Beneficial Twitter Strategies

There are actually a few different strategies that seem to be working for businesses using Twitter as a marketing tool. A perfect running strategy can also be custom tailored to your own small business needs by combining a bit of knowledge on social media engagement with a handy tool or two.

Customer Engagement on Twitter

Socialflow created an incredible video that talks about an interesting study they did to measure how audiences engage. The study was run on six major media Twitter accounts. What should the small business owner be more concerned about? Followers? Retweets? Content shares? This study has some very informative answers to those questions.
Which major media Twitter account would you assume has a more engaged audience? Al Jazeera or Fox News? Take a look.
http://vimeo.com/27306108
Now that you have a better understanding of where you want your Twitter account to go, what will it take to get it there?
Customer Acquisitions
Building a fine following on your Twitter account should certainly be one of your main goals. There are a few common tactics used to drive users to not only follow your account, but to participate in any interactivity that the businesses Twitter account offers. Always bring your creativity game to any social media interactions.
Contests
Everyone says that contest are effective crowd drawers for a reason. They are. They can commonly help a small business get exposure for their brand and even begin to grow an email list. Twitter accounts running contest are also likely to get a few more followers if contestants know they can expect more updates on the contests on the Twitter account. Be sure they do!
Engage with Relevant @’s and #’s
Whether you want to check out your competitors using @mention signs or head for a relevant #hashtag to check out the chatter, you will likely need to fish for followers using both methods. If you follow those who follow others in the same industry, you may have a chance at proving yourself the better option. If you reach out to random users via #hashtags, you may make a name for yourself and your brand by being a highly interactive source of information for your niche or industry.
Advanced Search
Using the advanced Twitter search option can be a great way to fill in more followers. Search by many available filters and the individuals meeting those may provide you yet more ideas on future follower fishing sessions (For great examples see “Twitter for Warm Leads”).

Twitter Tools for Strategic Marketing

Although engagement and acquisition are two very important elements of having a successful small business Twitter account, analysis is also a very notable process that should be utilized for its many benefits. Once you begin to understand the best times and the best users to market your content to, you should begin to see more noticeable results. You will want to know things like, when are users most likely to click your links? When do you seem to get the most questions? Retweets? These things will become infinitely more important as your follower base grows. The best way to analyze them properly is by choosing the right tool for the job. There are a few options.
SocialFlow
SocialFlow provides a complete Twitter analysis and management system. It can help to look at each of the topics your current audience enjoys, those that receive many mentions, or retweets and clicks, and at what times. Using SocialFlow will help any small business owner create the perfect conversation and the perfect time so that your followers are engaged. SocialFlow is a high-end precision tool for this type of analysis. For this reason it is around $2,000 per month for the first account with discounts for additional accounts management.
Tweetstats
Although Tweetstats does offer a more minimal reporting, it is also free. This very helpful tool can help a user get started and analyze options with a quick entry of your Twitter name and one click. No need to register for an account on Tweetstats. Check out everything from a full tweet timeline to retweets.
These are two great tools you can use but we have also covered some incredible Twitter tools on Digital Ethos so feel free to check out more in-depth coverage of some of the best Twitter management and analysis tools.
Twitter for Warm Leads
Once you’re on twitter a great way to generate some warm leads is to use a tool like TweetDeck to follow a keyword, or hashtag. If you’re a Travel Agent, you might want to leave a column dedicated to the word “Vacation”, then when you hit any downtime you can turn to the search and look for people using the word vacation, like I need a vacation, looking to go on vacation, we might be going on vacation to… These are great warm leads, you know the person on the other side is in the market for your service, now you just need a way to make a effective approach. The same is true for just about any industry, just discover the keyword you’re looking for and develop a great transition or approach.
Sources:

1. How To Get More Twitter Engagement
2. 3 Customer Acquisition Methods for Twitter
3. 4 Tools to Better Time Your Twitter Updates
4. 7 Twitter Strategies
5. 5 Awesome Twitter Marketing Strategies that Work