Are you currently using Twitter for business? If so, congratulations! You’re doing the right thing. Twitter is a great tool for connecting with customers, prospects, and other individuals who share similar interests. It’s also a great way to promote your online content, events, products, and services.
For those of you who might be just getting started with Twitter, you may or may not know that Twitter only allows you to input 140 characters when creating a new tweet. This means your tweets have to be concise. You need to communicate your message in as few words as possible.
Retweeting is a process whereby another Twitter user takes what you have tweeted and tweets it out to his/her Twitter followers. You can tell when something has been retweeted when a tweet is prefaced by the capital letters RT. The “RT” is usually followed by the original author’s username. The image to the right shows that @KratzPR retweeted my original tweet.
Retweets can make a huge impact in your success on Twitter. If someone takes time to ReTweet what you have to say, they are endorsing you. They are also exposing you and your tweet to all of their Twitter followers. This means that you may acquire a few new Twitter followers. Now imagine if one or a few of these new followers likes your tweet and decides to ReTweet it as well…Now we are really cooking. Welcome to the power of viral marketing.
The biggest key to getting others to ReTweet your content is to tweet information that your followers will find relevant and valuable. The next biggest key to getting others to Retweet content is to make sure you don’t use all 140 characters in your tweet. For each tweet, try to leave at least 10 characters out of your tweet. This way, when I go to ReTweet you, and Twitter automatically populates the “RT” characters and your username, I won’t have to alter your tweet in any way. If you use all 140 characters and I try to ReTweet you, I’m going to max out on my 140 character limit. The easier you make it for others to ReTweet you, the more likely they are to do so.
Twitter is a great tool for small businesses. By learning little tricks like this, success with Twitter for business will be much more likely.
Since Dell wants to make sure that they get all of their promotions out there, but at the same, do not constantly interrupt their followers with promotions, they’ve created a Twitter account solely for promoting refurbished Dell computers and electronics – @DellOutlet. By following @DellOutlet, twitterers are essentially opting in to receive Dell promotions. Dell makes it very clear that this particular account will be used for promoting their specials. This strategy allows Dell to get their promotions out without offending their followers. Can you incorporate this strategy into your small business? I think you can.
