Effective Twitter marketing involves a couple of really straightforward concepts. You simply have to know what your objectives are, and which kinds of posts will meet them.

Today’s blog post is a brief excerpt I’ve adapted from, my ebook Tweeting For a Reason: How (and Why) to Use Twitter to Market Your Business available for Kindle, from Amazon stores worldwide (but you don’t need a Kindle to read it – find out how to read Kindle books on almost any device here).  If you think you’d enjoy the rest of the book, grab it here.

 

 

Disclosure: Links in this post (and anywhere on The Savvy Solopreneur) may be affiliate links. Find out what that means here.

Twitter, like most social media platforms, is being used, misused and abused in various different ways. If you’re not sure what to tweet just remember you really are tweeting for a reason, or a few different reasons. Know your objectives, and don’t post anything that doesn’t tie in with those objectives.

This doesn’t mean that if your objective is to sell more stuff you only post links to your sales pages. Twitter marketing doesn’t work like that. You’re going to have to be a bit subtle and a lot more creative. Keep your objectives in mind, but think hard about the tactics you need to use to reach them.

Let’s say you’ve written a book about keeping horses, or a series of books with a horsey theme, and your main objective is to sell a lot of copies. You could keep tweeting ‘buy my books about horses’, or you could tweet a lot of very interesting stuff about keeping horses, horsey news and events, pictures of beautiful horses, tack and equipment reviews, and inspiring quotes or stories with a horsey theme.

If you do the latter you’ll soon build up a following of people interested in horses, and when you do tweet about your book(s), you’re much more likely to make some sales.

Here are some things you definitely want to Tweet:

Links

People browse Twitter looking for links to interesting stuff. By all means post links to interesting articles and posts on your own site or blog, but post links to other people’s sites too. Curate articles that are interesting to your target market to grow your following.

Some people get on Twitter and just promote themselves. They don’t seem to want to ‘waste’ their Tweets talking about other people. This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the way Twitter works.

People follow accounts that share a lot of great information. Tweeting great stuff other people have created is actually like having someone else do the work for you. You’re seen as the source of the information even though you didn’t write or create it. People will follow you to have access to what you share. Twitter is often referred to as micro-blogging, but whereas people will only follow your blog if you create great blog posts, people will follow your Twitter stream even if all you do is share other people’s content.

Special offers

Now you’ve got everyone’s attention, and they see you as a source of quality information, share something that’s of benefit to your followers. A discount, special offer, free sample or contest/giveaway with a cool prize. This way you start to sell to your audience but they still feel like you’re giving them something, because you are.

Freebies

People on Twitter love freebies. Free reports, audios, ebooks and videos in your niche will attract attention. Obviously this is where your bigger marketing plan comes into play. Ideally your freebies should stand alone but still be incomplete, to encourage a sale if the customer likes the free offering. Good examples are the first ebook in a series, or a report or video tutorial that teaches you to reach a level of basic competency in a certain area (an area you offer further training in, obviously).

Your stuff, other people’s stuff

I’ve heard it suggested that for every self-promotional tweet you post you should post ten other tweets promoting other people. This will certainly stop you looking as though you are selfish, spammy or self-obsessed, and it may be a good guideline. But keep your objectives in mind. Don’t post random stuff from other people just to meet this ratio. EVERY tweet should be working for you.

When you post other people’s stuff, questions to consider are:

• Is this attracting my target market, to help build a relevant following?
• Will people retweet this, to get my name in front of new people and attract more followers?
• Does sharing this information make me look like I know a lot about my niche and share good information on it, which will make people pay more attention to me on Twitter?
• Is this tweet interesting and relevant enough that people will check out my profile and tweet stream, and maybe click through to my site/blog/sales page?

Remember you can look like you’re tweeting other people’s stuff, but still have a hidden benefit in there for yourself and your business.

Images

Images are becoming much more important on social media in general and on Twitter in particular. So it’s a great idea to post pictures as part of your overall Twitter marketing strategy. When you click on the ‘compose new tweet’ box on your profile page, you’ll see a camera icon. Click on that icon to upload a picture. You can post images from your blog or website, infographics or picture quotes. I get most of my images from Creative Market. Sign up for their newsletter for weekly freebies and regular discounts on image packages.

One affordable and very efficient way to get hold of new images every month is to subscribe to the monthly All Access Pass from White Label Perks. It includes 10 ready-to-share, social-media-friendly graphics every month, as well as pre-written social updates and content you can use for your blog and newsletter.

Need some straightforward, affordable Twitter marketing strategy tips? Tweeting For a Reason: How (and Why) to Use Twitter to Market Your Business is available from Amazon stores worldwide. Grab your copy now.

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