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Social media is key in the marketing and branding of today’s small businesses.

That’s no secret. If you run, or work for any kind of business you’ll know that without social media, it’s difficult to make your brand’s voice heard and near impossible to continue growth.

Utilising Twitter to market your small business can certainly be overwhelming if you don’t know your handles from your hashtags. But once understood, Twitter can be a strategic wonderland for networking and building valuable relationships and generating leads for your company.

6 Ways to Utilise Twitter for Your Business

1. HASHTAG

Made famous by Twitter, the hashtag is a highly effective tool, particularly for small businesses. Hashtags let users to search for particular topics that interest them – so using a relevant hashtag within your tweets means potential customers are more likely to come across your brand.

A short, sweet, simple and clear hashtag that is relevant to your brand can be a huge driver for brand recognition.

A perfect example is Slims Healthy Kitchen, who use the #ChooseBalance hashtag, which is their recognisable brand slogan. Their customers frequently use the hashtag when mentioning the brand on their social media platforms.

Bank holiday brekkie @Slimshk #ChooseBalance #breakfast #healthy pic.twitter.com/qlKyaM1O6U

— Christine Fitz (@Kristinelokokos) May 25, 2015

However it is important not  to spam your tweets with hashtag.  Twitter recommends no more than two per tweet as using anymore actually devalues the strength of each hashtag.

2. ORGANISE

Timing plays a very important role in your Twitter strategies. There will always be better times of the day to tweet than others and this will vary for every brand, depending on the online habits of your customers.

Buffer is a great app to use to schedule Tweets and help you stay organised. The recommended optimum tweeting times are between 9am-4pm, showing the most activity and the highest number of clickbacks. Buffer allows you to schedule your tweets for specific times of the day, meaning you don’t have to worry about being on hand to tweet, and it ensures your highest potential reach throughout the day.

3. BE VISUAL

Twitter decided to add inline images to tweets way back in 2013, meaning that you no longer have to click on the tweet to see the image. Buffer recently found that tweets with images received 18% more clicks than those without. They also received 89% more favourites and 150% more retweets.

Canva is a great tool to use if you want to put together an image for a tweet that looks good and speaks to your brand. It allows you to select the dimensions perfectly formatted for Twitter and the freedom to design your own graphic.

Twitter has also recently rolled out a native video feature which is set to stir even more engagement among users.

4. ENGAGE

As a brand, engagement is one of the most important things you can do with Twitter. Follow those who may be interested in your brand and other local businesses. Favourite tweets, retweet good content and most importantly, respond to tweets. Thank people for following you or for recommending your business to others. The more you engage with others, the more they will engage with you, thus turning followers into customers.

Tweetdeck is a desktop tool to help you stay on top of all of your engagements. You can make individual columns for your feed, your mentions, your lists and more, allowing you to see everything in one place.

Galgorm Resort and Spa is one local business who often retweet and favourite mentions from their happy customers, thus encouraging more users to interact.

Afternoon tea at @GalgormResort ☺️ pic.twitter.com/FH5iDnnReH

— Aaron Willis (@willis_aaron) September 21, 2015

5. ANALYTICS

In a similar sense to Buffer Analytics, Twitter Analytics is a goldmine of information allowing you to see what you’re doing right and what you can improve upon. The user-friendly dashboard outlines which tweets are performing best, the number of impressions they are receiving, growths and drops in followers, mentions, profile visits and more.

It gives you a monthly summary, allowing you to make a quick and easy comparison month to month. Looking for patterns within your information gives you an idea on how well certain strategies are working – such as the time of day your tweets go out, which links are clicked and shared, who responds and so on. This leaves room for you to experiment on your strategies. For example, if you’re seeing a lot of impressions per tweet but not so many clicks, perhaps finding a more compelling way to word the tweet can work in your favour.

6. CONSISTENCY

Once you’ve got the basics of Twitter down and you have established your presence, it’s important to stay consistent with both your content and your activity if you want your following to continue to grow. Posting something irrelevant to your brand or falling off the Twittersphere can negatively impact both your following and your reputation. Simply tweeting daily can keep your presence firmly established.

It certainly takes time and a craft, but once you have it grasped, Twitter can be a highly valuable social media platform and an extremely cost-effective marketing tool for your small business.

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If you own or work for a small business, that business probably has its own Facebook page. Am I right?

