How to Use Twitter and Instagram for Business Marketing

Why are you interesting? Seriously, it’s not ego or vanity, it’s reality. Why do people find you interesting? How can you figure out the most engaging ‘hook’ about you and your business – the one thing that really grabs people?

Our Customers Love Us Because …

That is the baseline story of your business; “Our customers love us because…” you can essentially tell that story from many different angles and perspectives – if you are not sure what your customers love most about you, ask!

A simple story (or series of stories) can begin with that line – and consist of just a few sentences from a real live actual customer. A testimonial that is also an introduction and endorsement of your business to their friends and their friends and so on.

One of the great ways to increase the number of people who have access to your story is to leverage Twitter – you can use Twitter to post the headline or a leading sentence and link back to your blog (or Facebook page or YouTube account) – this helps get you found, makes it easy for people to share and is easy to incorporate into your social marketing routine.

This video we did recently will give you a few great ways to “Tweet Better”  and attract more people – love to share (or ‘re-tweet) on Twitter – here’s how to get the most out of it:

Telling business stories, socially, is the new marketing and it’s great for small business because we have great stories to tell.

Watch the Twitter Tips video – you’ll see how easy it is to leverage Twitter for marketing – and we’ll have more for you in the next email!

Congratulations. You are on the road to success!

 
 

4 Tips to Get Your Business Tweets, Re-tweeted

A re-tweet is when someone shares your tweet with their friends. When that happens, you’re doing things right – actually engaging people on Twitter to the point where they share your story and vouch that it’s good – this helps grow your fan and follower base and goes a long way to establishing your expert authority – so let’s do more of that!

 

Here are 4 solid ways to give your business storytelling tweets the most viral potential:

1. Share interesting and unique content
People follow the people on twitter who educate and entertain them. When you do both, you’re golden. If you can, try and be the first to break the news within your industry, or get an early jump on it. If you’re at a major event, let others know what’s going on by playing reporter. And if you can’t be the first, be the best – add your take, make your tweet interesting, funny or thought-provoking.

2. Mind your Ps and Qs
While there’s some tolerance for shorthand, this is twitter for business, not high school – watch your grammar, spelling and punctuation. Writing well (and succinctly) makes reading worthwhile.

3. Use Link Shorteners
Do include links in your Tweets – those tend to get re-tweeted more often, but you gotta shrink your links for brevity safety and forward-ability. Twitter, auto shortens your links to 22 characters, for greater control and analytics try services like Bitly or Owly – and you want keep it to about 120 characters so others can chime in – short and sweet, makes the tweet.

4. Be Visual
People scroll through the streams of information, and pictures will grab their attention – people like looking, so give them something to see! You’re telling stories so show the illustrations. Always consider how to communicate your message including an image as well as text. Good visual content will increase your reach through retweets, period.

 
 

How to Use Instagram for Business

Instagram is a great social site for sharing fun visuals with friends and family. But did you know that its Direct Messaging feature offers small business owners some compelling ways to connect with their followers through private messages, videos and photos? It’s flexibility lies in how it allows you to communicate with a select group of followers, a single customer or everyone, which means you can personalize your social marketing.

I’ve got 5 easy suggestions for using Instagram Direct Messaging that will enhance your business marketing efforts starting today:

Exclusive Deals – Offer sales and coupons to select followers to let them know how much you appreciate their business.

Sneak Peeks – Send out a “sneak peek” message about a new product or service you’ll be offering soon. Encourage your followers to share the excitement with their friends to build more buzz about your upcoming release.

Collect Data – Resolve customer service  concerns via direct messaging – this allows you to resolve issues immediately and in private.

Host a Contest – Host an exclusive contest by posting contest information and special instructions that only your followers can access.

Post Items for Sale – Send out photos of products with links on where to purchase them.  Having a sale? Mention it. Giving a special offer? Mention that. It’s a great way to get the word out to the people who are interested in that information.

Instagram’s Direct Messaging is a great way to share information about your business while letting you connect with your followers  in engaging, customer-focused ways. Get creative and have some fun with it. We’d love to hear what works best for your business.

I hope this series of how-to tips is useful to you – are you ready for the next video? Great! Let’s talk about LinkedIn!