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A while ago we went to a startup event where a person representing an accelerator said: „every entrepreneur needs to be on Twitter.“ And he is dead right. He continued by saying that he would not get why so many founders, especially in Germany, are still not on Twitter.

That is something that is not only true for entrepreneurs. And it is something I also observed here in Germany. Many people active in Social Media – even people claiming to be Social Media Manager do not understand Twitter. They say they do not get anything out of Twitter, and that is why they are not active there.

And I think they are totally wrong and missing out. Twitter has been our most valuable source of traffic (not only for this blog but also for other projects we worked on in the past). There is a reason most Social Media influencers are huge on Twitter. And some of them openly admit that Twitter is by far driving more traffic than any other social network (see for example Jeff Bullas’ recent post on 5 Top Tips For Driving a Ton of Free Traffic with Twitter).

Here are my reasons, why every entrepreneur should be active on Twitter.

1. You can reach any target audience on Twitter

There is almost no group of people, which you cannot find on Twitter. And all of them are accessible to you ready for you to connect and join in conversations. If someone tries to bail out of using Twitter by claiming his business area would not be on Twitter: That is bull. With a little research and using your brain, you will be able to find a ton of like-minded people or a potential target audience.

2. You do not need to know people on Twitter to connect

While in many social networks like Facebook people expect to have some relationship to you before they accept a connection, on Twitter, it is entirely legitimate to connect to people you never met or talked to before.

Since Twitter was never intended as a two-sided relationship network but was based on following instead of befriending, you can follow anyone you want to follow and some of these people you follow are likely to follow you back.

Yes, Facebook has a follow function, too. But still, the most common way to connect on Facebook is to become friends.

3. You can freely join conversations without intruding

Twitter is one of the best places to get into a conversation with complete strangers. You can find conversations about interesting topics via a simple keyword search. Or you can watch you own feed and answer the most interesting tweets. Usually, people are happy to talk to you – even if the answer might take some time. Even if you do not get an answer, what will almost never happen is being attacked for giving a thoughtful reply (yes, it happens, but rarely and you can easily ignore it).

4. You can build an audience without paying for it

Many people starting out with Social Media face the problem of not having an audience (yet). For many the way out seems to be to pay for ads on Facebook to build a fanbase. Let me tell you a secret: On Twitter, you can build an audience without paying for it. Simply follow some people you would like to connect to and a certain percentage of these people will happily do exactly that: Follow you back.

5. Twitter is the perfect place to spread content

Many entrepreneurs are trying to build a brand recognition. They do not have large funds but often they have a lot of market expertise. Perfect preconditions for content marketing. And Twitter and content are a perfect match. Twitter is hungry for valuable content and content is desperately in need of an audience. You can easily use your great content to build and audience on Twitter. And your Twitter audience can pay you back multifold in traffic, signups or even sales in the long run.

6. Twitter can be the starting point for growing a social audience in about any network

Once you found your way around Twitter, you can start cross-promoting other networks. Twitter is the one network that tolerates much in the direction of promoting if you keep up posting great and valuable content. On Twitter, you can post often. Thus, a tweet about your Facebook page or Pinterest account – or even a cross-posted update shared from Facebook to Twitter is tolerated and can give help you to transfer some of your followers to other networks. – Always assumed, that what you do on Twitter is really informative and helpful.

7. Twitter tolerates mistakes

A tweet is short lived, and you can tweet something else a short time later. If no-one clicks on the link you tweeted? Don’t worry, simply tweet it again with another text. This way you can learn a lot about headlines and what people like to click. Just monitor what happens, try different things and stick with what works best. Twitter is an excellent way to learn marketing because it is forgiving.

8. You can leverage influencers’ audiences

Many entrepreneurs are looking for someone who already has a social audience to help them spread the word. With the right content and the right approach, you can utilize the social audience of already influential people on Twitter. While it might be a little hard to get influencers to share your content on Facebook, most influencers and marketers are always looking for great content to share on Twitter. And this makes most of them fairly open to give you a tweet or retweet and share your content with their audience.

9. You can reach influencers without getting on their nerves

On Twitter it is totally legitimate to talk to people – if they do not want to talk to you, they will simply ignore you. As long as you do not overdo it, people will tolerate (and hopefully even like) your efforts to get in touch – and with the right message at the right time, even influencers will willingly respond.

10. You can test your messages and wordings

Since you are not only allowed to tweet often but also need to tweet often, Twitter is the perfect place to test your wording and messages with your social audience. Simply tweet different messages on the same subject or the same piece of content with various texts, monitor the results and learn from them. In no other network, you can as easily try out messaging as easily and get an almost instant answer on what works best. This is your chance to learn from your audience.

11. You can post more often

I already mentioned this one in some of the other points. But it deserves another mention. This is also one
of the biggest mistakes people new on Twitter make: They post too seldom. You need to be very active and share heaps of great content to be successful on Twitter. The average tweet is short-lived and will only reach a fraction of your followers. But that also gives you the great opportunity to share a lot. And while you share a lot of great content you can easily mix that content up with a handful of tweets about yourself, your product and whatever else you want to get out to your audience.

We already shared some advice on how to build a social audience on Twitter, here are two of the articles explaining some of the processes you need to gather followers: Still Missing Out?! The Simple Twitter Growth Approach All Influencers Use, Twitter and Content for Reliable Social Media Traffic

Join our free Email Course to learn how to grow an audience and traffic from Twitter:

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