Nowadays, social networks are extremely important tools to help you grow your business successfully. Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate Research Technologies research in 2010 showed that 67% of 1,000 adults were more likely to buy from a company they followed on Twitter. Furthermore, 79% of this sample said that they would prefer to recommend a brand they are currently following. Twitter is one of the most used social networks; it is a relatively inexpensive, or even free, using new creative ways to advertise your business and go viral. As word of mouth, social networking is an extremely powerful way to spread the word, advertise your brand and new promotions (Burgess, 2015).

 

It is very important for local businesses to use social media such as Twitter in its favor. Since many people in Brighton support local companies and communities, it would make the job easier for these businesses to stand out from the crowd. As an example, we can focus on New York Coffee Club, even though being their second shop in the UK; New York Coffee Club Brighton uses Twitter account as a local business, referring to details like the weather (Twitter, 2015):

These simple tweets might actually turn a follower into an immediate customer, as they are appealing to people’s feeling. Thinking of the cold weather, it would be nice a coffee from New York Coffee Club, that is “to die for”, like a customer tweeted (Twitter, 2015):

Creating a positive image on social networks helps the company developing a stronger relationship with their followers and customers. As we can see in the above image, customers also have a huge influence in helping to advertise the brand. Therefore, with social media customers developed an active role in building brands recognition as co-creators in market content (Hanna, Rohm & Crittenden, 2011). This change in trend is creating powerful “marketers” as customers are reliable sources that already tried the brand and had a good experience that is worth sharing. Consequently, other customers will connect and trust these experiences more easily. As the director of social media marketing and strategy for the NHL, Mike Di Lorenzo stated ‘‘Social networks aren’t about websites, they’re about experiences’’(Wyshynski, 2009).

 

There are some important techniques that you should use when advertising your company on Twitter. One of them is increase your followers count, the easiest way to boost your influence on Twitter. Burgess (2015) outlines 5 main steps to follow in order to delineate a successful twitter strategy:

 

1 – Connect your Social Network

Linking all your social networks and website is a great way to increase your visibility on the web and get more followers on Twitter. Make sure you have a visible button on your website to easily follow your brand on social networks.

 

2- Don’t send multiple tweets in a short space of time!

Sending a lot of tweets will bother people and will lead people that use to follow you to unfollow your brand. Especially on social networks, people don’t like to be filled up with useless information. Make sure you use your posts wisely with short and strong affirmations. There are some tools that can be used to schedule your Tweets like Buffer, which can be a big help.

 

3 – Ask to retweet you

Studies have shown that you can increase your retweets up to 4 times just by adding: “Please ReTweet” at the end of your Tweet. This is a great way to use your customers as to advertise you through reliable reviews! (Zarrella, 2011).

 

4 – Hash tags

Hash tags are a great way to make your posts visible to more people. By hash tagging your posts you are picking key word that will make your post pop up every time someone looks for that specific word. You have to be careful finding and evaluating these hash tags. There are some softwares like RiteTag ($10/month with first month trial free) that will help you making these decisions.

 

5 – Vary and be clear!

Vary the content you post on Twitter. Make sure you chose your market and you are focused in that specific group but don’t talk always about the same! Try to be innovative and dare the customers with, for example, questions and quotes! (Connell, 2014).

 

In conclusion, make sure you are clear so there are no misunderstood and/or weird comments. Short and clear sentences are what works in Twitter. These are only some tips to get started with Twitter. As soon as you start doing these, you will learn all other world and how many important and useful tools can be found on Twitter and more tricks to advertise your page!

 

 

References

Burgess, J. (2015). 7 Ways to Set Your Twitter Feed on Fire. [Online] Entrepreneur. Available at: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/241789 [Accessed 10 March 2015].

Connell, A. (2014). How To Get More Twitter Followers: 24 Effective Tips To Grow Your Following Fast. [Online] Blogging Wizard. Available at: http://www.bloggingwizard.com/how-to-get-more-twitter-followers/ [Accessed 10 March 2015].

Hanna, R., Rohm, A. & Crittenden, V. (2011). We’re all connected: The power of the social media ecosystem. Business Horizons, 54(3), pp.265-273.

Twitter (2015). New York Coffee Club (@N_Y_C_C) | Twitter. [Online] Available at: https://twitter.com/N_Y_C_C [Accessed 10 March 2015].

Wyshynski, G. (2015). Inside the NHL’s social media innovations, growing pains. Yahoo! Sports. [Online] Available at: http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/blog/puck_daddy/post/Inside-the-NHL-s-social-media-innovations-growi?urn=nhl,199092 [Accessed 10 April 2015].

Zarrella, D. (2011). New Data Proves ‘Please ReTweet’ Generates 4x More ReTweets [Data] . [online] Blog.hubspot.com. Available at: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/14982/New-Data-Proves-Please-ReTweet-Generates-4x-More-ReTweets-Data.aspx [Accessed 10 March 2015].