Twitter has gotten a bad rap lately, given the president’s propensity for tweeting. Whether you agree or disagree with his use of social media, President Trump’s actions exemplify the power of this platform.
Twitter is both the simplest and most complicated of the social networking sites. Expressing yourself 280 characters at a time seems easy, but the challenge comes from building a strategy to getting people interested in what you have to say.
Regardless of what you may think of Twitter, it’s a valid approach for enhancing your personal, professional presence and exhibiting value to your target audience. Below are steps to getting started and some traction on this platform.
If you haven’t already done so, visit Twitter’s website and create an account. It takes just a second and won’t cost you anything. Choose a username that reflects your business. Names such as “NewYorkCRE” or “STNLBroker” can help people visualize what your feed covers. Of course, don’t hesitate to use your own name.
Complete your profile, adding a professional photo of yourself or your logo, and briefly describe yourself and your business. It’s important that you include a link to your webpage or perhaps your LinkedIn profile.
Listen before you speak. Find 50 or so people to follow. Instead of just following major media sources and other similar sites, try to follow people to converse with and who are likely to follow you back. To do this, click the “follow” button on their Twitter page.
Follow clients, vendors and competitors. Look at the statistics of the people that you’re following. Try to find 50 people who follow about as many people as follow them. They are more likely to follow you back. Look for a diverse group of opinions to avoid being stuck in an echo chamber. Sit back for a few days and watch what the people you’re following talk about. When you’re ready, start tweeting.
Initially, keep it to sharing business matters or to your opinions about business matters. There is a lot of room to let your personality shine on Twitter, but it’s been said it’s best to keep it conservative in the beginning. That really depends on your personality.
One great way to get started is to reply to other people’s tweets. When you see a tweet with which you want to engage, click the “reply” link and post your message. Remember, though, that everyone can read your replies.
Simply following and responding to people will cause your list of followers to grow organically. To gain additional followers, promote your feed. Add a link to your Twitter feed to your email signature and include it on your webpage as well.
To start creating a meaningful buzz, here are some more advanced skills and techniques that you can integrate into your twitter feed to not only attract more followers but also have better conversations.
Easy Retweeting
If someone posts something that you want to share, click the “Retweet” button under it. It will be re-sent to your followers and the person who originally tweeted it will be notified. This makes it more likely that they will pay attention to you.
Hashtags
One way to distinguish your tweets is to add hashtags, words preceded by a # symbol, like #CRE or #Miami. Inserting appropriate hashtags into your tweets helps them get found, since many people either systematically follow or periodically search for particular hashtags.
Schedule Your Tweets
Tweeting spontaneously is an excellent practice but it can be time-consuming. To maximize your Twitter presence with the least effort, preschedule as many tweets as you can. For instance, if you will be releasing blog posts, you can use sites like TweetDeck or HootSuite to schedule tweets to correspond with when they go live. Don’t do too much of this — overly depending on scheduling services will keep your presence from being interactive.
Twitter probably won’t generate lead after lead for you. It’s not designed to be a direct sales medium. However, it can keep you in front of existing and prospective clients while helping to solidify your message. When leveraged correctly, it will make it easier for you to close those clients for business on the phone and in meetings.
