This month, I was featured in the “Author Spotlight” section of my publisher’s internal newsletter. The topic I was featured for was using Twitter for business. I wanted to share my top 5 tips to use Twitter effectively for your business or blog:
- Learn the lingo – what is @, # and .@? Get to know how to Tweet and Direct Message people to ensure your message goes to the right audience.
- Keep your Twitter and Facebook strategies separate. These are two different platforms with their own quirks. You can post 1-2 times per day on Facebook without annoying your users. On Twitter, you can post every 30 minutes or so and this would be fine, as Tweets have a shorter shelf life than Facebook posts. But think about if you posted every 30 minutes on Facebook – your followers may unfollow you.
- Use Tweet Jukebox for automation – this is a great tool where you can add a number of evergreen Tweets and the tool will randomly pick one to post whenever you schedule it to do so. For example you could ask it to post once an hour Monday to Friday, 9am to 6pm and it would do this automatically for you.
- Research your hashtags. Within Twitter you can search hashtags that are relevant to your business. Try using one specifically for your business (I use #NoChildIsBroken and #HealingFeeling) for consistency. You can also use other related to your industry (e.g. #children #therapy and #inspiration). This means that anyone who searches these hashtags will see your Tweet and that can help you to connect with people in your target market.
- Be authentic. Be yourself on Twitter – even if you are promoting your business, be human. For every 4 Tweets, 3 could be business related and 1 could be personal to help get your personality across.
These are some of the ways in which I use Twitter to raise awareness of my business, Healing Feeling, and my book, No Child Is Broken. If you have any more tips you have found to work well, please share them and comment below.