And let me guess – looking after that Facebook page is a gigantic pain in the arse?

If so, you’re not alone. So many Northern Irish businesses are stuck in a bit of a rut with Facebook. It started out great. It was new and exciting and you were reaching tons of people without having to pay a single penny. But then it just kind of stopped working. Facebook started adding new features, changing things and making it almost impossible for businesses to succeed without advertising.

As a busy person with a job, a family and a social life, we know you don’t have the time to keep up with every single new update, term and condition that Facebook issues. But fortunately for you, we’re giant nerds with nothing better to do, so to help you out a wee bit, we’ve rounded up some quick and easy tips that you can start using now to avoid wasting time and start making some moneeyyy from this old thing.

1. Use it or lose it

Facebook recognises when pages are more active and post regularly and it will reward you by increasing the amount of people you reach. A great feature is the ability to schedule posts which allows you to plan ahead and maintain regularity.

2. Don’t repulse people with a crap profile

Update your profile and cover photos every so often to keep people interested. Make sure you use attractive images that are the correct size. (Here are some size guidelines)

 3. Get experimental…

Facebook also likes it when you shake it up and post different types of media. Add pictures to your status updates for more engagement and when you post a website link ALWAYS make sure that the preview image appears. When posting videos, upload them directly to Facebook rather than just copying and pasting a YouTube link, as Facebook prefers it when you use its own features and will again reward you with greater reach.

4. Gain some Insight

Facebook’s Insights tool lets you know which posts are your most and least popular- and by the way, if something isn’t working just stop doing it and find another, more creative way of getting your message across. It’s all about trial and error. Insights also lets you know when your audience is most active online, so you know the best time to post or schedule posts. You can also see where your audience is from, what age they are, their gender and interests etc.

5. Be a fake American

Facebook is in the midst of introducing a new tool called ‘Graph Search’ which is basically a better search function that, amongst many other things, can give you valuable information about your audience. At the minute it isn’t available to UK users, but what you can do is change your language to English US (here’s how) and hey presto – you’ll be able to use it.

6. Be your selfie

Facebook is a social network, which means you don’t have to be all serious and corporate all the time. Share themed updates, behind the scenes pictures or selfies so people can see you’re real people and not robots. Establish a voice that people can relate to. Don’t post huge status updates, because quite frankly, no one cares enough about your business to read it.

7. Sell yourself,  baby… just not all the time

But at the same time, remember that the point of a Facebook business page is to promote your business so don’t get carried away with posting cat memes and quotes. Use the 70:20:10 ratio – 70% of your posts should increase brand awareness, 20% should be shared content or ideas from others and 10% should be promotional. If you use this rule and have specific objectives for every post, it makes it a lot easier to measure what’s working and what’s not.

8. Be friends with your fans

The main thing that any business wants on Facebook is engagement because a high level of engagement in your page will increase your reach and reach will help you gain customers. The best way to get engagement is to ask questions and respond to everyone. People love to give their opinion and are more likely to engage with brand that is personable and has a friendly voice.

9. Hey cheapskate – put your hand in your pocket

It’s no secret to most Facebook users that even if you have 10,000 fans, that doesn’t mean that all 10,000 people are going to see all your posts. In fact, many businesses report that less than 1% of their fans even see their posts. For that reason, we hate to say it, but you have to spend some money and advertise your business.

10. But don’t spend an absolute fortune

Start small with your Facebook ads, put a fiver behind your campaign and see how it works. If people start responding then fantastic, if not – adjust your budget and add to it little by little.

11. Embrace the POWER (Editor)

If you dabble in Facebook ads, then start using Power Editor. This handy tool lets you manage your ads better. It can seem incredibly overwhelming when you first get started but if you play about with it you’ll soon get used to it. You can find more info about Power Editor here.

12. Be super specific about who you want to reach

When you set up an advert, you will have to select an audience. The great thing about Power Editor is that you can target people in all sorts of ways – by age, gender, their education status, their job, their interests – the list is endless. The most specific you are, the better the results will be. If Power Editor tells you that your audience size is over 1,000,000 then you’re not being specific enough – try to aim for 800,000 or under.

13. Tell the world how amazing you are!

If you’ve received a nice review or a lovely email from a customer, share it on your Facebook page – don’t be afraid to boast a little. It will add more credibility to your business and people respond well to positivity.

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