STEP BY STEP GUIDE TO
FOR LOCAL BUSINESS
STEP BY STEP GUIDE TO TWITTER FOR LOCAL BUSINESS
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And while the “big” brands have plenty of time, people,
and resources to have a dedicated social media team,
the situation isn’t quite the same for most small and local businesses.
Which is exactly the reason why so many small and local businesses have
struggled to get going with Twitter.
Until now, of course.
That’s the purpose of this guide. We want to show you step by step how
you can get your Twitter account up and running.
This is a lot more than just “sign up and tweet” instead, you’ll learn how to
optimize your profile, how to find the right people to connect with, and
how to grow your account in as little as 15 minutes a day.
Are you ready to get started?
We all know just how important being
on social media is today. It’s where
you can find potential customers, promote your brand, and build authority online.
STEP BY STEP GUIDE TO TWITTER FOR LOCAL BUSINESS
Table of ContentsSTEP 1 Create Your Twitter Account
STEP 2 Fill Out Your Profile Details
STEP 3 Set Your Twitter Objectives
STEP 4 Create a Social Media Policy
STEP 5 Assign Tweeting Roles
STEP 6 Find Content to Share
STEP 7 Set a Schedule
STEP 8 Follow The Right People
STEP 9 Start Tweeting
STEP 10 Engage Your Followers
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STEP BY STEP GUIDE TO TWITTER FOR LOCAL BUSINESS
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Create Your Twitter AccountFirst things first, go to Twitter.com to get started.
It won’t be long before you have to make your first major
decision: what your user name is going to be. You want to pick
a name that is clearly identifiable as you or your brand. This
could be the name of your business, or your own name, if that is
easily recognized as the name of your brand.
STEP 1
For Example,
If you run Chestnut Book Shop, a great choice is going to be @chestnutbooks.
That way, your customers will know right away this handle belongs to your
brand. Keep in mind your handle is going to be limited to 15 characters.
Twitter will help you out there,
they let you know if your preferred
username is taken, they will also
give you a few helpful suggestions
as well.
If you want to save a bit of time,
use a tool like Namecheckr to
easily see if your chosen username
is available.
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STEP BY STEP GUIDE TO TWITTER FOR LOCAL BUSINESS
Here’s an example for Chestnut Book Shop:
Once you’ve chosen your username, follow along with the prompts.
Voila, you’ve got your account up and running! But, you’re not quite
done yet. You want to everything you can to optimize your account to
ensure your customers can easily find you online.
Fill Out Your Profile DetailsThere are a number of things you want to pay
attention to when setting up your profile. We’ll
cover the parts that you really want to pay
attention to.
STEP 2
ABC Shop
STEP BY STEP GUIDE TO TWITTER FOR LOCAL BUSINESS
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Header Photo
You can use your own creativity and a tools like Canva or PicMonkey to
create your own header photos that include things like an image of your
shop, or an image of some of your work, and your business name and
details. Include your website URL and phone number, for instance.
If you don’t have the time or the know how to create your own header, use
99 Designs or even Fiverr to hire someone who can create a header for
you. Be sure to give instructions as to what you’d like listed in the photo.
This post from HubSpot has a number of great examples of headers you
can use for inspiration.
Profile Photo
For your profile photo don’t make it too detailed, this photo should be clear
and quite easy to see. Your best bet is to use your brand’s logo, since you
want to be as consistent as possible across brands.
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Set Your Twitter ObjectivesBefore you get too deep into Twitter, take a minute and think about your
Twitter objectives. Social media should be an important part of your
overall content marketing plan, so you want to have a solid strategy for
how you are going to use Twitter to promote and distribute your content,
as well as drive traffic to your business, increase engagement, and build up
your authority.
STEP 3
Bio
This is the other place where you want to pay the most attention in your
profile. People will be able to search for your brand using the information
you post here. Your bio will also show up in search engine results for your
brand or username, so it’s key to think about this in terms of SEO (search
engine optimization) as well.
