We get asked a lot about whether Twitter works, so we’ve drafted a blog focusing on a range of elements that can help you build strong relationships and even generate leads on Twitter in addition to just gaining followers and retweets.

Twitter is a pretty straight forward social media platform for most, but how can you optimise the use of it for your business? Regularly posting relevant content to Twitter is great for raising your online presence, but the key to actually gaining leads is relationship building, and there are a number of ways to do this, so here’s our top tips.

 

1. Help people

Regularly posting relevant content to Twitter is great for raising your online presence, but the key to actually gaining leads is relationship building, and there are a number of ways to do this, so here is tip 1 of 4 on how to build and grow those all-important relationships. One of the easiest ways to build relationships is by answering people’s questions. So many people turn to Twitter for advice, often through the use of hashtags to gain a mass response – so how do you utilise this?

It’s pretty simple really, by searching for a hashtag that’s relevant to your industry (using marketing as an example) #MarketingQuestion #MarketingHelp #SocialMediaHelp you will be able to find thousands of people looking for help. You can answer their questions and ultimately become the ‘hero’, and everyone loves a hero! On this basis, you can build a relationship with someone, whilst demonstrating your expertise which will help not only that one person, but all of your followers too.  Ensure to ‘Quote Retweet’ rather than just reply, so that your follows can see the full conversation.

 

2. Be less ‘salesy’

As businesses and people, we often seem to forget about the ‘social’ and focus all on the ‘media’ when it comes to social media, Twitter isn’t a platform to bombard people with your sales message, it’s a social platform that encourages conversation.

We suggest being less ‘salesy’ in your posts, with around 80% of your tweets focusing on brand personality and relationship building and the remaining 20% to softly push your sales message, preferably in a subtle way. Ideally, we think one sales tweet per week is ideal, really the idea is ‘sell less to sell more’ as people are more likely to read engaging or funny tweets than a constant influx of ‘buy this’ or ‘call us’, because no one wants to see that. Posting relevant and engaging content is key to grab and maintain the attention of your followers. Post a ‘funny quote of the week’ to lighten the mood or inform people with interesting industry news articles.

It may take an hour out of your day to put together some content and research relevant stories, but what’s an hour when it could result in new leads for your business through a free platform?

 

3. Enhance current relationships

You may not want to admit it, but a lot of businesses can often neglect current clients in order to gain the attention of and build relationships with potential new clients. Although it is important to bring in new business, your current clients are vital to the day to day running of your business – especially if you are a small business with a low number of clients and customers.

So, it’s essential to enhance current client relationships and show some love and appreciation to the people you already have on board, and one easy way to do this is to connect with your client database on Twitter and other social media platforms. This can sometimes be a time consuming task if you have a large client base, but is something worth doing if you can spare the time. By simply retweeting and favouriting your clients Tweets, or mentioning them every once in a while regarding a live project goes a long way, and shows your attention to detail when it comes to your relationship with them. A recent statistic suggests that a huge 84% of people trust word of mouth recommendations, so by connecting with your current clients they are more likely to retweet you or tweet about you, and therefore drive word of mouth coverage.

If you’re affiliated with organisations whether you’re a member of a local business association or sponsoring a sports team, make sure you tag them into posts. This will increase the likelihood of your post being shared to their timeline and therefore being seen by a much bigger audience.

 

4. Post at the right time

There are around 500 million tweets per day, so essentially, Tweeting is a 24 hour activity that goes on all day, every day, all around the world. However, it is important to be aware of when your target audience and clients are most active during the day, to gain a higher rate of engagement.

Statistically speaking, the most effective times to post in the UK are from 1-3pm and around 6pm, so you catch people on their lunch breaks, or having a browse on their way home or when they get home from work. A tool that we would recommend using is Hootsuite – a scheduling website that allows you to choose the exact date and time to publish your posts. By using Hootsuite, you are ensuring that your Tweets are going out exactly when you want them to at optimal times for your clients and followers, without disrupting your day. To gain an understanding of the best times to post specifically for your business, we advise monitoring levels of engagement at different time periods to highlight what times gain the highest rate of engagement.

You should also research Twitter ‘hours’ or hashtags relevant to your sector such as #ManufacturingHour or #ConstructionUK, or the geographical based #NorthWestHour etc. which will mean your target audience will be active at the time of your post. Furthermore, the administrators of those hours will often retweet your post to their thousands of followers, encouraging more followers for you, so ensure your post being published at that time addresses users of those hours. Be creative and stand out.

 

5. Follow up

As with all marketing activity, follow up is key and there is no reason why you can’t follow up on Twitter. Sending a direct message to a new follower to say thanks for their follow and mention them in a post. Going even further by researching their business and finding contact details will allow you to follow them on other social media platforms such as LinkedIn and Instagram, however you can also use this as a reason to contact them by personal email to say thank you for following you, and use this as a way to tell them more about what you do, whilst inviting them to respond and tell you more about themselves – perhaps over a coffee or inviting them to a networking event. Businesses that help each other tend to be more successful.

This concludes our top Twitter tips, and we hope that they have helped when it comes to building relationships on social media. Don’t forget, if you do lack the time to research and post the all-important content, our team can help with that – if you would like a free one hour consultation to discuss your business’s social media activity, please get in touch on 01925 963 651 or email rinab@minimemarketing.co.uk.