Gaining Traction: Twitter Marketing for Startups

Hate or love it, twitter is among the most popular and most effective way of marketing your business or yourself online. If you  are a start up and you want to gain  traction in twitter,  you must first  learn why you truly need to use Twitter, how to set up profile that  is  awesome,  what you need to tweet, how you can get more followers, how you can automate bits so as to ensure that  your time is not drained, and other  tricks and tips  that you really need  to know.

If it is used properly, Twitter can expand your network, bring in more leads, add more visitors to your blog or website make it easy to connect with people whom you will otherwise not be able to, and allow the building of professional or personal brand with your loyal followers.  In short, twitter will enable you generate more traffic your website and make new contacts and leads.

The second undertaking for the start ups in Twitter is setting up profile that is awesome.  There are many profiles in twitter. If you want to catch the attention of the reader, you must make your profile unique and attractive. It will not attract the necessary attention if it looks just like the many others. You must do these vital things if you want to make your profile awesome namely updating your bio, putting your blog address or website, personalize your background and using good profile picture.

What should you tweet as start up? You should tweet whatever you feel is relevant and of importance to your audience.  Some of the useful tweets could be about  upcoming events,  interesting videos, podcasts, books and bog posts that  you  have found, inspirational quotes, engaging questions, offers and discounts that you have seen  and some insider views that  you have overhead or came cross somewhere.

As a start up, who should you follow in twitter if you want to gain traction?  You should follow the movers and shakers in your industry. If for instance you deal in real estate, you should follow mavens in that sector. You should also follow the popular celebrities such as Lady Gaga, Will Smith etc. If you follow politicians such as Obama or Romney, ensure that you do not show support or opposition of either candidate because they may anger some of his supporters who are potential clients or customers.

After doing the foregoing, the next hard task is getting more followers.  How do you do this? It is good to focus on the quality as well as quantity. There is no need of having 3,000 followers that are of no help to your business or cause. It is better to have 300 followers that re-tweet your posts, engage you in discussion and recommend your products to others.  You should ensure that you communicate with your followers and respond to their tweets.

 So, in short, as start ups that wants to use twitter marketing to gain traction you have to:

  • Be human
  • Be relevant
  • Have fun
  • Don’t spam
  • Make friends