The Use of Twitter for Business Purposes

Should you use Twitter for business? This fast paced social media network is becoming very popular with brands who want to reach a very wide audience.

When twitter began it quickly climbed to fame as the portal for celebrities to tell their fans their everyday thoughts. People signed up hoping to gain insights into their favourite celebrity’s world, feeling as if a little stardust was actually rubbing off on them.

As celebrities would take the time to re-tweet or interact with the fans, their fan bases grew and they proved that this form of Social Media is perfect for pitching a product.

Celebrities are after all business people at heart, without the interest of their fans (customers) no one would watch the movie, see the TV show or buy their album. Inadvertently they proved that interaction is the way forward to win the hearts of the nation.

Now businesses sign up on an hourly basis hoping to generate the same amount of followers, as they gain a wider audience they find that their local business can become national, whilst their little shop can become a huge online success.

The biggest companies have this down to a fine art and usually employ a person to manage their online social networking; however there are things the smaller business can learn from how they tweet.

Follow the Leader

It makes sense to follow those with the most followers. That way when you do tweet this people, (hopefully with a witty anecdote to their own ramblings along with a link to your own site dropped in) you will target their entire follower base, for instance if you follow the local radio station you can tweet them with your latest special offer relevant to their recent tweets. Following relevant businesses helps too, as they will follow back, such as Gardening Magazines if you own a Garden Centre, Lifestyle TV programs and Journalists if you are an interior designer and so on.

Mention

When you have a good list of people you follow you can then mention them in your tweets. For example, if you follow Davina McCall and you sell furniture, you could tweet, “We have a sale on a dining table just like @Davina McCalls as seen in @OK Magazine”

This not only attracts your current customer base but reaches the thousands of followers of these twitterers too!