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Written by: Sheena White | Social Quant
If you know me at all, you know that I love Twitter.
Of all the social media platforms, it drives most of the traffic to my site.
It’s also been huge in building my list.
Oh, and most recently it helped me to secure a spot as a writer on a business site that will only add to my credibility and increase my exposure.
But if you AREN’T a huge fan of Twitter, if you just don’t get it or you just aren’t using it, I’m going to give you five reasons I think you should be using Twitter to market your business in 2016.
1. Because Periscope is a big deal.
Okay, so that may be vague, but I couldn’t think of another way to phrase it.
Live broadcasting has been huge in 2015 with the release of Meerkat, followed by Periscope and then later Blab. Live broadcasting is going to continue to grow in 2016 and I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Periscope will prevail over Meerkat.
Because Periscope is owned by Twitter and all of your Scopes are tweeted out every time you hit Broadcast, building an active, engaged audience on Twitter is only going to help you get more people on your Scopes…which in turn will mean more engagement and (ideally) more sales.
2. Because it’s a great traffic driver.
I touched on this in the beginning, but it’s true: Twitter is great when it comes to driving traffic because Twitter users go there with the intention of finding content.
They want tips, the latest news updates and other information. They don’t go there to look at pictures of their friends’ dogs. <wink>
Also, unlike Facebook, there are no algorithms to prevent your content from getting out into the newsfeed. It’s just a matter of being ACTIVE and providing VALUE.
3. Because you can remarket to Twitter audiences just like you can Facebook audiences.
People love Facebook because of its ability to let you target your website visitors…but Twitter can do the same thing!
Once visitors land on your website, you can use the Twitter code on your site to tag visitors and remarket to those people …turning cold traffic into warm traffic, and eventually to buyers!
4. Because it’s the most widely used social network for customer service.
When you need to address a problem with a company, which platform would you more likely turn to: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter…? I’m going to go out on a limb once again and say you go to Twitter first. Everyone does!
And in 2015 Twitter made it even easier to provide customer service.
First, in April they gave users the ability to receive private messages (DMs) from people they don’t follow. Before, users had to follow each other in order to receive DMs. This means that even if a company isn’t following a particular user, the business can still receive a DM from them.
Twitter made another second valuable update in August when they removed the 140-character limit for DMs, which meant anyone who wanted to communicate directly with a company didn’t have to limit the conversation to 140 characters or send multiple short messages in order to convey the point (both equally frustrating).
Together, these updates make it easier than ever before for consumers to directly interact with businesses for customer service issues…or regarding any other questions they may have about products and services.
5. Because it’s an amazing research tool.
Twitter is a great tool if you want to do research on your target market and find out what they are interested in. You can now even conduct simple polls to elicit a fast response from your audience. Click here to learn some creative ideas for using polls.
Because of the direct access that Twitter gives you to your audience, you can stop guessing what they want and learn from what they are saying online about your products and services as well as your competitors’.
Cruise tweet chats and find out what questions Twitter users are asking to generate blog ideas or Periscope broadcast topics. Do advanced searches on Twitter for questions that they’re asking using specific keywords or hashtags.
The list goes on and on.
But the bottom line is that it’s a great research tool that you can and should be using. The sooner the better!
So have I convinced you? Will you be using Twitter to market your business in 2016?