How Your Small Business Can Get the Most Out of Twitter
If you run your own small business then the chances are you will have had someone tell you that social media is the way forward. ‘You need to start tweeting’ they will tell you but is there really any advantage to small and local businesses spending their day sending out tweets? Celebrities and large branded businesses may well get a lot from social media but how useful can it be to a local shopkeeper or painter and decorator, a gardener or builder? Perhaps the best way to look at it is a long-term project to build relationships, rather than short-term advertising. With that in mind, here are three important tips:
Forget business, think about relationships: Twitter is primarily a tool for networking and this is how you should use it. Don’t go signing up and just blasting everyone with adverts for your products or services. You can of course, mention your business from time to time but only on occasion and in context. Instead, make sure that you use twitter as you would if you were at a meet and greet in real life – by chatting casually and bonding with people. Intersperse tweets that relate to your industry and news about the field you work in with stuff you are interested in, stuff that is relevant to your local area and stuff you find amusing and you will soon make contact with people in your area as well as the wider world. It might not be that you will get any business initially but in the long term it will pay dividends. Real relationships will eventually bring leads.
Go local: Once you have built up a profile and some followers it is time to use Twitter more locally for your business. How do you go about doing this? Simple – get hold of a local community twitter tool such as Twitter Grader, which can simplify the process for you. If you live in a large city or a popular city then tools like this can easily link you up with other people and businesses in your area. Choose London or New York (or wherever) from the list and then you will receive a quick and useful list of the top fifty tweeters in your area, as well as their bios. Simply start following and interacting with them and begin to become part of the community for your area. If you live in a smaller city or town or village, simply do a search for your area in the search box and see if there are other tweeters in your area. If there are, get networking! Always remember to keep telling yourself that your aim is not advertising but networking and forming connections.
Get Media Coverage: Twitter is also useful not just for connecting people but also for getting some media exposure for your company, even if it is just in your local area. Journalists all over the world and in every town and village use Twitter. Seek them out and follow them – if you can get them to follow your tweets then you may well be able to get some exposure for your business. In addition to local media, you can also get involved with media and journalists that are related to your particular business or field. A simple search should bring you all kinds of sites and people who are pre-eminent in your industry – just get their twitter feed and get to know them – they might have some interesting developments for your industry and you may well be able to share some of your own.
Just remember, keep it all light and fun, make your tweets interesting and forget about trying to sell anything for at least a few months – and then you’ll find Twitter can be a really great tool for your business
Esther is a financial journalist and blogger. She writes about everything affectingsmall businesses and start-ups as well as personal finance from mortgages to credit cards to umbrella companies .
