7 Ways to Set Your Twitter Feed on Fire

Twitter has become an essential tool for entrepreneurs. A 2010 study done by Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate Research Technologies showed that 67 percent of some 1,000 adults surveyed were more likely to buy from a company whose brand they followed on Twitter. Plus 79 percent of the respondents were more likely to recommend a brand whose handle they followed on Twitter.

Most entrepreneurs aren’t experts on Twitter, but all entrepreneurs can improve their engagement with a few minor adjustments. The following are seven ways to set your Twitter feed on fire:

1. Grow your following.

Increasing your follower count is the most effective way to boost your influence on Twitter. Look at the followers of your competitors. If their followers are ideal clients for you, begin by following these handles. Many of these users will follow you back.

To keep track of the Twitter accounts you follow and figure out which ones don't follow you back, use free tool like Manageflitter to identify those who don’t follow you back. Manageflitter gives you the ability to unfollow the Twitter users who have not followed you back right.

Using a strategy of following a few hundred targeted followers a week will result in your adding scores of new and ideal followers within a month. Continuing this strategy consistently could result your gain of thousands of new followers in a relatively short time period.

2. Be clear about your message.

The main question potential Twitter followers want answered is "How do I benefit from following this person?” To have ideal clients follow you, answer this question immediately.

The first place customers look is your descriptive bio. They don’t care if you're a father of two and a husband. Your favorite quote won't prompt them to follow you. Telling them what’s in it for them is all they care about.

Author Brendon Burchard offers the best way to communicate this concisely. At his live Experts Academy event, he suggested saying, "I help [blank] do [blank] so they can [blank]."  

3. Ask for retweets.

The ability to have your followers share your tweets is imperative to the growth of your social-media presence. Salesforce.com found that when followers are specifically asked to “retweet” with the shortcut reference “RT,” they are 10 times as likely to retweet a message.

The research also showed that asking followers to “retweet” (using the whole word spelled out), boosted the retweet rate 23 times more than average.

4. Share during the best times.

You can have the best and most engaging content in the world, but if it's not tweeted at the correct time, then it likely won't be seen. According to Bitly, the best time to reach people on Twitter is Monday to Thursday from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. The worst times are after 3 p.m. on Fridays and any evening after 8 p.m.

5. Schedule tweets.

Set uptweets ahead of time. Free sites like Buffer and HootSuite grant you the ability to schedule tweets. This helps you be present on Twitter when your followers are more likely to be online. One hour of scheduling work might deliver a month’s worth of prescheduled Twitter content for your feed.

6. Use hashtags to boost retweets.

According to a study by Buddy Media/Salesforce at the end of 2011 and early 2012, tweets with hashtags receive twice the engagement as those without. The same study found that tweets incorporating more than two hashtags experienced a 17 percent decline in engagement. So be careful not to overuse hashtags.

Using hashtag websites like Hashtagifyme or Ritetag can assist you in identifying the most engaging hashtags for posts.

7. Use the @ properly.

Never start a tweet with @whoever. When you do, the only people who will see the tweet are your followers and @whoever.

Start the tweet with words and then insert @whoever later in the phrase like this: "Thanks @whoever for your great review about our service at ABC Company." This will ensure that all your followers will see this tweet in their feeds. And @whoever will be notified as well.

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3 Ways to Use Social Media to Build Rapport With Your Customers

These days, prospects and customers have more information thrown at them than ever before. From phone calls and snail mail to emails and social channels like LinkedIn and Twitter, each new way for a person to initiate contact makes it harder for companies to break through all the noise.

With sales -- and any industry, really -- the base of a strong prospect or customer interaction is a relationship. But how can you build a lasting bond when the people you’re trying to connect with are constantly bombarded with other requests and information?

One solution is a practice called social selling. Between LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, customers and potential new clients are everywhere online -- and salespeople should be, too. Today’s prospects don’t want a traditional “discovery call.” They want their sales representatives to have an understanding of who they are personally and what they need, and social media can help with this.

But how does an individual practice social selling? And how can an entire sales team implement a social selling strategy? Here are three easy steps to kick off your social selling program the right way.

1. Get to know your prospects.

With social selling, a sales representative’s job is to understand the individuals they’re targeting on as many different levels as possible. Maybe you both went to the same university or grew up in the same hometown. These tidbits of information make for a stronger initial engagement and can help build a lasting relationship.

Using a variety of social media networks in your investigation is important, and keep in mind the strengths and weakness of each. LinkedIn is great for finding commonalities and historical data, but is rarely the most up-to-date platform. Twitter, on the other hand, is often used several times a day for everything from announcing colds to career moves.

With social selling, it’s also necessary to find the right balance between too much and not enough information. No one wants a complete stranger to know everything about them! Find logical bonding points and easy ways to bring them up naturally in conversation, as opposed to abruptly dropping in information. Noticing you both grew up in the city may be an easier entrance than the fact that you both enjoy yoga.

2. Let your prospects get to know you.

When implementing a social selling strategy, you need to show not only that you understand where your customers are coming from, but also that you’d like them to know you better, too. When dealing transactionally-only, it can be easy to forget the individuals on both sides of a sales interaction are, in fact, regular people.