So include things that are going to attract and interest potential customers
in 160 characters. Don’t forget to include a call to action also (i.e. “visit our
website). Sprout Social has a post that highlights four keys to a great bio:
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i Be informative
Be personable
Be strategic
Be action oriented
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You want to ensure that you’re setting the stage to see a nice return on
investment when it comes to the time you put into Twitter.
Now, one thing to keep in mind is that your objectives are going to be
different based on the type of business you have and the types of
customers you serve. We’ll look at each.
Business to Business
For a business to business (B2B) brand, customers are going to be other
brands. So some key objectives are going to center around things like
growing authority in a particular niche or industry as well as driving traffic
to your site.
HERE ARE A FEW EXAMPLES OF COMMON OBJECTIVES
FOR A B2B BRAND:
Sharing industry thought
leadership
Becoming an industry influencer
Providing customer service
Improving your brand’s reputation
Establishing brand leadership
Recruiting potential employees
Establishing relationships with
industry news media
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Business to Consumer
While it’s certainly true that a B2B and B2C brand can share certain
objectives when it comes to setting up their Twitter strategy, there are
some important distinctions. Here, a B2C brand should really be focused
on interaction and engagement with their potential customers.
AS SUCH, HERE ARE A FEW COMMON OBJECTIVES FOR A B2C BRAND:
Once you have a handful of objectives set for your brand, it makes it much
easier to know exactly who you want to follow on Twitter and interact
with, as well as what type of content you want to share as well. So, don’t
skip out on this part.
Promoting special offers, sales, or coupons
Customer service
Establishing relationships with product influencers
Rewarding customers with loyalty
Creating an active community of customer
STEP BY STEP GUIDE TO TWITTER FOR LOCAL BUSINESS
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Create a Social Media PolicyIt’s always a good idea to have a solid social media
policy in place before you get started. Keep in mind
this can always be tweaked and improved upon
later as you (or your team) get more comfortable with social media.
The policy by no means has to be in depth, but you want to have a few
guidelines set in place to cover general rules.
Smart things to include would be any topics that should be avoided, these
would include anything that might be a controversial subject like politics
or religion. How to respond to negative interactions or comments, and
even the type of tone to take in tweets.
It might seem like something unnecessary, but many brands have been
sunk by bad PR after having an errant tweet go out.
While many such infractions can
be minor, the last thing you need
to worry about is a very angry
customer base, or even a lawsuit
from a mistaken tweet.
STEP 4
STEP BY STEP GUIDE TO TWITTER FOR LOCAL BUSINESS
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Assign Tweeting Roles
STEP 5
This really goes hand in hand with the above step.
Because just as it’s very important to have a Twitter
policy, you also want to be sure to know who is
responsible for the social media duties for your brand.
There are a couple of important reasons for this. Most importantly, you
want to maintain a consistent voice across your social media platforms. If a
number of different people have access to the Twitter account and all
approach tweeting a different way, with different styles and tones, then
that can actually end up confusing the customer.
Avoid that by assigning the role to a specific person.
If you run your business on your own,
Then this is pretty easy, you will be the designated “tweeter” for your brand.
If you have a larger brand that has a few people with access to Twitter,
Then be sure to highlight your social media policy amongst all of them. Here,
you can also assign specific roles within Twitter. For example, one person
could only tweet out with respect to interacting with customers for specific
customer service needs.
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Find Content to Share
STEP 6
There are two main types of content you want to
gather. First, your own content, and also high
quality educational, entertaining, and relevant
content from other sites and brands that your
target customer will really respond to.
TO FIND CONTENT FROM OTHER SITES TO SHARE,
USE A COUPLE OF THESE TOOLS:
Feedly
Allows you to compile feeds from a variety of online sources that you can
easily then load into your Twitter sharing tools.
BuzzSumo
Use this tool to find the most shared content by keyword, website, or
influencer, you can also use it for your own content creation ideas.
