Sales and Marketing - Jen Jordan

How to Decide if Twitter is Right for Your Small Business

Twitter is the sixth most popular social platform. Due to its rapidly changing landscape, Twitter for small businesses can look different from week to week. Should your small business still use Twitter? The most honest answer is it depends. Let’s look at some aspects of Twitter and consider whether it’s a good match for your small business and your customers.

Your Customer Base and Twitter

To determine if Twitter will bring a return on your investment (ROI), evaluate your customer demographic. The age, gender, and location of your customers, along with the resources you have to devote, will all play a part in the right decision.

Knowing your ideal customer is the foundation for deciding if your business will benefit from Twitter. Twitter has the largest gender gap of any social platform, with males making up 62% of its users and ads reaching three times more men than women. Understanding the platform’s demographic can help you decide if or how to use your marketing dollars on Twitter ads.

Twitter is growing 30% faster than Instagram among Gen Z (ages 8 to 23), and 42% of people between the ages of 12 - 34 use the platform. If your small business wants to reach a younger audience, Twitter can help you accomplish this goal.

Communication on Twitter

Twitter is not an app you can "set and forget" if you want results. You might find that this platform needs a bit more attention than other social media platforms.

89% of people use Twitter to find new products and 52% of them are more likely to be the first to buy something new. This offers an opportunity for product awareness and brand recognition.

Twitter for small businesses also offers real-time communication. With the ability to send 2,400 tweets a day, the opportunity for customer engagement is undeniable. Your small business can respond to comments, questions, and complaints before they have a chance to become distractors. Twitter also offers the chance to build relationships, share updates, and get a view of your competitor’s interactions.

Most small businesses step into social media to help build brand recognition. With the ability to show your organization’s personality in tweets that are now up to 4,000 characters long, aspirations for visibility might also benefit from creating a damage control plan.

Real-time communication and brand building can also come with mistakes, typos, trolls, bots, and other social media pitfalls. If miscommunication or negative publicity occurs, it can escalate quickly on Twitter. A quick plan for handling these situations can protect your brand’s reputation.

Because Twitter can take some monitoring, engagement, and repetitive activity throughout the day, consider having a dedicated social media manager. If that isn’t in your budget, be realistic in evaluating how much time, content, and energy you will need to dedicate to building customer relationships on Twitter.

Twitter Best Practices

There are some key best practices to keep in mind if you use Twitter. Obviously, some things go without saying, such as earning followers over buying them.

Some key action steps to help use Twitter successfully are:

• Identify your target audience/customer persona. How can Twitter help you reach them?
• Watch and learn from competitors. What are they doing that works, and what could you do differently?
• Set clear, SMART goals for your social media. What specific goals do have in return for using the app?
• Establish your brand voice, a plan to gain brand awareness, and a plan to protect it.
• Collect graphics and content for Twitter-specific use. Don’t be afraid to use content multiple times, so it reaches a larger audience.
• Network with other influencers, brands, and organizations that might benefit your small business.
• Engage, engage, engage. Be sure to establish and maintain interaction and a rapport with your audience as you build relationships.
• Monitor your site and analyze your metrics. This information will guide you on how to use Twitter for your small business marketing.

Deciding if your small business could benefit from using Twitter comes down to knowing your customer demographics, establishing SMART goals, having a plan in place, and ensuring you have the bandwidth to engage your audience.