Twitter is one of the most popular social networks. It is equally popular among businesses and personal users. Businesses all over the world are using Twitter to connect with consumers and expand their reach.

In this article, we take a look at 21 effective tips that will allow you to get most out of your Twitter marketing efforts.

1. Choose a Memorable Username

 A relevant and memorable username is very important. It is easier for users to remember and has an impact on your branding. Twitter allows you to change your username, so it is not too late if you have not made the right choice at the start.

2. Use Headshot In Your Profile Image

Most people either use their headshot or company’s logo as their profile image. Using your headshot offers several advantages and is recommended. A headshot makes your profile more personalised and can have an impact on your connections. Furthermore, you can still incorporate your company’s logo or other branding in your custom background or header image.

3. Customised Branding

It is important to customise the design of your Twitter page to reflect your branding. Twitter offers several options to customise the look and feel of your profile. This includes profile photo, custom background image, as well as the newly introduced header image.

4. Pay Special Attention to Your Profile Description

Profile description is one of the most important elements of your Twitter profile. This is where you get to promote yourself or your business. Rather than a sales pitch, use your profile description to describe what you do and include a link to capture leads.

5. Link Your Profile to Custom Landing Page

Most users link their profile to their website homepage. Create a custom landing page on your website and consider linking to it instead. This can prove very useful and is far more powerful. You can even include a lead capture or sign-up form on your landing page to get the most out of resulting traffic.

6. Share Links

Share links to content that is useful for your audience. Links are very popular on Twitter and tend to drive more engagement than standard conversations.

7. Post About Trending Topics

Posting about trending topics can lead to better engagement and improves your chances of going viral.

You can take advantage of tools such as Social Mention use the new Tailored Trends feature of Twitter to monitor trending conversations relevant to your niche.

8.  Take Advantage of Notifications

If you don’t have the time to check your Twitter profile regularly, you can use the new notification feature of Twitter to keep track of Top tweets and stories from your network or to keep track of when someone follows or retweets your content.

9. Identify and Connect With Influential Users

Cultivating relationships with influential users in your niche is a great way to increase your own influence and enhance your visibility. There are several free tools such as Twitaholic that can help you to identify influential users.

10. Use Tools to Find The Best Time To Tweet

You can use free services such as Timely.ls or Crowdbooster to find out when is the best time for you to tweet. This can help you to schedule your tweets at times that get the best engagement from users.

11. Use Buffer To Spread Out Your Tweets

If you can’t be on Twitter all day, the Buffer tool (linked to above) can automatically release pre-loaded messages at certain times in order to build your perceived presence.

12. Automatically Share New Content from Your Blog

Although it is recommended not to fully automate your social media presence, some degree of automatically can prove very beneficial, particularly on Twitter. Posting new content from your blog automatically to your Twitter profile is the perfect example of a task that can be easily automated. There are several free automation tools such as Twitterfeed or IFTTT that can help you to achieve this.

13. Post Daily
    

Unlike Facebook, average rate of engagement is not negatively affected if you post multiple time a day on Twitter. Conversations tend to move very fast on Twitter. It is common for businesses to post more than once a day to increase their reach and attract more followers.

14. Take Advantage of Hashtags

Keep track of popular hashtags that are relevant to your niche and use them carefully.  Use of hashtags is a great way to increase your exposure and reach. It is however important to exercise caution and only use it when relevant as it has been overused by many businesses and marketers.

15. Share Images

Share a variety of content including images. Images tend to be very popular among users and sharing good images is a great way to get noticed and go viral.

16. Share Content From Several Sources

Many users make the mistake of sharing content from their website or blog only. For best results, it is essential to share quality content from several sources, not just your own site.

17.  Use Call to Action in Your Profile to Generate Leads

Your profile description offers a powerful way to generate leads for your business. You can do this by including supporting text as well as including a link to your email sign-up form or another lead capture form.  You can include an extra link as part of your description text in addition to your URL field. For best results, try out alternatives and study the results to see what works best.

18.  Avoid Self-Promotion

 The importance of sharing quality information on Twitter is much talked about. In spite of this I come across business on Twitter every day that focus too much on self promotion.  Although there is nothing wrong with occasionally promoting your business directly, it is important to limit this to fewer than 10% of your postings.

19.  Engage Actively With Users

Twitter is a tool to engage with your audience and not for one way communication. The real benefits will occur only when you engage actively with users. This includes retweeting other user’s content, replying to direct messages promptly, following other users, joining conversations initiated by other users, and more.

20. Leverage Your Website

Your website is one of the best channels for attracting followers as well as to encourage sharing of your content on Twitter. Adding a ReTweet button on all website content is one of the simplest ways to achieve this. The design and placement of your button is also important.

22. Take Advantage of Twitter Advertising

In addition to free use, Twitter also offers several paid advertising options for businesses. Advertising on Twitter is cost effective and can offer a fast return on investment. Promoted Tweets, promoted accounts, promoted trends are some paid advertising methods your business can take advantage of.

What About You?

Do you use Twitter to market your business? What strategy do you use? Are you taking advantage of the tips above? We would like to hear from you. Please share your response by leaving a comment below.