Social Media Marketing Tips: Twitter

How to market with Twitter

Twitter is a valuable and powerful tool for growing your business and brand, but it can require a delicate touch to get the most out of this fast-paced social platform. Here you will learn how best to utilise your 140 characters to ensure that you attract as many new customers as possible while also keeping engaged with your existing base.

What is Twitter?

Twitter is a social media platform which allows you to broadcast messages (tweets) of up to 140 characters to other Twitter users who have chosen to follow you. Likewise, your own feed consists of messages which those people whom you follow have sent out. Beyond this you can also send direct messages (DMs) to individual users which will not be displayed to anyone but the recipient.
Twitter has 255 million active monthly users, and the company itself is valued at around £11 billion with 3000 employees – it itself is a major player not only in the world of social technology but in the broader spectrum of international business. Learning how to profitably engage with it is vital for any company with serious aspirations.

How To Use It

The defining characteristic of Twitter is its pace. Tweets run through your feed in real time, and can often be gone as soon as they are read. Engaging with Twitter thus requires constant attention and a recognition of the fact that this is not a space for slow and deliberate conversation – although it can be a launching pad for more direct communication, either B2C or B2B. Twitter is an ocean, and you must learn how to sail.

Getting Started

The first step is to create a profile. This involves choosing a name, or handle. The best option is your own name or company name; if this is already taken, choose something close to it that customers can recognise and associate with your brand.

Fill your profile with as much content as possible without making it appear overstuffed: choose a profile picture (either a headshot or your company logo – avoid making it too detailed or fussy as it will appear as a small image on your followers’ screens); provide contact information such as email, telephone number, and address; write a short bio to let visitors to your page know what you’re all about.

Once you’ve built a profile, you’re going to want to follow some people. Choose those related to your business, including rivals and peers, so that you can be a part of conversation about your industry. The more people you follow the more followers you will attract in return, and combined with an attentive and well-managed tweeting strategy this will snowball into wider engagement with your brand.

Pleased To Tweet You

Two vital parts of Twitter are retweets (RTs) and hashtags. Understanding and utilising these tools will ensure that you and your company get the most out of what Twitter has to offer. If you’re still on board with the sailing analogy, these are the sails which will help you best catch the wind of branding opportunity.

RTs involve resending another account’s tweet from your own account. Not only is it a simple way of agreeing with someone’s point or helping to spread quality content, it also builds good relations. Retweeting others’ tweets will make them more likely to retweet yours in return, helping to spread your message and brand to a wider audience. Don’t overdo it, though – no one likes someone who bloats their feed with unnecessary retweets. Be judicious, be selective.

Hashtags are words or short phrases preceded by a #, which are searchable across the whole of Twitter. Engaging with popular hashtags allows you to take part in discussions outside of your immediate circle of Twitter acquaintances, and careful application of trending hashtags to your own posts can help bring you exposure from a wider audience. As with RTs, however, don’t overdo it. A #sentence filled with #unnecessary #hashtags can #annoy your #audience.


The most important advice for Twitter is to have fun. Twitter is a platform which thrives on light-hearted and good-humoured exchanges, and large companies like Old Spice or Taco Bell who manage to walk the fine line between playful interactions with other users while keeping their message on-brand do reap the rewards.

Douglas Clarke-Williams

Douglas is an English Literature graduate who has written about everything from music to food to theatre, now a content creator for Social Media Frontiers. No topic too large or too small. Follow him @DouglasAtSMF.

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