10 Steps to Using Twitter for Lead Generation

Are your tweets getting the results you want? Find out how to use Twitter to target the people you want. Here are 10 steps to using Twitter for lead generation.

1. Develop A Plan for Twitter

In the words of Dwight D. Eisenhower “Plans are nothing; planning is everything.” This relates to how we should view our social media strategies. We must continue planning to keep up with changing social trends. Twitter is a social network that can generate waves of conversations about particular topics, events, and points of interest. To successfully execute your Twitter strategy, you must leverage momentum of conversations to target buyers on a frequent basis.

Key Insight: Your Twitter plan should include: (1) How you will attract followers; (2) What content you will share; and (3) How frequently you will tweet.

 


2. Build Your Twitter Profile

Your Twitter brand identity is one of the most important components of your strategy. Particularly, your profile picture along with your tweet is what buyers usually see when scrolling down their Twitter timeline. You must include a compelling profile picture and background image that represents your business.

Key Insight: When I first started using Twitter, I uploaded my brand logo as a profile picture. Shortly after, I switched it to my latest headshot and received a significant lift in follows, retweets, and favorites. I believe this is a testament to people liking to engage with other people more than brands.


3. Start Attracting Twitter Followers

There are three basic ways to attract followers on Twitter:

1. Follow people who may be interested in your product or service. These include influencers, thought leaders, and/or experts in your market. When you request to follow someone on Twitter, it is customary they follow back if they believe your tweets can bring value. So bring it!

2. Follow people you already know. Twitter gives you the ability to scan your email for friends already on the social network. Once friends are identified, the platform can automatically send a follow request on your behalf. Additionally, you can promote your Twitter account to existing customers and employees by including your Twitter handle on email signatures, company letterhead, and promotional materials.

3. Engage with people you think should follow you. Retweet and reply to the influencers and potential customers you wish to target. By proactively engaging with them, they’ll likely become followers.


4. Make Content the Foundation of Your Tweets

Tweets that have links see a higher level of retweets. Be sure to include high-quality content such as blog posts, whitepapers, webinars, etc. After you send a tweet, keep a close eye on the level of engagement so you understand what types of tweets work best.


5. Tweet Frequently

Twitter is a highly active social network where the lifespan of a tweet can range from seconds to minutes depending on your number of followers. Therefore, it is critical to tweet frequently so that your followers are more likely to see your tweets.


6. Participate in the Community

To leverage Twitter to generate leads, you must engage in the community. Using Twitter as a broadcast medium will not gain traction with your followers (in fact, you risk loosing them). Be sure to follow, retweet, favorite, and reply to members of this community.

Key Insight: Tweet less than 140 characters as it will give your following a chance to retweet and include a message with your original tweet.


7. Use Twitter Hashtags

A hashtag is a word or unspaced phrase prefixed with a number sign (#hashtag). Customers can use them to join the conversation about a certain brand, campaign or event. For example, when hosting a webinar, you should create a hashtag so attendees can have conversations with other participants. This will allow you to review the types of engagements that took place when searching that hashtag at a later date.

Key Insight: You can incorporate social media into traditional marketing campaigns by promoting hashtags in your messaging. By doing so, you can generate on-going conversation about your campaign or brand.


8. Consider a Tweetchat

Tweetchats are online text chats held on Twitter about a particular topic. To participate, users are required to use a hashtag when engaging.

Key Insight: Tweetchats provide opportunities to gain new customers and increase your social media visibility. Check out tweetchat.com for step-by-step instructions on how to execute a Tweetchat.


9. Promoted Accounts, Tweets, and Trends

Twitter currently offers three advertising products that allow you to target specific users based on keywords, interest and geography. If you are looking to rapidly enhance your Twitter presence these are great paid solutions:

1. Twitter Promoted Accounts. A Promoted Account is an ad that invites targeted Twitter users to follow your brand – attracting more of the right followers to your brand faster.
2. Twitter Promoted Tweets. Promoted Tweets are similar to organic Tweets. They can be retweeted, replied to and favorited. Promoted Tweets can include links to websites, hashtags and rich media.
3. Twitter Promoted Trends. Trends appear in a module on the left side of the homepage, and you can change locations to see what’s trending in different countries around the world.


10. Measure the performance of your page

There are a number of tools such as TweetReach and Topsy that you can use to track the performance of your social marketing efforts on Twitter. For promoted accounts and tweets, Twitter also offers a rich analytics tool.

How are you utilizing Twitter for your business? Any additional tactics/methods to add?

Written by
Juntae DeLane

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