Today your consumers are the most detrimental members of your marketing department. They don't spend hours analyzing and constructing best practices, they simply share and publish their raw emotion and opinion of your product to billions of people. If you are utilizing Facebook to join the conversation, you are among the 70 percent of small business owners.
Currently, only 40 percent of businesses are utilizing Twitter- but this social media platform's popularity is only predicted to increase. In fact, Twitter has been deemed the conversational search engine of our time. Shouldn't you be the most interesting person in a conversation that consumers are already having about you? Here are four easy steps to optimize your Twitter profile for your most influential presence.
1. Consistent, Smart Twitter Handle and Account Name
Your Twitter handle, or a more familiar term, your username, is your "hello my name is" tag for followers to engage with your brand. It is attached to all of your tweets, and should reflect your business's website and all other social media platforms you have (Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.).
For our client, AQUIESSE, we maintain consistency by using their business title, AQUIESSE, for both their username, as well as their account name. This not only secures validity and clarity for followers, but now reflects their vanity URL, www.twitter.com/AQUIESSE for proper search engine optimization.
Tip: To see if your desired name is available across all social media platforms, check out the social media tool, NameChk. The tool will search 159 social media networks to see where your name has been used or not. If you discover your company trademark name is being used, simply contact Twitter about their Trademark Policy Violation to learn more about the action you can take.
2. Interesting, Engaging Bio
To optimize your bio, you need to include relevant, mission-statement type sentences.
Your bio, is the perfect 160 character summary of your mission as a company. This is where you tell people who you are and why they should follow you at all. You get 20 additional characters to fully optimize this critical aspect of your presence on Twitter, so use the space wisely.
For our company bio, we clearly state the benefit of following us, while utilizing keywords like, "social media presence" for people who may be searching for social media best practices. Additionally, we include our website URL for followers to seek further information
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3. Creative, Consistent Profile Picture and Background
Your profile picture is the icon attached to all tweets. Keep your icon consistent with your business logo, a recognizable product, or face of your brand.
The same is true for your background. For our client, Jes MaHarry Jewelry, we use her company logo as the profile picture, and create a visual portrayal of her company mission utilizing 3 strategic aspects of her brand: a photo of her, her well-known, nature-inspired sketches and of course, a few of her signature pieces. By doing this, consumers are not solely being fed a cold, hard, faceless product- they are getting to experience and feel what the company is all about.
How-to: Customize your Twitter background, by clicking on your settings, then the "design" tab and hit "change background image" and upload the image of your choice. Jes MaHarry's customized background was designed by the excela creative team.
4. Use Engaging, Search-Engine Friendly Keywords
Nobody enjoys speaking to someone who only talks about themselves- the same goes for your followers. The quickest way to get unfollowed or ignored is to hash out one-liners about your business.
People don't like to be sold, but they do enjoy feeling exclusive, heard and appreciated. You must be relevant and relatable to your consumers- so engage your followers by speaking their language. Use tools like Google Insights to learn how people are searching and talking about your products.
Twitter conversations are short, sweet, and if done strategically, to the point. But with 200 million tweets going out every single day, our goal is to get you heard by the right audience, at the right time, and with the right information.
What will be the first change you make to your Twitter page? Visit /excelamktg for further customized Twitter ideas, designs and insider tips for optimizing your Social Media.
Be sure to check out more of our Social Media on a Budget video series where our panel of experts will take a closer look into the social media hot topic of the week.