A Business Owner’s Guide to Crafting Great Tweets

By Stefanie Neyland, Small Business Content Developer at BizLaunch.com

 

You know about social media. You know you're supposed to use it as a way to engage with your customers, but thus far, you’ve seen little return on your time and investment. Take Twitter, for example. You regularly post updates, new blog entries and pictures, but you’ve received little feedback or engagement from your followers. What are you doing wrong?

Before we look at what is going right, it’s important to have the right expectations for Twitter. Finding followers is easy—almost immediately after you setup your account you’re going to see people following you. Many of these requests are automated while others are no more interested in your tweets than you are of theirs. In fact, one report found that some of the top celebrities have millions of followers but the majority are fake. For example, Katy Perry and Lady Gaga have millions of followers, but only about 20 percent are real and active users.

With that in mind, how do you craft your tweets to gain engagement from the quality connections you have on social media? Here are five tips.

 

1. Don’t sell

Don’t use Twitter to market your newest product or service. You can do that once they come to your website. Instead, make it light, conversational, funny, and informal. Twitter is the place where you give yourself and your business personality.

 

2. Be witty

People like to laugh and will respond to something that’s witty. What can you say that relates loosely to your brand that would make people laugh or say, “that’s clever”? These types of tweets will be retweeted frequently giving your brand more reach.

 

3. Make people smile

You’ve seen them all over Facebook—those pictures that have some sort of caption written on them. It probably seems seems as though every other Facebook post has them. They’re called memes and they have a propensity to go viral. That being said, you don’t have to share or create a meme to make people laugh. Any image that evokes a positive reaction is the goal.

 

4. Share content that’s of interest

You’ve likely heard that with so much content being posted each day, your  only hope of being noticed is to fill your site with interesting, useful, and well-written content that stands out to readers. Your tweets should be the same way. Include links to videos, quotes or other useful articles your readers will enjoy.

 

5. Engage in conversation

Once you start to see people engaging with you through Twitter, don’t forget to write back. Create a conversation. Portray your brand as responsive to customers and as one that is interested in more than getting the sale. People do business with people they trust. Once they get to know you, even if its online, the trust will build and that may eventually turn into sales.