Twitter is one of the most popular social networking websites with millions of online users who use it to micro-blog for a variety of reasons, including the promotion of a local business. And the more followers you have on Twitter for your local business, the better. You can generate more leads for your business once you have thousands of followers that are targeted for the theme of your product or service. For instance, if you are selling beds in Maine, you can target followers from Maine that are married, or maybe you’ll target mattress wholesalers. The goal is to target users who you can convert to followers of you or your local business on Twitter to support your local business.
You also want to follow others so they’ll follow you. After setting up your Twitter account, you simply log in and conduct a search using keywords for your local business. By doing so, you’ll identify other users with similar interests that you can choose to follow, and in return, they can choose to follow you. Start following and interacting with others on a daily basis, and you’ll be amazed at the results.
You can even outsource the task of microblogging and interacting on Twitter to a freelancer. Great resources to find such freelancers include Odesk.com, Elance.com, and Guru.com. On a side note, these same freelancers can be used to help support a variety of your writing needs, including coming up with content for your Twitter microblogs, or you can simply hire them to help you manage your Twitter account.
Once you have a strong following built up on Twitter, you can begin to educate them about your business organically. You don’t want to try to sell them anything outright. Typically, they’re not on Twitter to buy anything. The users of Twitter often just want to talk about what they like and have a great time online while networking. As you begin to share and provide them with links and useful information about your business and industry, you will build your expert status and credibility, and they will begin to trust you. And as this begins to happen, your followers will want to learn more about you by visiting your blog, local business website, etc. When this happens, you begin to receive inquiries and leads that you can convert to build and grow your business! Thus, you’ve organically begun to sell your products and/or services on Twitter indirectly.
Twitter can be also integrated with Facebook, and who doesn’t have a Facebook account these days? This is another great way to boost your online exposure via online social networking. Every post that you write in Twitter can be posted in Facebook automatically by linking the two. To find out how to do this with step by step directions, check out the post ‘How to Connect Twitter to Facebook Status Updates’.
Every local business should have a Twitter account with a fully completed profile that they engage on frequently and consistently. By doing so, they’re using a valuable tool to build their local business through online exposure and networking with access to millions of online users.
Author Chris Marentis is the founder and CEO of the local online marketing firm, Surefire Social. For over 30 years Chris has worked in the field of marketing and online marketing and his company leverages website development, search engine optimization, and social media marketing to generate quality leads for local businesses around the world.
