Ah, Twitter. The noisy social media platform where Trump makes vague threats and brands shout their 140 character messages to a sea of followers who aren’t listening. But hey, despite a lot of recent changes to the platform and increasingly lower engagement rates, Twitter still has an important place in your social media toolkit. Especially for generating leads for your small business.
Let’s look at some ideas and tips to help you make the most of Twitter to find and generate leads without getting into the advertising game. We’ll save the topic of advertising for another post and get right into some free (‘cause who doesn’t like FREE?) tools and techniques to help you start your Twitter lead generation campaign.
Start at the top – your Twitter header
You can make the most of your Twitter header by using a call to action in your image. Make sure you clearly communicate what your business is and give people an easy way to contact you. For example, let’s say you are a plumbing company in Vancouver – your Twitter header can feature your logo and phone number in the image along with text to support it like, “Let us know you found us on Twitter for 10% off!” Simple and effective.
Pin a tweet
Build your perfect tweet – something that offers your services, perhaps an important image or link to your website and pin this tweet to the top of your profile. You can pin any tweet – so select one that can help you sell. It’s the first message that followers will see on your profile, so make it count!
Search hashtags
Depending on what kinds of leads you’re looking for, start searching on industry terms or topics that are being used by the people you are looking to find. If you’re a Vancouver clothing retailer, search topics like #Vancouver #Fashion. Perhaps you’re a Thai restaurant in downtown Vancouver, searching for #Vancouver #foodie will help you find people who might be interested in you. You’ll need to try a few different hashtags and terms to zero in on the market you are looking for.
Build Twitter lists
When you find people in your market, follow them, of course, and add them to a Twitter list. These can be public or private. Adding users to a public list can get their attention, like a soft tap on the shoulder. Beyond the relationship building, lists can help you keep track of important users out there… as you’ll see in our next tip.
Build a relationship with the people on your lists by retweeting and liking their tweets. Your actions in becoming a fan of their will go along way in gaining their interest in you. Make sure you are following and sharing content from as many different users as you can. Spend some time on them!
Use free Twitter lead generation tools
Using a publishing platform like Hootsuite can make your life easier for a few different reasons when looking to help generate leads from Twitter. How?
Save your searches into visual streams
This allows you to scan each stream at a glance without having to return to the search results every time you execute a search. Being able to organize your Twitter data like this allows you to quickly interact with and act on lead generating content that is applicable to your business.
Schedule your tweets
Batch your work to save time, and pre-plan your tweets. Doing this helps create a more consistent marketing message for your brand, plus saves you hours of searching for stuff to tweet about (especially when the Trump BS that dominates Twitter isn’t going to help you get leads).
Now, not only do you have the convenience of being able to schedule tweets and other social content, but you can review a much larger and relevant picture of what your Twitter audience is up to at any given moment.
Set up automated Twitter lead generation platforms
Twitter has recently updated its policies to block third-party platforms from sending automated direct messages, welcome tweets and other automated content.
The use of automated DMs was always controversial (can you say “SPAM”?). However, automated DMs were a handy way to send out offers and links.
All of that doesn’t really matter now – so if you were thinking of using automated tools or had set these up in the past, they certainly won’t be working any longer.
Play the long game
Once you’ve begun to build up your community, you can then start inviting them directly to your business. You’ve earned the right to approach them on occasion, but keep in mind – no one, not even you yourself – likes the hard sell. Ask them directly, send them links… but then go right back to supporting and reinforcing your audience.
There are really two ways to look at Twitter to generate leads:
- you’re either going to spend money (on ads)
- or you’re going to spend time to generate leads
No shortcuts, my friends. If you opt for time, we know these tips will help get you out of the gate faster, help you to be more efficient and at the same time, build a solid community around your brand.
Have questions or need help with your Twitter marketing or using Twitter to generate leads for your business? We do that! Get in touch with us awesome people at Legendary Social Media Vancouver to start your Twitter lead generation campaign.
