Twitter is a popular social networking option that revolves around the concept of short, 140-character messages, referred to as “tweets”.  Created in 2006, it has grown exponentially with over 255 million active users posting approximately 500 million tweets each day.  This is an exceptionally large audience for a business to connect with, especially if you are looking to market outside of the U.S. or create a mobile campaign as 77% of Twitter accounts are from outside the country and 78% of active users are logging in from their mobile devices.

But what can you really do on a service with a 140-character limitation?  Plenty!

Use Twitter as a Networking and Lead Generation Tool

*Find out who is talking about your business with username queries – Using “to:” and “from:” search terms, you can determine who’s sending tweets to a specific user and/or from a specific user.  You can even include specific search terms using “to:[user] ‘[keyword]’”.  That search will show a listing of everything mentioning that keyword that was sent to a particular user.

*Find your local audience with geo-location filters – Using “near:” or “within:” search terms will help you locate local users.  “Near” indicates a specific area you want to monitor and “Within” specifies a certain radius (i.e. near:80301 within:10m)

If you don’t want to do these searches manually, you can use an automated tool like Twilert.  You can input the specific search terms you want and Twilert will email you alerts or daily summaries with the results.

Use Twitter for Advertising

*Promoted Tweets – this is by far the most popular way that businesses advertise on Twitter.  To promote a tweet, you need to go to the Twitter advertising section and choose the Promotional Tweets Campaign.  You can choose users based on certain keywords, television programming the users watch, or their interests.  You also need to set your budget with a daily maximum amount (usually ranges from $1.50 to $2.50 per user).

*Promoted Accounts – this is similar to promoted Tweets, but instead of promoting just one tweet, you are promoting your entire account.  The targeting and budgeting options are pretty similar, with the exception that the budget range is between $2 and $3 per follower.

Use Twitter Cards

Image Courtesy of Wikipedia

Twitter cards are a great way to insert more content about your business, all while bypassing the 140-character limit.  To install them, you will first need to be able to add some code into your website header section.  Here is a quick list of some of the different card types:

*Summary Card – This card includes your website page title, description, a thumbnail image, and Twitter handle.  If you have a blog, or deal more with information, then this is the type of card you should use.  There is another version of the summary card with the same content, but larger image size.

*Photo Card – This card is more for businesses that deal with photograph or art.  Like the summary card, your title, description, and Twitter handle will appear, but the real emphasis is on the image.

*Gallery Card – This card works exactly like the Photo Card, except instead of one featured image you can have up to four different images.

*App Card – This card is primarily for businesses that sell or create mobile Apps.  When someone mentions your app in their tweet, a link will display to view the app.  If a user views the tweet on a mobile device, however, there is a download prompt right on the tweet.

*Player Card – This is a good card for businesses that want to feature their video or audio capabilities and will put a live video or audio player within the tweet itself.

Image Courtesy of Flickr

There are many more little tips and tricks businesses can use for sharing their message with the Twitter masses than have been mentioned here.  If you would like to know more ways to increase your follower base, or have any questions on the information I shared above, please contact me: sani@sunnysidesocialmedia.com