Month: November 2016

3 Steps to Gain Twitter Followers That Matter

  • mannette
  • November 17th, 2016
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Twitter BirdsRemember the last time you googled “Increase Twitter Followers”? Now, think of how overwhelmed you were trying to wade through all the blog posts, articles, and videos promising astronomical growth results for your Twitter profile.

As of today, that google search yields 5.9 million results, including:
• Super-Secret Strategies for 5,000 New Followers!
• How to get Free Twitter Followers!
• Gain Twitter Followers Quickly!

It all sounds great and hey, many of them actually work to add more followers. But, before you begin researching how to add 10,000 followers in a day, ask yourself WHY you want to increase your following. What’s your purpose for creating a Twitter profile? What are your Twitter goals? What will an increased following do for your small business? If yours is a personal Twitter account and the goal is simply lots of “Twitter love”, then by all means, have at it! On the other hand, if this is your small business account and you need to make an industry impact or grow your business, I’d caution you to try a different approach.

Your social media and/or Twitter goals should be directly related to your overall business objectives. A large Twitter following, just for the sake of having a large following, will not benefit your business. You should have a clear understanding of how the followers you seek can benefit the growth of your business. Will they help increase your brand recognition in the right circles? Will these followers be at all interested in your business or your expertise? Will they have any interest in clicking through to your website to get more information or signing up to be on your email list? If the 1000 new followers aren’t doing any of these things for your business, you’ve attracted the wrong crowd.

Gaining the right follower for your business may require more energy and effort, but the benefits will show themselves in the long run.

Try one or two of these tips to get the right people following your brand.

Find your direct competitors, large or small, and follow their followers.

The people and/or companies in your industry have the audience you want, as they will typically share similar interest. The people engaging your competitors concerning their products or services will also engage your company. Follow them, engage them, and watch them follow or follow you back!

Use tools that can make that process easier, efficient, and more productive.

Tweepi is a free tool that helps you find relevant Twitter followers specific to your industry or interests. You can search for possible followers using your competitors’ handle, company name, interests, etc. Twitter will, in turn, notify them that you’re following them. More than likely, they’ll check you out follow back! From Tweepi, you can also create follow lists of influencers and can also tweet from the dashboard! Filters also help you choose accounts to follow based on location, number of followers, tweet count, and many more.

Crowdfire is a tool that also recommends accounts to follow based on interest and other followers you’ve selected in your industry. It also helps to manage your Twitter and Instagram accounts by communicating who’s following you, who’s not following back, who’s inactive, etc. One thing I love about Crowdfire is its curating feature. Based on your chosen interest, it will suggest articles to tweet and Instagram images to like. Both are great ways to garner more interest and gain followers.

Twitter Analytics is part of your Twitter account and provides lots of statistics that may be of interest in the quest to grow your following. You can see what tweets had the highest impressions, how many people visited your profile, engagement percentage for each of your tweets, etc., etc., etc. If you’re not sure how to use it, please take the time to do so. It’s a great way to get a better understanding of the kind of tweets that work well and garner more followers.

Add links to your tweets – they get better exposure

Remember that link you used to get to this blog? Yep, that one. Well, according to Salesforce research, tweets with links included receive 85% more clicks, or engagement. EIGHTY-FIVE PERCENT! That means more people will click the link to your information and are more likely to follow you. So, every tweet you send out should have a link! You know what… don’t even consider this a tip. Consider it a tweet requirement!

Increasing Twitter followers is easy, but growing the RIGHT followers takes a bit more strategy. Remember, the end goal should always be to grow your business, In order to do this, you’ve got to engage people who are interested in what you have to say, which brings me to another topic – TWITTER ENGAGEMENT. You can multiply your following, but to move your business goal needle, they must engage with your content. We’ll talk about that in the next blog!

In the meantime, what tips do you have to gain better Twitter followers?

Do These 2 Things BEFORE Creating Your Small Business Social Media Accounts

  • mannette
  • November 4th, 2016

Man with Laptop and Bag

Small business owners have consistently full plates. Aside from selling our products and services, marketing to potential customers is critical. For many of us, researching, writing, and implementing the all-important marketing plan is also a huge undertaking. It takes time, energy, and lots of creative juices to determine where, when, and to whom you’re marketing.

Now, enter “social media”.  Many Millennial entrepreneurs start out of the gate with both feet firmly set in social media marketing concepts and ideas. With Baby Boomers and Gen Xers, not so much. For those of us not born into, but rather adjusted to the world of social media, creating an online business space can be daunting and downright scary.

But, it’s gotta’ get done!

How many of you created a Facebook business page because that’s what everyone else was doing? Come on…raise those hands! It doesn’t take long to realize that setting up the profile is the easy part. The hard part is figuring out what to do next. How can you get traction and attract potential customers to your page when, other than your website, you have no online currency?

Let’s look at two critical, but simple and often overlooked, initial steps to help you get social media traction, attract relevant followers, and hopefully, get more eyes on the product or service you offer.

Determine Your Target Audience

Sounds familiar, right? Remember all the research you did to identify your target audience when writing that small business plan or preparing your traditional marketing strategy? That very information is extremely important now that you’re venturing into social media territory. As with traditional media, determining your niche audience can help you tweak your product offering, confidently determine your pricing, and decide how to effectively market to customers online.

Determine Your Audience’s Preferred Platform

Knowing specifics of who your customers are leads to the next step of finding them online. Your specific audience spends most of their time on one social media platform or another. They don’t have the time in a day to spend hours on Facebook, and then hours on Twitter, and then even more hours on Instagram. Think about how you interact on social media. More than likely, you have one platform that appeals to you more than the others. The same goes for your target audience.  Instagram may simply appeal more to your audience than Twitter, or Facebook more than Pinterest. Do your research! For example, according to a recent Hootsuite blog, 82% of adults online, ages 30 – 49 use Facebook , but if your audience is between 18 – 29 years old, Instagram may be the better option for your product. And here’s a consideration – brace yourself…is your target audience even on social media?! Again, DO THE RESEARCH!

After you’ve thoroughly researched your target audience, you may be inclined to create a Facebook business page or Pinterest account. Your research will help you make smart decisions about where best to focus your energies. Even if you create more than one platform profile, you must still decide where you will focus most of your attention.

While there are a million thoughts running through your head as you prepare to enter the social media business world, you must make these two priorities. The last thing you want is to have put 6 months into a social media campaign, only to realize that the people you’re targeting aren’t interested in your product or service. Worse yet, you realize you’ve been ignoring your true customers the entire time.

Master the basics, first!