A small business marketer often is the owner or founder of the business itself. They have limited time for marketing.
On the other hand, there are numerous social networks, all offering some way to market a business. And there are also huge differences between the networks.
Some are easy to start a new presence; some are rather complicated to find the path to marketing success. Some require paying for some ads and some only want a special kind of content like videos or images.
When we were marketing our startup exploreB2B we tried a lot of different marketing options. We even had a small advertising budget.
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But what really set us on the path to success was when Jonathan figured out how Twitter worked and how we could make it work for us.
When Twitter turned into our most important channel for traffic and leads, a lot of other bits of marketing also fell into place: Google started sending us traffic, our fan base on Facebook grew, and more traffic sources started to send website visitors.
You can do it, too!
For small businesses, social media marketing offers a huge opportunity to gain brand awareness and earn traffic, leads and new business. And the investment that is necessary can be kept really small in money if you are willing to invest some time – and understand how the networks function.
Between all the social networks Twitter has a special place for small business marketing and here are 8 reasons why you should consider Twitter for marketing, too:
1. You can find people from (almost) any niche on Twitter
Twitter is not limited to a couple of select niches or a certain age group. It is not limited to local or necessarily global. Twitter is a wide-spread social network. Even if people use other networks, too – businesses, entrepreneurs, bloggers, executives… they all are on Twitter. And you should be on Twitter too, for a chance to connect with them.
2. Twitter is great to share content in various formats
The decision for or against using some social networks for marketing and branding purposes often comes with the decision what kind of content format you want to use. If you want to use videos, Youtube is a good choice. If you have a ton of great photos and images, Instagram or Pinterest may be the place to be.
But there is one network where you can share all these formats: Twitter. And that makes Twitter a perfect social network for small businesses alongside any other social network you choose for a special content format.
3. Twitter’s feed is not based on an algorithm
In a way, Twitter is one of the most straight forward and honest networks: The feed simply shows all tweets that your followers share. While the endless stream of tweets may seem a little intimidating at first, for small businesses and entrepreneurs that are just starting out this is an advantage.
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While on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest, you have to figure out what factors influence how many of your followers even get to see what you post, on Twitter you share and your followers (that are on Twitter at this moment) see your tweet.
Especially for newbie social media marketers, this may well be easier to understand than the complicated formulas used by other networks that we do not even fully know about.
4. You can talk to and connect with people you have never met
Even though Twitter may seem like an unsorted jumble of statements and shared links, there is actually a ton of conversations going on. And you are free to join the conversations that are important to you and your business. Twitter conversations are not an exclusive club. It is easy to talk to total strangers – even influencers – on Twitter and build connections and relationships.
5. You can grow an audience without paying for ads
Starting out in social media can be hard and frustrating. The dream of seeing your content spread and your audience magically multiply may look far beyond reach when you have a Facebook fanpage with your mom and best friend as the only two fans and no budget to pay for ads.
On Twitter, on the other hand, there are simple processes that can help you grow an audience even if you are just starting out and have no money. And these processes are neither shady nor do they involve any illegal or spammy activities. In fact, most of the social media influencers have used these techniques and processes to grow their Twitter presence.
These processes are part of what we explain in the ebook „Growing Your Twitter Account Like A Pro“ that we release today.
6. You can be active on Twitter while you are busy working on something else
Many entrepreneurs and small businesses cannot afford to pay a full-time social media manager. Often this results in social media accounts being active for a couple of minutes at a time – either in the morning or late at night. In these few minutes, they send out a ton of tweets and then the account is silent for the remainder of the day.
That is not ideal. For Twitter, there are a ton of tools you can use, many of them offer a free version. These tools help you schedule updates, find content to share and monitor conversations related to a given keyword or hashtag.
Twitter is the social network where you can find a useful tool for almost any task. These tools allow you to keep your account active while you are busy working on your business.
7. You can use Twitter as a starting point to grow an audience in other networks
Even if you choose Twitter as a starting point, there is nothing that should keep you from being active in some other social networks. Twitter can help you grow the first followers or fans in these other social networks via co-promotion. You can mention your Facebook or Instagram account in a tweet once in a while. You can cross post from these other networks to your Twitter feed, to make your followers aware of your other social accounts.
There are various ways to help you grow fans and followers for other social accounts from Twitter.
8. Twitter is a great teacher
Social media has to be learned. A lot of success comes from trial and error. You need to test messages and content. Measure how your audience reacts to them. Adjust your activity according to results.
Twitter is a great social network to learn. You can tweet often, and you can tweet the same content again with a different headline or image and see if it responds better with your audience.
Twitter is a fast-living network. Mistakes can be forgiven and forgotten quickly. Simply regroup, try something new and measure the success.
I have talked to business angels who said, an entrepreneur who is not on Twitter does not exist. While this seems a harsh statement, there is definitely truth to it.
Twitter may in the long run not be the social network that drives the most traffic or sales for you – but starting out, Twitter offers huge opportunities to every entrepreneur and small business marketer no matter how big the budget or how famous the brand.
If you are just starting out: Head over to Twitter, it is a great starting point to grow a social audience and learn marketing.
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