As of 2016, nearly 78% of Americans have a social media profile. In fact, social media sites and blogs now reach eight out of every 10 Internet users in the U.S, accounting for about 23% of all time spent online. In other words, while 93% of online experiences begin on a search engine, many people are making their way to Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram at some point throughout the day. With so many people frequenting social media websites, it only makes sense that so many digital marketing experts are focusing their lead generation efforts on these platforms. In 2015, 78% of companies reported that they created a social media team to produce content and stay active in the online social sphere. But what if you don’t have a department dedicated to social media? Here are a few tips for the social media newbie on how to best use Twitter for online marketing and lead generation purposes.
- Create an informative Twitter bio The first step is to create an account and include concise but detailed information about your company identity and purpose. Insert a link to your website or email so that potential consumers can check you out.
- Interact with influencers Who are the biggest influencers and experts in your industry? Consider bloggers, journalists, scholars, and well-known consumers. Follow them, retweet them, link to them, and interact with them as much as possible.
- Recruit colleagues To build your brand, you need followers. Your first followers should come internally; they should be the people who work for or engage with your company regularly. Ask them to tweet, retweet, and share your content on other social media sites as well.
- Stay active Ideally, you should be posting on Twitter daily to stay in the public eye. Consider it the Twitter equivalent of “keeping up with the Joneses.” Remember, an active profile is a healthy profile, but you should only tweet relevant and useful information that will engage your followers. If you post too often or post blatantly self-promotional content, you risk becoming a nuisance and you’ll lose people quickly.
- Practice customer service The rules of customer service still hold true online. If someone mentions you in a tweet, always respond as quickly as possible. Keep track of what is being said about your company online in order to keep improving.
These are just a few tips to get you started using Twitter for lead generation, but there is a lot more to online marketing and social media than you can learn in a single blog post. For more advice and assistance, hire an experienced digital marketing company.