Exotic Flowers in Boston uses its pinned tweet area to promote a cute YouTube video.
Facebook is a given for florists and Instagram, with its highly visual style, is a natural fit for the industry, but Twitter? That can be a harder social media platform to figure out for some small-business owners: Should you use it? How do you use it to generate sales and leads?
The answer to the first question is YES, writes John White, founder and CMO of Social Marketing Solutions, who recently offered tips at Inc.com to address the second question.
“If you use it right, Twitter can be a massive lead generation tool for your business,” he explains. “The problem is, many don’t take the time to learn how to use Twitter effectively. They open an account, put out some tweets, and then wonder why there aren’t thousands of people flooding to their account to follow them and buy their product or service.”
His tips on a more effective approach:
Follow Your Competitors’ Followers. Twitter can provide you with an enviable leads list: “Just go to each of your competitors’ Twitter pages and click on their followers,” White suggests. “While not every account that is following your competitors is doing business with them, they all have indicated an interest… begin to follow the accounts that look like they would be interested in your company.”
Pin a Compelling Offer. Pinned tweets are the first thing people see when they visit your profile, so use that space, and use it wisely. “To pin a tweet, create a tweet with your offer, call to action, and link,” White writes. “Then, once the tweet is live, click on the drop-down menu in the top right corner of the tweet and choose ‘pin to your profile page.’ Doing this will place the tweet at the top of your profile page, so it is the first tweet people see when visiting your page.”
No Love? No Sweat. “After following, give people 3-5 days to follow you back,” White suggests. “If they don’t follow back, either their account is not active, or they’re not interested in you. Either way, go ahead and unfollow the people that don’t follow you back. This will free up space in your network for you to be able to continue to follow your prospects on Twitter.”
