Twitter is one of the most asked about platforms when I speak to businesses about social media. I often hear “Should I use Twitter for my business?” “What is a Tweet?”

To be honest, when I started on Twitter 8 years ago I had no idea what to do. And I really didn’t spend any time learning about it, so it didn’t work for me because I didn’t use it properly.

More recently, within the past couple years, I actually started focusing on social media and getting interested in actually using platforms properly. Once I started sharing information and interacting with people on Twitter I saw the huge potential for it and thought there was something about Twitter that could be great for business and building an audience.

Since I do get asked often about Twitter, here are some commonly asked questions and answers.

Should I use Twitter for my business?

The short answer is: it depends.

Are you going to actually use Twitter? If you’re going to be like me when I first started out, and not take the time to learn the platform, and take the time to actually share other people’s content, comment, ask questions and really engage on Twitter, then likely Twitter won’t do anything for you or your business.

Things to consider:

  • Do you have the time to learn a new social media platform?
  • Do you have time to spend interacting with other people? (5-10 minutes daily)
  • Is your audience/ who you want to connect with on Twitter?
  • What is your goal with using Twitter? Media mentions, brand awareness, more website traffic, interact with influencers?

Twitter has huge capabilities for you and your business. Using Twitter gives you the ability to help distribute your content, connect with influencers in your industry, get media attention and more.

What is a Tweet?

A Tweet is simply a status update. When you go to post news, an article, an image, GIF, video, etc. that is a Tweet and it gets sent out to anyone who follows you.

What is a #hashtag?

A hashtag is a way of tagging your information. Hashtags are searchable so you can use them for specific locations, subjects, or events. Hashtags that get a lot of mentions and are popular get featured in the trending topics area.

Using 1-2 hashtags per Tweet is acceptable, and make sure it is relevant to your topic. A hashtag can be used anywhere within your Tweet, it doesn’t have to be at the end.

Twitter has great support articles available, specifically about hashtags and how to use them.

How do I get followers?

To get started, make sure your account is completely filled out with a custom header photo, profile photo and bio. Add 3 Tweets with photos so that you have some images on your profile. Add 3-6 Tweets so that your account looks full.

Make sure to add a URL where it’s available so that if someone comes across your account and wants more information, they have somewhere to go (ideally your website, or to a freebie of some sort).

Once you have this complete, search for some accounts that you like and that their Tweets would benefit your audience and start following them. If you like some of their content, retweet it to show some love.

How do I find accounts to follow?

In order to grow your account, you need to connect with like-minded people and industry-specific accounts.

To find accounts to follow, you can use the search option to find accounts, search by hashtags, or when you are on a website, you will often see their social media accounts and you can click to follow that way.

You don’t have to follow accounts only in your industry. I follow a Safety Training provider who provides Working at Heights training, because they post great information and I like seeing the style of blog posts they write. You might be surprised where you find inspiration for your own business.

If you want to follow some amazing Twitter rockstars, Madalyn Sklar and Gary Vaynerchuk are two people doing it very well.

Madalyn is a social media influencer and focuses on teaching Twitter. She shares amazing tips and articles to help you succeed on Twitter.

Gary is someone to watch because he has insane engagement with his community. Even though he has over a million followers, he replies, retweets and likes so many of the mentions he gets. It’s absolutely amazing to see how much time he puts into building a close-knit community. Plus, he shares great content (his own).

Do you have more questions about Twitter? Maybe something I didn’t cover? Let me know in the comments.

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