Attracting Customers With Twitter, Part 1

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HubSpot has released another great e-book about social media marketing.  In “Learn How to Attract Customers with Twitter,” HubSpot describes how to optimize your Twitter presence to generate leads and sales.  

As we stated in our previous post about social media sites, in September 2011, Twitter received 144 million unique visitors.  All reports point to that number growing even larger each month in the last year.  Twitter looks like a good place to market your business. 

Optimize The Branding Of Your Twitter Profile

In 2011, Twitter announced they would offer official brand pages.  Larger companies like American Express, Coca-Cola and Chevrolet were launch partners and the first to test out the pages.  They allow “Call-To-Action” banners, which enables a business to add a header underneath it’s bio.  They also allow featured tweets so that you can highlight an important message at the top of your feed, and a custom background (which you would most likely create using your company logo).  

Six Steps To Optimize Twitter For Search

HubSpot included six tips for helping to raise your SEO. 

  1. Make Twitter Handles Spam-Free.  Many spammers use names like @Name546789.  Google’s algorithm often disregards such user names.  Your company name is obviously your best choice.
  2. Include Keywords in Bio.  While you don’t want to fill the entire 160 characters allowed in your bio with hashtags and industry keywords, you will want to include enough information to accurately reflect your business and help you improve search visibility.  
  3. Build Your Reach.  You will want to build a high-quality following.  Google and Bing said their algorithms check the “author quality” of every user tweeting content.  Therefore, #TeamFollowBack may not be your best plan of action for gaining followers. 
  4. Create a Special Subset of Keywords.  Using specialized keywords and phrases in your tweets can help raise your SEO. 
  5. Keep Tweet Length in RT Safe Zone.  You are allowed to tweet 160 characters.  However, if you want any re-tweets to have room for your company name to remain in them, you should try to plan your tweets to be somewhere in the 120-130 character range.  Data shows that posts that length have the highest clickthrough rates.  
  6. Create Your Own Inbound Links.  In our last post, we described how to create inbound links.  Re-tweeting is the Twitter equivalent of an inbound link.  Post content that causes influencers to re-tweet and share your message.

Next week, we will continue our adventures in Twitter-land by discussing etiquette for businesses.  Until then, tell us how you have used the tips above to improve your visibility on Twitter. 

alison

Alison has worked with clients of all sizes, from sole proprietors to television networks and financial institutions, including HBO, CBS, Showtime, Charles Schwab, and The Body Shop. In her career at DoubleClick, Google, and Infogroup, she learned social media, email marketing, SEO, and web design from the people inventing the standards. She makes a mean flourless chocolate cake.