To make a big impact on Twitter, you will need to focus on your topic of expertise, actively engage, and build relationships with other people who shares the same interests. It really takes time and effort to build relationships on Twitter and it doesn’t happen overnight (depending on your topic). Building relationships and online networking on the social web with your social media campaign works pretty much the same way as networking offline. How are you going to start building relationships on Twitter with your target audience?
Firstly, what do you know about your target audience? What interest them? What content do they like? If you already have set up a couple of buyer personas for your social media campaign, it’s easy. If you don’t know anything about who you want to target on Twitter, do some research first. Once you know who your target audience is and what interests them, how are you going to make a big impact on Twitter to stand out from the crowd and all the noise?
Start making friends on Twitter
Twitter provides you with the opportunity to engage and build relationships with your target audience anywhere in the world. This requires a little bit more than just dipping your toe with all the conversation going on. It’s important that you engage with chatter, influencers, and others. Always try to be helpful and show your human side. This is one way you can make friends and build your network on Twitter.
Follow relevant #hashtags
To make the most out of your Twitter strategy and to make it more relevant to your needs, use 3rd party tool such as Hootsuite that integrates with Twitter that enables you to track all the conversation going on around a specific hashtag. To start with this, create a list of all the relevant hashtags related to your business and search for those hashtags on Twitter. You can also use Twitter Search to search for those #hashtags and keywords. You can also use #hashtags from other relevant discussions and events you have attended. If you want, you can also create your own, but remember that it takes time and effort to start promoting it.
Share useful and relevant content
Only share the best and most relevant content that your target audience will need to know on Twitter. Find the best original content to share, answer relevant questions, and retweet other people’s tweets. Make sure that you understand and that you read the content before sharing it to ensure your audience will find it interesting. You can also schedule a couple of tweets during the day, but it’s important that you don’t post updates only about yourself. As a general rule of thumb, post 1 of your own content tweets for every 9 other relevant tweets that you post.
Reach out to influencers
Search for influencers in your industry and retweet the interesting content they share. You don’t have to include their Twitter handle when retweeted them just to get their attention. Since one of your goals should be to engage with them, don’t spam or bug them. Do something good for the person you are trying to engage with and they will most likely return the favor. Look at the other content that they share as well as their bio. How can you help them without getting anything in return?
Use Twitter chats
Don’t join a couple of chats and then leave. Connect with people and try to help them by answering their questions. One of my main goals with Twitter is to interact with others in real-time. You can also let your target audience know that you are currently participating in a chat on Twitter so that they have the option to ignore your Twitter stream if they are not interested in following the conversation.
Share information in real-time
When you visit events, share information to your Twitter profile in real-time. One of the best benefits of live tweeting is that it can help you focus on what is being said at the event. Use the event’s hashtag to stay on topic with the event and also mention the speaker’s Twitter handle. You can also add relevant content or source that was referenced by the speakers.