As salesperson utilizing social selling, you should have an active online presence, where you thoughtfully interact with various groups and gain an understanding of different digital communities. Social profiles allow prospects and clients alike to get to know you better from afar, which builds trust and shows them who you are as a person, outside of your one-on-one interactions. Most of all, it makes the individual on the other end of the phone or email more willing to engage with you as a specific person, as opposed to “The Company” that you represent.

3: Organize and analyze.

What good is information without organization and analysis? Just like any type of data, social media insights are only truly helpful when there’s a level of understanding and interpretation behind them.

Just as you would sync direct contact with a prospect into CRM, make sure to track your social insights and interactions closely. Tools like TweetDeck can assist with segmenting social streams to help keep new, up-to-the-minute information organized, while creating a timeline within your CRM platform allows you to have all the pieces of puzzle readily available when initiating contact with a potential client.

Once you’ve got all your informational ducks in a row, it’s time to analyze. Do you have enough of a basis to create a warm outreach, or is it better to wait until you’ve learned more about this individual and feel like you can build a meaningful relationship? Understanding whether you need to gather more information is extremely important, since an unprepared initial outreach could ruin a potentially advantageous relationship.

Communication is a big part of analysis among the sales team. Teammates will benefit greatly from bouncing ideas off of each other and asking for advice. For example, a sales person could ask a teammate, “My prospect just tweeted that she’s going to be really busy this month. Should I wait until next month to pitch her?” or “My prospect just posted a picture of his lunch of Instagram. Is it awkward to tell him that I share his love for burritos?” Having a team member or two weigh-in can help speed up analysis and provide clarity on what’s most appropriate.

Salespeople are known for being social, but in a field as competitive as sales, it can be easy for representatives to isolate themselves at the office. Sales managers should encourage sharing across the team by instilling a feeling that when the team succeeds, everyone succeeds. Sharing advice and best-practices can help each individual on the team learn and grow from the experiences of their teammates. Not only does social selling help with the initial engagement of a prospect, but the insights and connections you can gain from this technique will help set up the basis for more meaningful, fruitful engagements long-term.

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Customers Want Answers on Social Media — Don't Leave Them Hanging

If you think you're seeing more and more brand interactions on your social feeds, it's not your imagination. According to a recent report by social media management tool Sprout Social, the number of social media messages customers send to brands has increased by 77 percent since 2013.

"The general volume of social [messages] increased, and that's not surprising," said Andrew Caravella, vice president of marketing at Sprout Social. "What is surprising is how many of those messages are inbound toward brands and how many require a response."

The 2014 Sprout Social Index found that the number of customer messages that need a response or issue resolution (i.e., questions about products or complaints about services) has doubled in the last year. The problem is, the rate at which brands respond to these messages has actually gone down: Five in six messages that need an answer from a brand never receive one. [For a side-by-side comparison of the best social media marketing services, visit our sister site Top Ten Reviews]

So why do businesses fail at giving customers the responses they need on social media? Caravella said that it's partly due to the overwhelming volume of responses, which may indicate that businesses simply don't have the right tools and resources in place to manage their social media activity. But he also noted that social networks weren't originally created with businesses in mind: Instead of just using social media for branding and marketing, companies now have to adapt and learn to use it for a number of other purposes.

"Social networks were built for personal use," Caravella said. "It's a relatively nascent channel [for businesses, and] it's changing and expanding into other areas of business — talent recruitment, customer care and service, etc. It's a big undertaking, [and] people want to get it right."

Based on the Sprout Social Index, Caravella offered the following tips for small businesses that want to boost their social media presence and keep up with the tidal wave of messages and mentions they receive.

Know your capabilities. Based on both your bandwidth and your available staff and time, conduct an internal social audit and understand what you're capable of, as well as your limitations. That way, you can determine how to best allocate your resources. It's better to have a very strong presence on two networks than a mediocre presence on four.

Focus on response rate and time. The companies that do social media best are the ones that make a concerted effort to engage with and address customer comments and questions that come through on their feeds. Depending on how many social interactions your business receives per day, it may be impossible to respond to each and every customer. But it's a good idea to get to as many as you can in a timely manner, whether the sentiment is positive or negative.

"People are on social media for recognition, [to know] that what they say matters," Caravella told Business News Daily. "People love when businesses acknowledge and recognize them, [whether with] a favorite, retweet or actual response."

Understand your customers. Pay close attention to the way your customers talk about your brand, whether it's directly to you or indirectly to their friends and followers. Knowing how your customers feel about you can help you better understand your strengths and weaknesses as a business — and better serve customers' needs on social media.

Don't get hung up on the numbers. Engagement rates, rather than follower count or number of "likes," are the hallmark of true social media success for today's brands. Caravella noted that businesses should focus more on improving engagement than upping the raw numbers.

"Growth comes organically, by having conversations, responding and being participatory," he said. "If you have a million followers and don't talk to them, [it's not effective]. If you have a thousand but build relationships with them, that's more useful."

Originally published on Business News Daily.

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