3 More Twitter Tactics

As I promised in my post about a month ago, here are more three more tips for using Twitter to help your small business.


1. Use Pictures

When people are scrolling through their twitter feed, pictures can help catch the attention of your users.  You want to make sure that the picture that you share is attractive and something pleasing to the eye.  Avoid sharing pictures with a lot of text or screenshots of your ads.  In this post, Lowe's does a nice job of grabbing your attention with a beautiful kitchen that makes you think about getting ready for Thanksgiving, when you'll probably have family over in your kitchen.













2. Reply Quickly

Often times, your customers will want to go onto social media platforms and talk about their experiences at your store.  You can use your Twitter account to interact with your customers.  If you reply to their tweet, most of the time the user will be excited that you engaged with them.  For some people, a retweet or a reply can make that user's day.  Although many customers talk about their good experiences, many also talk about their bad experiences.  Either way, make sure you reply quickly to their tweet and never tell your users that they are wrong.  A business account on Twitter should never argue back and forth with a user, no matter how absurd they are.  In this example, Publix does an excellent job engaging with this customer who found an apple at the store that is apparently a big deal to her.











3. Use Humor

The goal of social media is to have meaningful interactions with your customers.  Although your goal
should never be to get a gazillion followers or a ton of re-tweets, you definitely shouldn't toss those statistics to the side.  A re-tweeted branded message is more meaningful and accomplishes a goal of brand awareness, while "re-tweet this if you think cats are better than dogs" is not absolutely worthless.  When you want to drive meaningful retweets, you need to think like an average user.  Most people will re-tweet topics that include stats that prove that I'm right and you're wrong, news, and humor.  For us, humor is the best route to get your name out there.  When using humor, make sure that it isn't offensive!  The best trick for this that I would use is to think of the most sensitive person you know, and if you picture yourself having to explain why the joke is funny and not offensive, then you shouldn't post it.  Yes, your joke is probably hilarious and I would laugh at it, but the easily offended people on Twitter will attack you for making the joke.
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In this example, Dos Equis plays off of their "Most Interesting Man in the World" commercials and makes another joke that received a lot of re-tweets.  These re-tweets are valuable because it helps build brand awareness.