Internet Marketing Weekly: Strategies to help get started with Twitter, a quick and easy marketing tool that will gain you exposure.
As we move into 2012, it is a great time to start your Twitter account. Twitter is an easy and quick marketing tool. Tweeting, if done correctly, can help you to gain exposure for your brand and drive traffic to your blog and website. If you’re not sure how to get started, here are five steps to help.
1. Create a Strategy People will Follow
Be yourself, be real, interact and show who you are. These are guiding principles of all great Twitter accounts. Contributing original, funny, interesting or useful ideas is the best way to develop a following. Most people will look over your account before deciding to follow, so there must be a good reason to follow you in a quick glance.
2. Don’t Forget the Real Life Connections
Use the search box at the top of your Twitter account to search for people you already know. Locate their accounts and start to follow them. They will often follow you in return. Also, go out and locate other professionals or experts in your area of business. Twitter is a social network, so the more social you become, the more followers you will have.
3. Come one, Come all!
One of the best ways to get started with Twitter is an open invite. Use your newsletters and blog posts, and add a Twitter widget to your site or to Facebook. If you start to proactively reach out to people, your followers will grow.
4. Interact and Engage
After completing the steps above, you should have a number of followers. The number one reason why Twitter accounts fail is because there is no dialogue. Make sure to respond and get involved with your followers’ comments and accounts. Twitter works very similar to high school — if you sit down to lunch with a group of people you don’t know, pretty soon you’ll make a few friends. Twitter followers are always looking for a good laugh, so remember to keep it light and show off your personalty.
5. Consistency is the Key
If you follow the first four steps, in a few months, more people will be following and interacting with you. The worst thing you can do with your Twitter account is lose traction. The one way to avoid this is to keep a consistent stream of information going. I recommend that you post at least twice a week. As you grow your account, you might find yourself tweeting daily.
For more information and a deeper look into Twitter, please read a great post written by our very own Social Media Marketing Strategist Laura Alisanne, Twitter for Your Business: An Intro Guide to Get You Up & Running.