If you’re a brand looking to expand your reach on social media, Twitter is a natural platform for brands to add to their social repertoire — and for brands, this means harnessing the power of Twitter for business.
Twitter for business is the best choice for brands who want to advertise, use the Twitter Pixel to track website traffic, and ultimately harness more professional solutions than are used by typical Twitter users.
In this article, we discuss:
- How to use Twitter for Business,
- Why is Twitter Important for Business?,
- Tips for using Twitter for Business,
- How often to post to Twitter business accounts,
- How Dash Hudson supports your Twitter for Business strategy.
To get the most out of your Twitter for business strategy, there are a few tips to use to maximize your efforts.
How To Use Twitter for Business
Getting started with Twitter for business is fairly straightforward compared to some other accounts that require you to define your account as ‘personal’ or ‘business’. To create an account for your business:
Step 1: Set up Your account
- Select ‘Sign Up’ from the footer menu, then ‘Create Account’
- Choose a strong display name and account handle, and create a password.
Step 2: Optimize Your account
Once your account has been created, optimize your brand’s profile. Be sure to:
- Upload a profile picture, header, write bio and link your website and location (if applicable).
- Post a Tweet — it’s a good idea to create a plan of what you plan to tweet about, and pre-schedule some of these with a tool like Dash Hudson’s Scheduler.
- Once your account is created, you can opt to switch to a Professional account — however, your account must qualify. To qualify, you must not have a history of repeatedly violating Twitter’s User Agreement, a completed profile (with name, bio, and profile picture), your identity must be clear on your profile.
Step 3: Create a Twitter Ads Account
Creating a Twitter Ads account really sets your brand apart — this account type is also needed to run Promoted Ad campaigns. To set up a Twitter ads account:
- Go to ads.twitter.com and select which account you’d like to run ads from,
- Select your country, timezone, and which currency you’d like to be billed in — this is important, since it can’t be changed once it’s set.
Step 4: Twitter Shopping
If you’re a US-based brand looking to add social commerce to your Twitter strategy, brands can also opt to incorporate Twitter shopping into their account. In order to use Twitter shopping, brands must:
- Be based in the United States,
- Have a Professional account,
- Not be state-affiliated media,
- Not subject to US trade sanctions,
- Are 18 years or older,
- Meet standards pertaining to account and website requirements, merchant conduct, merchandise standards, technical requirements, quality standards,
- Must not operate in any prohibited merchandise categories.
Why Is Twitter Important for Businesses?
Twitter is important for business — users on Twitter have a ‘discovery mindset’, and are generally seeking out new things. Twitter opens opportunities to expand their reach with features like Twitter Communities, and ultimately, is a great opportunity to engage in conversations with your community while sharing entertaining content.
Twitter is also useful to increase sales and conversions — there are 41.5 million monetizable users on Twitter in the United States, and it’s the 6th most popular social media platform in the United States. And, according to Twitter themselves, 76% of polled Twitter users reported a conversation on the platform led them to make a purchase.
There are many other benefits for brands that know how to market on Twitter — free promotion, paid campaigns, the opportunity to experiment with different tones in a fairly low-stakes way, expand reach, and increase engagement by sparking conversations.
Tips for Using Twitter for Business
If you’re a brand on Twitter, there are a few steps you can take for your organic and paid content that will ultimately contribute to your success.
Here are some tips and steps to take for your business on Twitter:
Conduct Competitive Analysis
Although it’s important to stay true to your brand’s voice and identity, it’s important to know what your competitors are doing on social media. Competitive analysis lets you identify tactics that work well, identify competitive benchmarks, gaps in your own content, and even what users say about your competitors with social listening for Twitter. This is essential to gauge where your own brand falls among competitors and hone your Twitter strategy.
Keep Twitter’s Suggestions in Mind When Crafting Content
Twitter itself has some tips they recommend incorporating into your content to increase your engagement, and increase your chances of being recommended to others through the Twitter algorithm.
