Twitter is now used by many businesses as a marketing tool. If it is used in the correct way it can become a very powerful weapon in a marketing strategy. Its presence on the social media platform will only continue to grow; of this there is no doubt. However, many businesses are unaware of how to tweet effectively. Tweeting is an art, a significant amount of businesses are unaware of this. The purpose of this article is to give advice on how to tweet, so that your Twitter marketing campaign can as effective as possible.

The first point to make about tweeting is that it is essential you tweet regularly. This can be done through tweeting regularly on Twitter, or through Twitter software, which allows the tweets you come up with to be tweeted at regular intervals. If you do not tweet regularly people will lose interest in what you have to say. They will also become less aware of your business and therefore not have an interest in what you are tweeting, thus it is vital that you are consistently tweeting.

Many businesses are unsure of exactly what to tweet. They only create promotional tweets about their business and post links to their site. Whilst some promotional tweets are needed, it is important that the business recognises that the tweets need to be varied in nature. Tweets should be about related news items: take a piece of news from the internet, tweet with what you think of it, then post the link. Tweets can also be about your opinion on a subject within the industry the business is in. Many companies in the motor industry have regular tweets regarding their opinion on the predicament of Toyota. By varying your tweets, it allows your twitter campaign to encompass many different areas; people will see that it is not purely a promotional campaign and are more likely to read your tweets and become a follower.

Tweets should encourage interaction. Tweets that are just statements do not encourage people to respond to your tweet. Interactive tweets allow for some customer insight to possibly be gained and also for you to analyse other opinions in the industry. For example, a recent tweet I did for Ortegra was ‘Do you agree that measuring social media marketing success is the biggest challenge social media faces? Have a read!’ There was then a link to an article discussing this question. Rather than just posting a comment on the article, this tweet actively encourages other people to respond back by directly asking for their opinion. This allows for opinion to gauged on this topic and for social interaction. The whole notion of social media is that it allows people to connect, if your tweets are just statements, then you are not utilising the potential of connecting with people through social media.

When tweeting it is crucial that you are creative in your use of language. Whilst you want people to understand the content of your tweet, you also have to encourage more followers. However, you only have 140 characters. Again a recent tweet I did for Ortegra can be used to demonstrate this point: ‘Some great examples of how social media can save your business money! Have a read and start saving now!’ Again a link was posted to the article. This use of language entices people to read the article, whilst also detailing exactly what the article will be about. By using the word ‘great’, people are able to see that I would recommend the article, thus it already has a positive review. The ending of the tweet further encourages people to read the article; ‘Have a read and start saving now’ is a very persuasive piece of text. To start saving, you must read. In this tweet there is information on the content of the article, as well as some language, which is designed to persuade people to read the article. These tweets show how in 140 characters, you can be persuasive in your language; the key to this is being as concise as possible.

There are of course many other factors relating to the nature of tweeting for a business, this article only details a few. However, it is of significant importance that when starting a Twitter campaign for your business, you analyse your tweets in great detail, many companies make the mistake of tweeting for the sake of tweeting. This is pointless and a waste of a valuable marketing space. By being thoughtful about your tweets you will be able to make far better use of this incredibly powerful social platform.