Why Small Businesses Can’t Afford Not To Use Twitter

Today consumers are the most detrimental members of a company’s marketing department. They don’t spend hours analyzing and constructing best practices, they simply share and publish their raw emotion and opinion of products, services and more to billions of people.

When companies utilize Facebook to join the conversation, they are amongst the 70 percent of small business owners. Currently, only 40 percent of businesses are utilizing Twitter, but this social media platform’s popularity is only predicted to increase. In fact, Twitter has been deemed the conversational search engine of our time. Shouldn’t businesses be the most interesting person in a conversation that consumers are already having about their product?

We certainly think so. To help brands get back into the consumer conversation, we’re offering four easy ways to optimize Twitter for small business owners’ most influential presence.

Keep Your Twitter Handle and Account Name Consistent

Your Twitter handle, or a more familiar term, your username, is the “hello my name is” tag for followers to engage with your brand. It is attached to all tweets, and should reflect your business’s website and all other social media platforms you have (Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.).

For our client, AQUIESSE, we maintain consistency by using their business title, AQUIESSE for both their username and account name. This not only secures validity and clarity for followers, but now reflects their vanity URL,www.twitter.com/AQUIESSE for proper search engine optimization.

Tip: To see if your desired name is available across all social media platforms, visit the social media tool,NameChk. The site will search 159 social media networks to see where your name has been used or not. If you discover your company trademark name is being used, simply contact Twitter about their TrademarkPolicyViolation to learn more about the action you can take.

Create a “Call to Action” with an Interesting, Easy to Understand Bio

To optimize your bio, you need to include relevant, mission-statement type sentences.

Your bio is the perfect 160 character summary of your mission as a company. This is where you tell people who you are, and why they should follow you at all. You get 20 additional characters to fully optimize this critical aspect of your presence on Twitter, so use the space wisely.

For ourcompanybio, we list the benefit of visiting our website, while utilizing keywords like, “social media presence” for people who may be searching for social media best practices. This keeps our social media platforms streamline, while clearly stating the reason you should follow us.

Include a Creative & Consistent Profile Picture and Background

Your profile picture is the icon attached to all tweets. Keep your icon consistent with your business logo, a recognizable product, or face of your brand.

The same is true for your background. For our client, JesMaHarryJewelry, we use her company logo as the profile picture, and create a visual portrayal of her company mission utilizing 3 strategic aspects of her brand: a photo of her, her well-known, nature-inspired sketches and of course, a few of her signature pieces. By doing this, consumers are not solely being fed a cold, hard, faceless product- they are getting to experience and feel what the company is all about.

How-to: Customize your Twitter background, by clicking on your settings in the top right-hand corner- then click the “design” tab- and hit “change background image” and upload away!

Speak like Your Consumer

Nobody enjoys speaking to someone who only talks about themselves, and the same goes for your followers. The quickest way to get unfollowed or ignored is to hash out one liners about your business. 

People don’t like to be sold, but they do enjoy feeling exclusive, heard and appreciated.

So talk like your consumers would talk about your product. Use tools likeGoogleInsights to learn how people are searching and talking about your product.

Twitter conversations are short and sweet, and if done strategically, to the point. But with 200 million tweets going out every single day, you can’t afford not to take advantage of every opportunity to optimize your social media platforms.

What will be the first change you make to your Twitter page?

You can visit/excelamktg for further customized Twitter ideas, designs and insider tips for optimizing your Social Media. /excelamktg (www.excelamktg.com) is a social media marketing firm based out of Los Angeles. The firm is the creator of ‘Social Media on a Budget’, a web series focused on teaching small businesses how to maximize their social media presence.  /excelamktg offers various services such as online marketing, social media campaigns, digital PR, web design, and more.