AllTop
Visit AllTop to find the most popular stories both online and within a
category that you can share.
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The first place you want to start is with your brand’s blog. If you don’t have
a blog, now is a very good time to start. There are three huge benefits to
having a business blog, as noted in this post:
To drive traffic to your website
To convert that traffic into leads
To build authority
A blog should be a huge component of your overall content marketing
strategy. If you do have one, then this is where you are going to be pulling
from quite a bit to share on your Twitter account.
Here again, we can break this down by B2C brands vs. B2B brands when it
comes to the types of content to share.
Business to Business
When it comes to creating blog posts, you can never go wrong with
anything that is going to help your ideal customer and build your own
authority within your industry.
FEATURE POSTS LIKE:
Slide decks
Infographics
Videos of speeches
Audio of interviews
Buyers guides
Comparison guides
White papers
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Remember to look at other content you can share from what you’ve
already got on your website or your inbox, it doesn’t just have to be about
blog posts.
Business to Customer
There are no shortage of available topics or content for a B2C business
blog. Here is where you want to educate your customers and help them
fall in love with your brand.
If you’re struggling for topics, use crowdsourced content around your
industry that ties back to your product or service.
FEATURE POSTS LIKE:
How to posts (especially how to
use your product/service)
Customer testimonials
Customer case studies
Unboxings
Guest posts written for
complementary brands
Buyers guides
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Set a Schedule
STEP 7
Growing a social media channel seems daunting to
many, but even more so to small business owners
who are typically quite busy and wear a number of
hats within the organization.
The good news?
There are tools that can help. Using these tools can help you share both
your own content (new and old) as well as other content that will engage
and interest your core audience consistently.
Buffer
Allows you to easily share content across a number of social media
channels at set times, also has a very useful Chrome extension to easily add
curated content.
Edgar
Lets you share content across a number of social media channels and has a
library system for you to consistently share evergreen content at set times.
TweetDeck
TweetDeck is a Twitter specific tool that allows you to easily set and
schedule tweets, monitor lists, reply to followers, and retweet others.
HERE ARE A FEW GREAT TOOLS TO HELP WITH YOUR SOCIAL
MEDIA AUTOMATION PROCESS:
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Using these tools are going to help you take care of one part of the
equation, getting your tweets out there. Next, you want to be sure you’re
scheduling your tweets at the best
possible times for the most
engagement and views.
Keep in mind, as you tweet more, the
best times to tweet are likely to
change, so re-check your schedule on
a quarterly basis to make sure it’s up
to date.
THERE ARE A COUPLE OF TOOLS THAT CAN
HELP YOU WITH THAT AS WELL:
Buffer Optimal Scheduling
Lets you know the optimal times to post for accounts linked to your Buffer
account.
Tweriod
Allows you to see when the best time to tweet is for your brand, based on
both your tweets and the tweets of your followers.
For even more Twitter tools, check out this list.
Once you’ve got your content scheduled, you can focus your time on
Twitter to interacting and engaging with followers and customers and
following your Twitter objectives.
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This part of your Twitter strategy shouldn’t take long.
One way to tackle this in an organized way is to set it in your calendar.
Schedule yourself anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes a day as your “social
media engagement block.” You could do it all at once, or say 10 minutes in
the morning and 10 minutes at lunch.
In this time don’t worry about sharing any new content, this is what your
automation is for, instead you want to focus this time on speaking directly
with customers, influencers, industry leaders, and followers.
This is where you truly work on connecting and engaging with others (we’ll
cover a bit more of the “how to” later in this post). It’s the engagement that
is going to grow your brand.
Follow The Right People
STEP 8
A big part of success on Twitter is following the
right people. You don’t want to just go around
following people willy nilly, that’s not going to
help your brand. You have a strategy and
Twitter objectives you want to hit, remember?
