Try this super useful research tool
I thought this week I would focus on Twitter - twitter doesn’t generally get much love but I hope to change your view!
Many people have a love/hate relationship with twitter - a little bit like marmite! I fall into the love category, possibly because it was the first social channel I really got to grips with.
Feel the fear and dive in!
I was initially fearful of it - how does it work? What do I write? What do all the hashtags mean? Well that was 10 year ago when hashtags were a “new” thing! My only regret is that my first twitter account I set up was for a business rather than for me so when I left, I had to start again from scratch - I wasn’t going to fall for that again!
The reason I love it so much is that you can discover no end through it and can do a bit of “business stalking” or “research” as it’s more diplomatically known!
So many businesses, individuals and organisations connect through it and you can follow the trail so simply - I can’t fathom why more business people don’t use it!
Don’t let the bad rap put you off!
Admittedly, twitter has received a bad rap, particularly with political manipulation, but if you use it for business purposes only you should avoid most of the “nonsense”. As long as you don’t say anything too inflammatory you’ll stay on safe ground. As my mum used to say “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all - and I think she’s right!
On a practical note, if you haven’t used twitter before, the first thing is not to be scared of it. Think of it as an extension of your networking activities and, as with all platforms, ensure your bio is complete and has a link to your website. If you don’t have a website, link it to your landing page or your LinkedIn profile. Remember, you only have 160 characters to play with, so send your audience to somewhere they can find out more about you.
Ideally you want to have more followers than accounts that you’re following and please don’t be tempted to “buy” followers - it won’t help you or your business.
Think of twitter like a running river, once your tweet is out, unless you’ve tagged others in it, it probably has an active lifespan of about 20 minutes …..so what’s the point in that I hear you say? There are so many business conversations happening on the platform, you really don’t want to be missing out. And because the river runs so fast, there’s no reason why you can’t use the same tweet several times over a few days or even weeks.
Find those journalists!
If you’re hoping to get your “news” noticed you should be aware that 24% of verified twitter accounts belong to journalists. Due to the fast-flowing nature of the platform, journalists find many of their stories here. And if a journalist is after evidence to support their story, they’ll often do a “callout” for contributions by using the hashtag #journorequest. So if you’re aiming to be a contributor, simply use the search bar to type in #journorequest and opt for “latest” rather than “top” and you’ll see requests for stories like yours. Should you see a relevant one, message the journalist back and be prepared to get a response to them super quickly as they’re usually on a very tight deadline. There’s unlikely to be a request relevant to your sector everyday, but a top tip is to make a diary note to carry out a search at least once a week to see if there’s an opportunity to get your story out there.
So when PRs tell you your latest story needs to be relevant, they are referring to how well it fits into the current news, so being timely and relevant is all important.
Discover your specific twitter hours!
One of my favourites for engaging on the platform is twitter hours - you can download a list of helpful ones here. This is where an organisation or local area supports a hashtag, so check out the list to see if there’s a relevant one for your business - it may be as simple as #MidlandsHour or #weddinghour. Typically this will run for an hour at the same time each week, so find your local or relevant one and get involved. If you choose a sector-specific one, you’re more likely to be mixing with complementary or competitive businesses, so that would be a good place to find collaborators or suppliers, whereas if you choose a location specific hour, you could find new customers.
Join the competition
There are now a few “competition hours” across twitter, one of my favourites being #SBS - Theo Paphitis’ Small Business Sunday hour….well it’s 2 ½ hours actually running from 5-7.30pm each week. His team puts out a tweet to say the hour is open and you need to reply to his tweet saying why you believe Theo should award your business. Sadly, this does mean that you can’t schedule a tweet, however, the engagement factor can be off the scale if you dedicate some time to it each week as all the responses are in the one thread. I believe they are also looking for interaction and showing how supportive you can be to Theo’s “community” and who knows, you may find a future client amongst the #SBS winners and you’ll be in good company! Theo’s team announces the 6 SBS winners each week on the Monday following at 8pm….and what a thread that is! Out-pouring of congratulation from not only those who took part on that sunday but all the past SBS winners, so it’s the perfect opportunity to grow your audience. You can wear your #SBSwinners badge with pride in your bio if you win so all future connections will know you have been awarded the accolade by Theo. There is then the opportunity to host an #SBSwinners hour and on a normal year, there is a big gathering of all the current year's winners, including an opportunity for a photo with Theo, but plans have yet to be decided for the 2020 winners.
Proud to win the #SBS title for a client
I was very proud to have won this accolade for a client of mine in the Spring and the excitement was off the scale. The twitter traffic over the following couple of weeks was amazing and you can harness that further by contributing to the conversations in these hours each week to grow your contact base.
But enough about twitter hours, let’s talk images. I recommend you use an image wherever you can - it’s often your eye-catching image that stops the scroll. You can use tweets without images, but you want every opportunity to be seen, s it makes sense to me to through everything at it 😊 The advantage of using images, if you’re posting natively on twitter, is that you can tag up to 10 accounts in your image, leaving your character limit intact for your text. The images also invite you to add ALT text, where you can write a description to enable your content to be consumed in an accessible way. It takes a little more time but it’s effective and you don’t want to miss out on a potential audience.
Inject some fun with emojis
Use emojis in both your posts and your bio, they can convey more in fewer characters and when space is at a premium, every little helps! They can also bring a bit of fun into the environment. I recently used a smiley face in a text to the bus-to-carpark service I used when I landed at the airport, thinking nothing of it. When I arrived at the carpark, I said “thank you for coming so quickly” he said “Aah, you sent me a text with an emoji and it brightened my day”! We often don’t realise how something so small can make a difference to another person, so spread a little love with some (nice) emojis!
Have you found what you’re looking for?
Let’s move onto hashtags - could this be where it all started? Unlike instagram where you can be prolific with hashtags, I would recommend no more than 3 in a tweet. But it’s not just about including them in your tweet, but using them to search who else is using the same ones and what they are saying.
It’s Autumn 2020 and we have just finished the 2 week Leicester Business Festival, which had the hashtag #LBF2020. If you search that hashtag, you’ll be able to see everyone who used it, that enables you to be able to react, comment and follow any of the businesses who took part and tweeted over that 2 week festival. Imagine being able to find out who was interested in a topic or service that you offer without having to pay for that data? You could look at a particular event that has some synergy with your business and see which other local businesses took part in that event and start interacting with them.
Once you’ve pinpointed the accounts you’re interested in, take a look at their bio and you’ll see the number of followers and the number of accounts they're following, which tells you a lot about them. Does their business fit into the category of “type of businesses to follow”? You can also use this type of research on your competitors and see who they’re attracting and why. This web of connections is endlessly fascinating and a great source of data. You just need to figure out how you can make this knowledge work for your business.
So we’ve covered hashtags for searching, the use of images, twitter hours and #journorequest. Have a go this week of implementing a couple of these tips and watch your engagement grow and if you’d like to add some tips of your own below in the comments, please do.
