The Best Ways to Advertise Online With Social Media: Twitter

Welcome to the wonderful world of online advertising.

Since the rise of social networking sites, people have come to learn that using them to advertise has helped their business’ growth expand exponentially. There are so many different social networks in this day and age… but is any one better than the other? Do you need to use them all? And which one is best to advertise your business with?

Yes, you need to use all of them. With different social channels come different audiences, styles, and features. Today will go over advertising using Twitter.

Twitter was originally launched in 2006 and now currently ranks as one of the leading social networks worldwide with 313 million active users per month.* Twitter allows registered users to post short & sweet, 140-character messages out to their followers. This is perfect for businesses to stay connected to their community and inform potential customers about their day-to-day activities.

Here are some of the best ways to use Twitter to advertise your business:

Present your business

There are four must-haves for your business’s Twitter account if you want it to be successful: an easy-to-identify username, a profile photo, a header image, and a bio.

Your business’s username should be under the name of your business so it can be easy to find, not your personal name or anyone else’s. For example, if the title of my business was ‘Emma’s’, I’d want my username to be something along the same lines, such as ‘@emmas’. Avoid using punctuation to keep your name easy to type. If the exact username you want is unavailable, try adding in something simple like your location or your type of business, such as ‘@emmasboston’ or ‘@emmaswriting’.

Want something a little more creative? Try a word of encouragement to check out your businesses, such as ‘@visitemmas’ or ‘@writewithemmas’. Make sure you love your username because it can’t be changed once created (unless you want to create a whole new account from the ground up - you don’t). Don’t get too lengthy though, the maximum amount of characters you can have in your username is 15.

If you think skipping over adding photos is no big deal, think again. Photos add trust and legitimacy to your account. If I look up a business on Twitter and there isn’t a profile photo, it makes me think that the business is either brand new and doesn’t have a logo, or that the account is poorly managed and not worth a follow, or even that the account is fake trying to scam me. Take the extra five minutes to pick out a profile photo and a header image.

Your profile photo (the small square box) is a great place to put your business’s logo. Many people make the mistake of adding a picture of themselves, which makes your page look like a personal account. This photo should be about 400x400 pixels.

Your header image can be something a little more creative. You can use a photo of the outside of your business, your products, photos from an event, or even a graphic with text. This image should be about 1500x1500 pixels.

Last but not least, create your bio. Your bio is 160 characters to give a brief overview of your business. This could be anything from a mission statement to a slogan or tagline, or even something as simple as your store hours. I recommend you add your business’s location and a link to your business’s website and any other social media accounts you have for your business.

And just like that, your business’s account has been created.

Follow at a steady pace

On one hand, you want to follow every account you can in hopes that they follow you back. On the other hand, you definitely do not want to go overboard with the following. No one likes an account that is clearly just following you and everyone around you to build their follower base. In fact, Twitter keeps an eye out for pesky accounts such as these that follow too many accounts in a short amount of time and blocks them from following more users until their following-to-followers ratio balances out. Keep it simple and follow the people that matter like other local businesses, friends and family, and businesses you aspire to be like.

Engage in conversation

Talking on Twitter is always fast and to the point. With only 140 characters to work with per Tweet, there isn’t room for many details. If you need more than 140 characters, you can take the conversation to a Direct Message (DM) where it’s private and can be as long and lengthy as you want. On top of that, the only way to send a DM is if you and the person you want to converse with follow each other. So when a customer sends you a Tweet with a question, you can answer back with a simple “Thanks for reaching out! Give us a follow and we can message you the details.”

Depending on your profile’s privacy, your Tweets are public to either the entire Internet or your entire follower base. That means that people can see if you respond to someone or not, so make sure that you come across as responsive and reliable to your followers by checking your account daily and responding to anyone who Tweets at or DM’s you.

Tweet, Tweet, Tweet

Twitter moves fast, you can post a Tweet and then 5 minutes later it could be at the bottom of someone’s Timeline (aka homepage/newsfeed). It’s recommend to post about 2-3 times per day; you can post anything from upcoming sales or events, posts from your blog, an interesting article to check out, photos or videos from your business, or basically anything that comes up during the day! To check out your local BBB’s Twitter page for ideas, visit twitter.com/BBBConnection.

Every Tuesday during the entire month of June, BBB will be releasing a different blog post for each of the four most popular social media platforms of today with instructions on how to use each site to it’s full potential for your business’s benefit.

Keep a lookout for our feature on the best ways to advertise using Instagram next Tuesday.

Check out our post from last week on the best ways to advertise using YouTube here.

For more information you can trust, visit us at bbb.org/boston, like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter and Instagram.

*information and statistics provided by about.twitter.com/company and business.twitter.com/en/basics.html.