Weblinx, Incorporated

Use Twitter Effectively

There are roughly 200 million tweets sent out every day, many of them from celebrities, corporations with a social media marketing staff of dozens of young people, and major news organizations that have enormous followings. So how can you get yours to stand out in the crowd? And better yet, how can you use them to help your business?

There are really two answers to this question. The first is to set the right expectations. Unless you are enormously popular, the chances that you’re going to sell anything directly from Twitter are pretty slim. With that in mind, your focus shouldn’t necessarily be on making the cash register ring, but driving traffic to your site, your blog, or some landing page.

Once you have that goal firmly in mind, then take a time-honored tradition out of the marketer’s playbook and think like your average grocery aisle magazine editor. That is, condense the headline of your message into something that’s quick, easy to read, and attention-grabbing enough to make sure that it’s hard to think about anything else for at least a few seconds.

If you’re at a loss for inspiration, then take this advice literally. Go to your local super market and see what kinds of stories are being peddled. We guarantee you’ll find promises of salacious celebrity breakups, lizard babies hatching from swamps, and maybe even a doomsday prediction or two. None of these might be particularly true, but they are great examples of pulling readers in.

It goes without saying that we aren’t actually advising you to make up something crazy, irresponsible, or libelous; what we are telling you to do is think outside the box. No one cares that “Jane Expert predicts steady growth in the coming years,” but it’s hard for your customers and colleagues to ignore your advice for “record-breaking profit margins.”

Twitter for Business

The challenge for anyone wanting to market themselves or their products on Twitter is rising above the noise. Focus on driving traffic to your site by grabbing quick bites of attention, and you’ll be doing just that in no time.

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