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The One Reason You Should be on Twitter Right Now

• Craig Wilson
• May 17, 2016

Twitter isn’t just a place to follow your favorite celebrities or tweet about how you finally tackled that load of laundry. Over the years Twitter has also become quite an effective marketing tool for your business. You can tweet about the activities of your business, promote special events and generally engage with your audience.

But, the number one reason to use Twitter is for a little something called networking.

You might be thinking what’s the point of networking on a website that requires a limited amount of characters per post. But you’re already using those limited characters to market your business to your audience. Why not also use them to network and show your business’s potential off to future clients or partners? Here are some ways you can do better networking on Twitter.

• Make your Twitter page stand out: When you’re networking in person, you want to make sure you and your business look the best and are properly represented. The same goes for networking on Twitter. Write a bio for your profile that accurately sums up who you are in a professional way. Make sure your picture is something professional as well, not a snapshot of you from the beach. A headshot would work best. Also, if you want to put up a background/header, don’t go overboard with colors or patterns. A nice, smooth, eye-catching color scheme for your profile will work. If your page looks great, people will want to network with you.

• Follow the right people: For a professional Twitter account, it’s best to not follow too many of your personal friends or family unless they also have their own professional Twitter account. Instead, follow people who are in the same niche/career field as you. Twitter has a great search function that allows your to search for businesses or people on Twitter you’re interested in networking with and follow them. Twitter also has a Who to Follow section on their website that recommends accounts to follow. Search hashtags of your niche, such as #contentmarketing and see what comes up.

• Be active: While you don’t have to be on Twitter 24/7, you should be active on it fairly regularly in order to get results. A business account should be prepared to post between 3-5 times daily.  Retweet posts from people you potentially want to network with or if you’re more outgoing, directly tweet them and say what you like about their post and you’d like to know more about their opinion. Post tweets of your own that will show the kinds of content you’re interested in and what your niche is. Be sure that those tweets also let your true self shine through.

Twitter has had a lot of bad press lately and may well have peaked as a social network, but it is still a very effective way for you to build an audience of people interested in what you might have to say and can be excellent for networking. But like all marketing, it requires persistence an dedication to get results.