Twitter feeds are a mixed bag. Some businesses get the balance of content spot on, with an alchemical blend of updates, shared content and thoughtful comments. Other companies don’t get it quite right, with the result that their Twitter feed is more of a put off to potential followers, rather than the powerful lead generation tool it could be.
If you use Twitter for business you may be wondering what the best sort of things are to post. Below you will find our top four content ideas for Twitter. You can use these ideas as a backbone for your feed, experimenting with new content to build a balanced and engaging Twitter profile.
1) Content Updates
The first and most obvious thing you should be doing with Twitter is using it to announce when you publish new content. Whenever you put a new landing page online, create a special offer or publish a blog post, then let your followers know through a short tweet giving a link to the new content.
2) Images and Videos
Twitter has become a great platform for publishing images and videos, especially as they can be published to your feed directly from a smartphone or tablet. One of the real strengths of Twitter is the ability to engage your followers on a personal level; to get to know them and to give them a glimpse of who you are. So use your Twitter feed to publish impromptu images from trade shows and meetings, from staff events and webinars. You can use this to give shout outs to your clients and suppliers by publishing candid images and videos of your meetings and events, coupled with a relevant hashtag.
3) Shared Content
An important way of developing your follower base on Twitter is to share other people’s content. You can do this either through retweeting someone else’s tweet, or linking to external content, such as an article on a relevant blog. Relevance is the key here. Only share content that your followers and target market are likely to find genuinely useful, and do so only if it does not detract from your own content. Less is more when it comes to shared content. If your feed is constantly being updated with links to external blogs or articles, then you are unlikely to win many new friends, and most of your tweets will be ignored. However, carefully curated content is a good way to build friends and contacts within your industry, as well as demonstrating an awareness of current trends within your market.
4) Questions
Twitter does not have to be a spectator sport. Many businesses find it useful to engage their followers through direct questions.
- “What do you think of our latest Facebook ad campaign?”
- “Who’s going to the Mobile App Developers Expo next week?”
- “Any suggestions for what flavour characteristics you would like to see in our next beer?”
- “How can we improve our customer service responses?”
The questions you can ask your followers are almost endless, and will very much depend on the business you are involved with. However, they are a free and effective way of gaining product insight from your target market, as well as opening up communication with individual leads. Take a note of the answers you get and the conversations that develop, as this will allow you to customise your brand messages to fit in better with the needs of your market.
What we love about Twitter is the immediacy of the platform. Tweets allow you to share content and interact with your followers on a moment to moment basis, responding to breaking news, neutralising complaints and providing great customer service. By providing balanced content you lay a great foundation for building an active follower base that has a strong likelihood of converting into leads.
