Who to follow on Twitter for businesses

Following the right accounts on Twitter is just as important as tweeting the right content. Following certain accounts can increase your business’ profile, both on Twitter and in your area, by connecting your business with your customers and local media outlets.

By following trendsetters within your industry, you can stay abreast of interesting and important developments that may affect your company. Also, Twitter can be used to keep an eye on the activity of your main competitors, as well as the larger companies you want your own business to emulate.

You will be able to see all the public tweets of the people you follow in your stream. Follow a diverse group of accounts to ensure that you get the most out of the service.

Industry leaders

Look for some of the bigger businesses that work in your industry. If you are opening a bakery why not check out Millie’s Cookies, Cinnabon or Dunkin’ Donuts. If you run a sportswear shop, have a look at Nike, Adidas orPuma.

You can monitor the leaders in your industry by following their activity on Twitter . Perhaps they will use the service in a way that you hadn’t thought of to promote themselves. Imitate their more successful or innovative ideas.

Follow the companies that provide you with your stock. Big brands often tweet about new product releases. SayNike football boots are one of your sports shop’s best selling products, if Nike were to tweet about a new football boot you could retweet it on your business page, alerting your followers.

You could then make sure that your shop was one of the first in your area to get the boot in stock and tweet about it, attracting more customers to your store.

Industry Voices and the Media

Follow the accounts of those in your industry whose views are respected. Look for the accounts with the most followers in your network and, perhaps more importantly, those that are getting the most retweets and favourites.

Following these accounts could lead to interactions with them, making their followers aware of your business. Their tweets may also prove to be very informative and useful to your business, tweets that you could retweet yourself.

Search for the Twitter accounts of the media sources in your local area. To do this, you can use the “Browse categories” list in the Discover tab, or you can use websites like Wefollow, Muck Rack and Twellow.

Building a relationship with newspapers, magazine publishers and radio stations on Twitter could persuade them to feature your business in articles and reviews.

Customers

When your business is just starting out on Twitter, it is a good idea to follow some of your current and favourite customers. Ask for your customers Twitter handles or email addresses, then use this information to search for them on the site.

People use Twitter to interact with brands and business. Following your customers will show them that you want to interact with them on the site, making them feel valued. Following customers will also make them aware that you are on Twitter and, if they thank you for the follow, it will make their followers aware of your business’ Twitter profile as well.

Competitors

Use Twitter to keep an eye on your competitors. Many of your rivals will already have Twitter accounts on which they will post company information and updates. If you can’t find a competitor type their email address into Twitter’s search engine, or have a look for their Twitter handle on their web page.

If you don’t want your competitors to necessarily know that you are following them, use a private Twitter list to keep tabs on them. You can follow lists without following the Twitter accounts listed within them.

Followers

There are two opposing schools of thought concerning follow-backs. Some say that businesses should follow all the users (those proven to be humans and not robots) that follow them, while others argue that businesses should only follow those more active and influential on Twitter.

The people who think that businesses should try to follow as many followers back as possible argue that not only does it show potential customers that the company appreciates their support and cares about their opinions, it also provides users with a way to communicate with companies privately on Twitter via direct messaging – a fantastic customer service tool.

The opposing argument, though obvious, is a good one: too many followed accounts clog up a business’ Twitter stream and bombard it with lower quality information.

If your company is not already on Twitter, it is unlikely that it is well-known. I suggest following as many people back as you can (having made certain that they are people) as this will help build your profile on Twitter, as well as off it.

Suggestions

On your Business’ Twitter home page there is a small list of suggestions entitled “Who To Follow”. In this list, Twitter collates accounts that you could follow based on your interests, activity and the people you follow. Clicking “follow” on one of the suggestions opens up a larger list of options: Twitter encourages users to follow as many accounts as possible to increase engagement and networking on the site.

There is also a longer list in the discover tab with even more suggestions of who your business should follow. Often these suggestions are very good, so it is worth having a look at this list – which is constantly updating itself – every week or so.

Others

Of course, you don’t just have to follow those within your industry or the people who follow you first. Why not follow the accounts of celebrities or people who interest you? Following interesting accounts may provide you with inspiration when you can’t think what to tweet, while interacting with celebrities might lead to an endorsement.

You should be using Twitter to display how interesting and multifaceted your business can be, so following the right mix of people can really help imbue your company’s Twitter account with more personality.

The Importance Of Knowing Your Audience On Social Media

To create a successful social media strategy for your business you must know your audience. Social media is all about communication and conversation, how can you have a proper conversation if you don’t know anything about the people you are talking to? Before you create or post any content, you need to know who will see it. If you only know a little about your audience to start off with, using that to your advantage when creating a strategy can help you not only engage with your audience, but also understand more about your audience as a result. Here are the questions you should ask yourself in order to help you get to know your business’ audience on social media:

1. Why?

Posting content without prior knowledge of its potential audience is just a Random Act of Marketing: you might have some success, but your content won’t have anywhere near the same amount of engagement as content posted with a targeted audience in mind.

For your social media strategy to have any success, you must first work out who you are trying to reach and then the best way to reach them. Be aware that different networks will have different audiences, so make sure you create content which suits each social media site.

2. Who?

So, knowing your audience on social media is of the upmost importance. After the ‘why’, though, comes the ‘who’: who are all the people following you on Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook and Google+? Who are all the people sharing and engaging with your content? Who is retweeting you on Twitter and repinning your pins on their Pinterest boards?

You need to work out who engages with your content in order to work out what sort of content they are more likely to engage with. Find out what demographics your fans belong to: their age, gender, professional status, location and income. For example, if your fans are predominantly of a younger demographic, they might be more likely to share funny or fashionable content.

