Ah, Twitter! It’s one of the most wonderful communication and social networking tools available today. But, as many of us are finding out, Twitter offers more than just a great networking opportunity; it also makes a terrific marketing tool.
With just 140 characters worth of tweet, Twitter empowers online marketers, allowing them to promote and expand their business. However, just because a tweet is only 140 characters long, that doesn’t mean that it has to be mediocre or superficial.
It’s quite a challenge to make a pitch as short as 140 characters really hit its mark, especially in online marketing. So how do you make your tweets work?
What’s your main point?
Before sending out a tweet, think carefully about what message you want to put across to your audience. What is it you want to express? It’s the most crucial step toward composing a tweet that’s going to do the job for you.
When you tweet, don’t think in terms of what you want to say; instead, think about tweeting in terms of what your audience would like to know.
Whether your tweet is primarily humor, news, or marketing, it doesn’t matter, as long as you put some thought into proper targeting of your tweets.
Edit and then edit some more
Once you’ve determined your main point, write down several versions of your message. Write down as many as you can and then study them before choosing the one you think is the best.
The process shouldn’t stop there, however. You need to edit your tweets before publishing them; otherwise, you’ll risk sending out a message laden with errors in spelling and grammar. Thousands of tweets go out each hour — not just from celebrities and men or women on the street, but from corporate marketers, too — that include unfortunate slips of the typing fingers and brain.
As with other social media marketing activities, you must treat your tweets as if the life of your business depended on them. Go over the text and make sure every word is necessary. Do you really need that adjective? Will that adverb truly enhance your message? Does the phrase make sense? Is there any way to shorten it further?
Go over your tweets several more times to see if they read well and make sense. Remember, tweets are marketing messages. You don’t want to hit that publish button only to find yourself (figuratively) falling flat on your face in public.
Reserve some space for additional words
Make it easy for your friends to pass your tweets along and share to others by way of re-tweets. How you do this is by making sure to leave space for at least two or three more words when you compose your tweets — to accommodate the symbol “RT.” If you max out the entire 140 characters, you leave no way for your followers or friends to re-tweet your message.
Minimize the use of abbreviations
Not all people know the meaning of certain abbreviations. While the abbreviations YOLO and FTW may now be widely understood and accepted, not everyone surfing the Internet gets their meaning. Especially if your business has the potential to appeal to people in different parts of the country (think rural versus urban), or potential overseas customers, you want to avoid pop Web acronyms.
If you’re tweeting a business message, using abbreviations as though you were sending a text message makes your tweet sound unprofessional. So be sure to make your tweets shorter to accommodate words that truly matter to your marketing message.
Let your tweets represent you
By the same token, your tweets should represent you. That’s why you should ideally tweet with the same communication style you employ by other means. Without getting too informal, especially with abbreviations, try to adopt the distinctive, personal voice on Twitter that you use when you’re blogging or posting an update on Facebook.
Not only will your long-time followers recognize and appreciate that, but newbies who like your style will be more likely to follow your links to your main site and blog.
Conclusion
Tweeting can do a lot more than just let people know what you’re up to. Effective tweeting will allow you to achieve greater success in business.
To learn more about the various social media options available for your business, contact us today.
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About the author
I am a Content Writer, SEO and Social Media Marketing Specialist and a full-time coffee lover.