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Who to follow is going to be different depending on what type of brand
you are and what kinds of products or services you provide. So, once again,
let’s break things up into B2B and B2C to make things easier.
Business to Business
To start, you want to remember that a big goal is to build your authority on
Twitter, so you’ll want to follow what’s going on in your niche or industry.
HERE’S WHO TO FOLLOW TO GET STARTED:
Industry leaders
Industry influencers (bloggers,
consultants, etc.)
Industry specific news sources
and journalists
Industry specific communities
(forums, membership groups)
Local or area groups in related or
complementary industries
Complementary brands or services
(especially if you work with them locally)
Conferences (plus the people who run
them and recent speakers or attendees)
Your customers
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Once you start adding more people to follow, chances are you’ll start
spotting new sites, brands, news sources, and influencers you can keep
following that pop up frequently.
HERE’S WHO TO FOLLOW TO GET STARTED:
Industry sources (news, influencers, journalists)
Local news sources and journalists
Influencers in your niche and complementary niches (i.e.
bloggers, podcasters, Instagramers, etc.)
People who participate in Twitter Chats in your (or
complementary) industries
People who mention your product on Twitter (do a search
to see what comes up)
Your customers
Business to Customer
A B2C brand has a bit more flexibility when it comes to adding followers
on Twitter, especially locally.
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Start Tweeting
STEP 9
Are you itching to start tweeting by now?
Good!
By the time you’ve gotten to this step, you’re in very good shape. You’ve
got a plan to put in place, you’ve optimized your profile, you’ve created
content to share, you’ve automated the process and set up a schedule, and
you’ve followed the right people.
Now, you can start actually tweeting.
Beyond the content you’ve collected and scheduled, both from your own
business blog and other content you feel like your followers will really like,
you can add a few more ideas into the mix:
Inspirational quotes
Quote photos (you can
create these on Canva)
Links to any of your other
social media accounts
Videos you’ve created on
YouTube
Contests
Product photos
Coupon codes or
discounts
Customer generated
content
Memes
Gifs
%
GIF
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While you always want to keep a proper and professional tone, don’t be
afraid to have a little bit of fun when it comes to Twitter. People often
respond most positively to brands that are willing to showcase their per-
sonality online. Here are a few more examples.
A couple of other tips when it comes to tweeting:
Include images whenever possible
Don’t go hashtag crazy! One and a maximum of two per tweet will
suffice
Try to keep tweets under 125 characters, it allows others to retweet
them more easily
Don’t make your tweets all about you, share other content at least
60% of the time
Retweet other’s content
Include a call to action in your tweets, ask people to click links,
favorite, or retweet
Create a Twitter account that your customers will fall in love with and be
excited to see what you come up with next.
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Engage Your Followers
STEP 10
Far too many brands ignore this part, they
simply share content and forget about engaging.
Not only is it boring, but it doesn’t make
customers feel very warm and fuzzy, does it?
Creating engagement is all about being willing
to communicate and sharing some personality.
You can find out quite a bit about how you brand is doing online by doing
a simple search on Twitter. This opens you up to a ton of ways to engage,
so during your scheduled engagement time, be sure to include searches
for your brand name, local area, and specific keywords for your niche or
industry.
Here are a few tips to increase your engagement:
Respond to everyone who tweets at you, especially if the comments
have a complaint
Favorite or retweet (positive) comments about you
Jump into conversations that feature your product or service
Offer help when you see people asking a question (even if it’s not
directly related to your own product or service)
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Target 2-3 new people every day in your industry and tweet at them
(introduce yourself, tell them you like a post, ask their opinion of your
new infographic, etc.)
Add your Twitter username to your website, email, newsletters, etc.
Be active about your location, connect with other local brands and
showcase them
Follow back those who follow you
These are just a few tips,
If you consistently spend time on a daily basis focused on growing your Twitter
following, posting great content, and engaging with others, then you’re going to
see results, even in as little as a few minutes a day.
Further Reading
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