10 Ways to Use Twitter to Grow Your Business

Author: Tayyab Malik

If you've never used Twitter and have always wondered how to use Twitter for your business, this is the article to read. Twitter has gone a long way in through the years they've grown dramatically. Every week on average, there are a billion tweets send out and if you're business owner who's not on Twitter, you might be wondering, well, should I get on, should I start tweeting?

Twitter is a great platform for businesses to be on because they can use it to quickly share information with people across the globe. Twitter is also great at helping businesses gather intelligence and feedback from prospects and current clients and customers. There is also a free tool available to Download Twitter Videos from your Twitter account to your computer. Lastly, Twitter can be used to build strong relationships with current client’s customers and prospects. That said, Twitter is a great marketing tool but it's not for all companies. Many companies will have a use for it and social media in general but you really have to analyze your customer's needs, what their behaviors are and whether Twitter will be a great fit for you and your offering. For those companies who can leverage the power of Twitter, I'm going to cover 10 ways your business can use Twitter to its advantage.

The first and most obvious way to use Twitter is to build your brand awareness by tweeting out lots of messages, you get your company logo, its colors and your company name out there for more and more people to recognize.

Second, your business can use Twitter for direct to consumer marketing. You can Tweet out messages about different promos, specials, announcements, anything that will encourage people to visit your business, to reach out and contact you, to email you, visit your website, whatever it is to pull them in, attract attention so that they can start interacting with your business.

Third, Twitter can be used to provide customer service. Many companies use this for instance, Comcast, where if you have a question, you can tweet and they have 24-hour representatives who will reply to your tweet right away with answers or with information on how to get answers to your issues or problems. Twitter can be used for lead generation and sales as well.

Fourth, as you gather more people to follow you on twitter, you can treat these people as email subscribers as leads that you can build relationships with and ultimately sell to. By having more followers on your twitter account, you can send out sales messages that encourage your followers to buy certain things, making Twitter an effective sales machine.

Fifth, Twitter can also be used by your company to provide your customers or clients with instant updates and alerts. Some businesses will require continuous and constant and immediate communication with their clients and customers and Twitter is a great way to do this. You can send a tweet out and can be retweeted among everyone who's following you.

Sixth, Twitter can be used to effectively market events your company organizes. Through the use of different features within Twitter, for instance, hashtags and retweets, your followers can market your event for you by spreading the news and by getting people to get involved and follow your hashtag or in other words a code related to your particular event alone. By doing this, people will be able to follow all the major announcements about that event and also more people get curious about what this code or hashtag is and may in turn click one of your links to learn more about that particular event.

Seventh, Twitter is also a great platform to conduct market research. You can ask questions to all of your clients or customers who are following you and get their answers so you know what they're looking for, what their needs are, what their desires and wants are. You can also look into your competitors to see what their followers are asking questions about and what their needs and wants are.

Eighth, Twitter is a great way for your company to manage a crisis relating to your company because of the viral nature of tweets and retweets. If something major is happening with your company, you can let all of your followers know about it by sending out a tweet. This can quickly spread throughout the Internet and reach all the people who are concerned about that topic or your company.

Ninth, another way your company can use Twitter is to entertain your followers. Send out valuable messages, links to valuable articles, links to funny articles, send out tweets that are controversial, anything to entertain your customers or clients or prospects who are following you. This in turn will build strong relationships and help you market or sell to them in the future.

Tenth, if you're not aware of social media's influence on organic search engine rankings in search results such as Google, you'll be happy to know that Twitter sends social signals to Google and other search engines providing you with an increased opportunity for search visibility. That means by having a twitter account and having more people tweet about you and your company, you have a better chance of ranking higher for different key phrases searched.

There you have it, ten effective ways your company can use Twitter. In future articles, I'll be covering more advanced techniques and strategies about Twitter and how your company can leverage these techniques to increase sales.

1.