Twitter’s tips include:
- Keep your Tweets to the point,
- Write copy that has a clear call-to-action — Sign-up, Shop new arrivals, etc.
- Use 1-2 hashtags relevant to your brand, industry, or audience — if appropriate, capitalize the first letter of your hashtag to make Tweets more accessible and easy to read,
- Include relevant links whenever possible,
- Use visuals that are colorful, high-resolution, and ideally feature elements of your brand like a logo or color palette.
Tap Into Paid Content
Describe benefits of Quick Promote, Follower, and Reach campaigns. Discuss how Twitter recommends Quick Promote, Follower, and Reach as the best campaigns for new advertisers.
If you’re a brand on Twitter, be sure to make use of paid content to drive conversions and maximize reach. There are a few different types of paid promotions brands can use — these are:
- Quick Promote Campaigns: Rather than run a campaign, brands can choose to promote a single tweet without Twitter Ads campaign manager.
- Follower Campaigns: Best for brands focused on building their following, this promotes your account on users’ timeline to grow your audience.
- Reach Campaigns: Prioritizes showing your ad to the most amount of people possible within a set timeline.
Follow the Right Accounts
Twitter is a fast-paced platform for news — this makes it valuable for brands to collect information and news as well as their users, too. Twitter recommends brands follow their key customers (think brand ambassadors), stakeholders like suppliers, partners, and investors, brand partners, thought leaders, news outlets, and relevant lists and Twitter Communities. For example, Twitter lists exist for Skincare brands, Makeup brands, Hair care brands, and more — brands might choose to follow lists or Twitter Communities related to industry news or other relevant categories.
Monitor Data to Measure Success
You’ll only know how successful your efforts are on social media if you set goals, monitor your analytics, and measure how your efforts are impacting the data.
Twitter recommends specific measurements to determine success of different goals — these are:
- Growing online community: Follower growth count
- Build brand awareness: RT's, Quote tweets, likes, replies, and engagement — also monitor brand mentions and hashtags with social listening.
In addition to these, you could also monitor:
- Sales/conversion growth: Likes, clicks & website traffic
- Strategy-Related KPIs: Any other KPIs you’ve identified in your Twitter marketing strategy.
How Often to Post on Twitter for Business
Generally speaking, 9AM, 10AM to 12PM are peak posting times on Twitter. However, this won’t be the same for every brand — you might notice tweets shared during this time receive less engagement than tweets shared in the evening or late afternoon.
Use social media analytics to determine when your audience is most active, and share tweets during that time frame. You can also experiment with posting at different times, and referencing your data to determine which time slots received the most engagement, clicks, or whatever other metric you’re most focused on.
How Dash Hudson Supports Twitter for Business
Dash Hudson can take your Twitter strategy to new heights. Twitter Insights lets brands set goals and track their progress in one streamlined platform, so you can gauge your success at every step of your Twitter strategy. Enhanced reports let you know which tweets drive traffic to your site, drive conversions, and more.
Vision is there for your visual assets, using AI-powered insights that predict which content from your visual library will perform best on Twitter.
FAQs
Can I create a Twitter account for my business?
Yes, you can create a Twitter account for your business — brands should create a Twitter account using a phone number or email that’s easily accessible for everyone on the team that will need it (for example, it’s best to avoid using a personal cell phone number for sign-up). Once you’ve created an account, select a ‘Business’ account type. From there, to start running paid promotions, brands should set up a Twitter ads account and give access to their Twitter profile.
Does Twitter work for business?
Yes, Twitter works for business. While there’s no one-fits-all strategy for brands, cross-channel social media campaigns are more effective in terms of engagement than single-channel promotion, and Twitter is a natural platform for many businesses.
Twitter is a great way to increase reach, share website content, and reach your audience visually with images and text, and paid promotions. Twitter is also news-centric, making it a great place for brands to stay on top of industry trends, updates, and general buzz.
How is Twitter good for business?
Twitter is good for business as it allows you to reach your audience in a variety of ways. Brands can share images, video, text, and even integrate shopping to offer users a seamless shopping experience from platform to purchase.
