you want to do this is it’s searchable on Twitter and if you have it blank (which many do) you won’t come up in the search results all the time.
The second reason to do this is that when you have time and you’re on Twitter you can just click your location if Twitter identifies it and you’ll see all tweets going on locally in your geographic area.
This is HUGE and such an amazing opportunity for you as a local business owner to jump in and have a discussion if relevant (don’t be creepy).
For instance if you’re a local restaurant with a happy hour special and see people talking about where to go, jump in and offer them your deal. Any business can do this locally because tons of discussions are going on live in your area all day that can be applicable to your business.
Exciting right?
5. Twitter Pinned Tweet
You should have the 1 tweet you want everyone to look at pinned to the top of your Twitter profile.
When people visit your profile they look at your Twitter bio, your profile picture, your cover photo, location and then they start looking at your Tweets.
You have the power to show them what you want them to see first, so make it something amazing.
You can make it a coupon offer for your service, coupon for your store, eBook offer and so much more.
Be creative and test different pinned tweets regularly.
This will probably be one of your most retweeted tweets and you can change it as often as you like.
To pin a tweet simply look at any of your Tweets you’d like to include and next to where you see how many times you’ve been retweeted or favorited are 3 little dots. Just click on those 3 dots and in the short drop down you’ll see an option to “Pin to your profile page”. That’s it you’re done.
This one Tweet below, pinned last month by us, has had almost 450,000 impressions, over 140 clicks on the link to our free guide and as you can see over 100 retweets at the time of this post.
Each Tweet you make you can view it’s activity by clicking on the 3 bars next to the number of retweets and favorites you see when you’re signed into your own Twitter account. Make sure to look at these numbers regularly as the data will tell you what is resonating with people and what isn’t.
6. Tweet with Images
Tweets with images receive 150% more retweets than Tweets without images according to Buffer.
You want to make sure that your images are sized correctly to get the best impact. So if you’re Tweeting live and not scheduling your Tweets, make sure to hold your camera sideways to get the best sized image when taking the photo and creating a tweet.
If you’re scheduling your Tweets, the perfect image size is 440 x 220 (2:1 ratio) or 1024 x 512 shows great in the newsfeed according to Rebekah Radice.
Here are some ideas of photo’s to take and include in a Tweet:
Recognize & congratulate employee successes with an employee picture and tweet
Customer photo’s either in the field, your store or at events
Behind the scene shots of the day in the life of your local business
Local event shots of school teams, fairs or events that will resonate locally
Personal family shots (remember people like to do business with people they get to know)
Pictures of you creating your product or performing your service
Just make sure to mix the tweets up and have some fun with them.
7. Include Video in your Tweets
Tweets with videos, similar to Tweets with images, can really help you get much more Twitter engagement.
You’ve always been able to include links to a video, but now you have the ability to actually shoot a 30 second video right from inside Twitter.
This is huge and really gives you the opportunity to connect one-on-one with your followers.
Like the suggestions above, consider sharing a video of behind the scenes of what you do, local events or anything that can tie you to the local community.
Another great way to use video is to send a personalized messages to your new followers, customers or even prospects you just met.
NOTE CREDIT: http://www.socialquant.net/how-to-use-twitter-for-business/