If you’re not sure who your fans are on social media (bear in mind we haven’t got to the ‘how’ yet) it’s a good idea to find out what demographics your brand appeals to outside of the world of social media. Your customers in the real world will give you a great insight into your fans on social media. However, there are other variables that need to be taken into account, so don’t just presume that your fanbase is made up purely of actual customers: you may discover a completely new support base online thanks to your adoption of social media.

Always be aware that the number of people engaging with your content is miniscule compared to the number of people who aren’t, but could be. There are those that see your content but don’t engage, as well as the millions who haven’t even see your content yet. Make sure you don’t just create content to please the people engaging with it already, create content that will attract new fans and followers: after all, you want to be building your support base, not just maintaining what you’ve got.

Having worked out who your fans and followers are, and what makes them tick, you should work out who the most influential people within your fanbase are. Find out which of your fans have the most followers themselves, and which fans get their own content shared the most often. If you can identify the influencers within your fanbase, you can engage with them more frequently and perhaps create a few brand ambassadors.

3. What?

There are actually a number of ‘what’ questions you need to ask yourself when researching your social media audience. The first, and arguably the most important, is ‘what are people saying about your company?’ Not only will this give you an insight into what your audience want from your company and from your social media presence, it will also help you better engage with customers and monitor what they think about you. You should always be monitoring sentiment analysis to get a better understanding of your customers and how your brand is perceived.

You should also find out what your fans and followers are saying on social media in general. Very often a throwaway tweet or Facebook status can give you a great insight into what a customer’s wants are. By monitoring what people say and post, you can also find out what your audience’s interests are. Create content that will pique the interests of your audience and make them more likely to engage with you.

What networks are your fans on? If your audience is far more active on Twitter than on Pinterest, and you don’t have enough time to manage both, focus on posting content and engaging with followers on Twitter to make the most of your social media presence. In answering this question you may also discover more about your audience, as different demographics prefer different sites. Of course, this means that if you have a similar number of fans on Pinterest and Twitter, they won’t necessarily be the same, so you should tailor your content to the site it is posted on and the people who will see it.

The final ‘what’ question you should ask of your audience, a question that is getting more and more important as mobile social media use increases, is ‘what devices are my fans and followers using to check their social media?’ It is no good posting image-laden content if all of you followers are on mobile, as they won’t get the full impact of a large image on a phone.

4. When?

There is only one question in this section, but discovering its answer is vital to the success of your business’ social media strategy: when are your audience active online?

Don’t post your content in the evenings if your audience is using social media in the morning, as they won’t necessarily see it; post when the majority of your audience is active on social media so that they are more likely to see it and interact with it. Ideally, of course, you will be able to post content regularly throughout the day but, if not, work out the best strategy in order to get the most views, engagement and reach.

5. How?

So, the burning question: how do you find out all you need to know about your business’ audience on social media? Well, you can always ask. Ask questions on Twitter and Facebook about what your customers like and dislike, what makes them tick, or create surveys to discover more about your fans and followers.

Take the time to research your audience. How do your followers describe themselves in their Twitter bios? What have they liked on Facebook? Don’t forget to measure the success of your own campaigns within your audience.

Another important question to ask your followers is how they found out about you. This can give you a great insight, not only into the minds of your audience, but also into how successful your social media presence is. Again, you can use a survey to do this.

There are a number of analytical tools which you can use to make researching your audience easier: Klout can help you work out which of your fans and followers are the most influential, while Followerwonk can help you delve into the details of your Twitter followers.

How do you research your social media audience?

Top 10 Tips To Increase Your Social Media Traffic (Part 1)

Using social media to generate traffic can be very effective. But a lot of people and businesses start using social media without researching into the best practices prior to their implementation.

By understanding and following the tips in this article, you too should not only be able to increase your traffic, but also increase your fans and online awareness. Building a successful social media community around your business and brand can take time, but persistence can pay off.




The great thing about social media is that a lot of the tips for one particular social network can be easily transferable to another, creating less work and helping you keep the same type of engagement style with your fans.

Right, enough with the introduction. Lets dive into those all important tips.

1. Profile completion

Having a fully completed profile is first and foremost the most important task that should be done. You are essentially filling out a form with all your business details to help attract people. Adding links to your website in the biography section is extremely important as this will be one of the first things a person will see when visiting your profile. An unfinished social media profile can easily put people off, and we all know that first impressions are important.

2. Graphic Design

Many social networks allow you to customise your page with your own branding. With this, you can become very creative and eye catching which can go a long way to securing your business another fan/follower. Try not to add too much information onto your graphic backgrounds as it can be overwhelming and confusing. Here is a prime example of a well executed Twitter background - Coca Cola.

3. Posting Regularly & Engaging

Now that your social media profiles are complete, posting regularly and engaging with your fans will help increase your traffic significantly. A stagnant social media profile can turn people off and you will slowly lose the fans you have already acquired. Scheduling posts can be a great way of keeping your profiles active throughout the day, especially when you are not in the office to post manually. Ezeesocial is a tool that we use to keep track of all our scheduled posts.

4. Using URL Shorteners

Using URL shorteners can help a post look more sleek and inviting, and not just for Twitter (due to its 140 character limit). URL shorteners allow you to track the statistics from specific URLs to see where your traffic is coming from. There are many URL shorteners to use, it mostly boils down to preference. Bit.ly, Tinyurl.com andgoo.gl to name a few, are all useful and get the job done.

5. Photos are king

When it comes to social media, photos are king! Statistically, posts that are accompanied by a photo received 53% more likes than the average post on Facebook. Not only this, photo posts attracted a whopping 103% more comments than the average post. Its time to make a conscious effort to increase the amount of posts that feature high-quality photos. Don't be afraid to have fun with your posts.

To be continued...