Many of the most popular social media sites started out as a more personal place for friends to socialize, but quickly became powerful tools for businesses to market their products and services.
Statistics will tell you that participating in social media can increase your business by leaps and bounds. Social media is now the number one activity on the web and can generate more power for your business than ever.
More than 90% of marketers use social media for their business. Twitter is the second most popular social media site and it should definitely be part of your social marketing arsenal.
Here are ten tactics you can use to help increase your sales and make your business more successful.
1. Be Consistent: Nothing can kill a social media account like an inactive user. Don’t think you can post once or twice a month and keep an active following. You have to be consistent and you have to participate. Create a schedule of tweets and stick to it. Retweet articles of interest. People are active at different times, so tweeting items of interest once will not achieve the results you need.
2. Always reply to comments: By always replying to a comment, you acknowledge that person and let them know that what they have to say is important to you. This will encourage more people to interact with you and build the relationship necessary to form a lasting business connection. By responding promptly to all comments, your credibility will flourish and your reputation will be revealed. Ignoring the comments will make the potential customer disappear from your business.
3. Build Leads from Giveaways – Running a Twitter giveaway can not only bring you new leads, it can also improve your search engine rankings. Get people to go to a sign up page and send a specific tweet. This tweet will contain your link and relevant keywords. You can also search for people who are interested in winning your giveaway for more possible entries. If you’re giving away a natural beauty kit, use those keywords to find people who want to win that award. Let them know about your giveaway and what they have to do to enter. Once your giveaway is over, you can use the list of entrants to filter viable leads for your business.
4. Use Photos or Pictures – As you probably already know, pictures and photos can greatly increase the response to a post or tweet, so you should definitely keep that in mind. Emotions greatly influence what we buy and what we don’t buy, so use photos to highlight the emotions necessary to trigger a person’s decision to buy your products and / or services.
5. Specials and Discounts: Regularly tweet discounts, coupons, and special offers. Let your followers know that you always have something that they will benefit from. Get creative and make these specials unique. The holidays are a great time for fun promotions and contests. One that I have always liked is the Easter egg hunt. Be the first to find the hidden Easter egg on our site and get a 50% discount on your first order. You could go one step further and have different colored eggs and each color offers a different prize.
6. Hashtags: By simply using hashtags, you can increase the chances that your tweet will be found and read. People looking for specific tweets can find you through your hashtag. Your hashtag can also build your brand. Hashtags can spark buzz about a specific company or marketing campaign. For example: Domino’s Pizza asked people to Tweet with the hashtag #letsdolunch. Once a certain number of tweets were posted, Domino’s would lower its prices by 50% for an allotted time. You can also use hashtags in your contests and giveaways.
7. Make It Mobile: Make sure it is compatible with mobile devices. More and more people are using mobile devices and you must ensure that your sites and pages can be viewed correctly on mobile devices. Be sure to take advantage of the mobile features of Twitter.
8. Share testimonials – Periodically Tweet short new testimonials from your customers. For instance: Thanks John who says: using #ZitBeGone has given me more confidence to make every day a success! Tweets like this can help give a potential customer the boost they need to visit your site and possibly buy your products.
9. Schedule Tweets – It’s impossible for us to be on Twitter sending tweets 24/7, so it’s best to schedule our tweets regularly. When scheduling tweets, the first thing to do is determine the best times to tweet. A free tool that can help you find the best times to tweet is Tweriod. They will analyze your followers’ tweets to find out when they are active on Twitter and when you should be, too. If you find these times difficult to tweet, you can use tools like Hootsuite to schedule those tweets. By using these tools, you can stay active at all times keeping your Twitter account more alive, thus attracting more potential customers.
10. Customer search: You can use your Twitter account to search and find customers. By using keywords that relate to your products, you can find people who are talking about these products and then offer the solution they are looking for. Join these discussions so you can be available to help find the solution. Use the search function on Twitter to find these potential customers. You can also use a tool called Tweetdeck to set up searches. Respond to these people quickly and establish a connection. Many people will go with the first business to meet their needs.
These ten tactics are just the tip of the social media iceberg. Make the most of social media and take the time to design your strategy. Social media is here to stay, so don’t resist, embrace it!
