Twitter is often in the news for celebrity spats and for various other related issues but at its core, it is a simple social media site where users can post, follow, and be followed. For this reason, it is an extremely useful business tool that not enough companies make the most of. Twitter boasts well over 300 million users who tweet one billion times every two days so here is a brief introduction for how Twitter can benefit a business.
Research – Firstly, it can act as a basic research tool where businesses can see the most recent news in their industry as well as what their competitors are up to in the market; this can be invaluable information that was previously hard or impossible to retrieve. Businesses always need to know what competitors are up to so they can react if necessary and this can be a great way to go about it.
Communicate With Customers – Years ago, customers would send letters in hopes of receiving a reply within a couple of weeks. This process has improved over the years to phone calls, emails and now one step further – Twitter. If customers have a place to contact a business for a quick reply if they have any problems, they will be more likely to be interested in what the company has to offer. Furthermore, this is great for the business because they can instantly deal with any issues that arise.
Advertise – Twitter is a great tool for advertising and what’s more, it’s free. Businesses can advertise their products or services through a simple tweet and it will reach all of their followers within seconds; this will lead to an increase in visitors to a website and hopefully, an increase in sales.
Furthermore, hashtags (#) are now huge on the internet and if a business can get a particular hashtag to ‘trend’ or even just target their advertisement to a particular hashtag, this can lead to a dramatic increase in visitors to their Twitter page and their website.
Analytics – If a business sets up twitter and finds that they are having success in some areas but not in others, they can see exactly what is happening and why through the analytics screen. The owner of a profile will be able to see what tweets have the biggest ‘impressions’, what hashtags are receiving the most interest, and who is influencing the page the most.
Giveaways – A great way to generate interest around a business is to set up a competition or a giveaway and there is no better way to do this than on Twitter. As long as the prize is good and interesting, a decent amount of people will interested and while they are entering, they will check the page out.
The options with giveaways are endless; a business could make it so people have to head over to their site to enter, they could set certain restrictions and benefits on the giveaway, and they could even giveaway their own products. A certain percentage of the people that don’t win will still be interested and will look into buying the product anyway.
In today’s internet age, Twitter really can grow a business like never before and with the sheer amount of users, now is the time to get involved!