Every business needs to take care of its online reach and the brand image it builds via different platforms. If you invest in your online presence and branding wisely, this investment will pay off sooner than you expect. The important thing is that you choose the right means of communicating your messages.
And, Twitter happens to be one of the strongest platforms that businesses use for this purpose.
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If you plan on using Twitter to boost your business’ branding, you need to know how to do it like a professional. Luckily, this article has you covered.
Below, you’ll learn everything you need to know about using Twitter for business. You’ll also find our ultimate guide to Twitter branding for business. Let’s get started.
How Important is Twitter?
You may be reading this article thinking about other social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook and how powerful they are for business branding. While we agree these platforms are essential for your success online, they shouldn’t be your sole focus.
Instead, you should try and expand your reach by going strong on other platforms as well. But, why Twitter?
Here are some facts to help you understand just how important Twitter is for a business:
- It has an advertising audience of 353 million users.
- It has 199 million monetizable daily active users.
- 21% of adults in the U.S. use Twitter.
- 82% of B2B content marketers use Twitter for organic content marketing.
- 500 million Tweets are sent daily.
- 12% of people globally use Twitter as a news source.
As you can see, Twitter may not be standing shoulder to shoulder with Instagram or Facebook. But, it’s still one of the strongest platforms you can use online and a powerful tool for branding.
The only question is- do you know how to use it?
Benefits of Twitter Branding for Business
Next, we need to discuss the reasons why you should start thinking about branding on Twitter. Simply put- what’s in it for you?
You may not be aware of it, but Twitter can help you reach some, if not most of the goals you’ve set for your business. If you apply the right strategies, it will significantly improve your online reach and efforts to connect to your audience.
Here are the benefits of using Twitter branding for business.
Staying Competitive
Your business is on Twitter but so are your biggest competitors. The only question is, who’ll draw more attention and get more people to follow them.
By being active on Twitter, you get to keep an eye on your biggest competitors and see what they’re up to. Then, you can use this information to come up with something original and unique for your brand.
As a result, you’re staying competitive and making sure you don’t just blend in with the rest.
Reducing Marketing Costs
Twitter is such a powerful marketing tool and it costs you nothing. The platform is completely free of charge but allows you to achieve and earn so much.
That means that, if you play your cards right, you can reach a huge audience without spending a single dollar.
Increasing Sales
When you have a strong brand voice and message, your followers and customers will start to respect you. They’ll see you as a more professional and trustworthy brand, and find it easier to decide to become a customer.
As a result, your sales will be up and your reach will only continue to grow.
A Complete Guide to Twitter Branding for Businesses: 8 Essential Tips
Now that you have the whole picture and understand why Twitter is so valuable for you as a business, it’s time to explain how to reinforce your branding using this platform. This guide will teach you everything you need to know, one step at a time.
Get Visual
Every brand needs to have a strong visual presentation. The same goes for your business.
Without a visually appealing Twitter profile, you’ll never get your target audience to pay attention. So, start here. Make sure your profile stands out and is instantly recognizable. Here’s what that implies:
- use brand colors and fonts
- add a compelling banner image and profile picture
- make your logo visible
- do something different than your competitors
Here’s how Tesla does it on their account. They use their logo as the profile picture and their banner image has the same logo colors. It also showcases a powerful car in an attention-grabbing setting.
This strong visual representation will make your handle sound better and will help your followers create a visual image of your brand. That is extremely important since you want them to know it’s your Tweet the moment it catches their eye.
Share Your Main Message
Over the course of time, you’ll be using Twitter to share a lot of messages. But, there needs to be one main message that represents what your brand stands for. You should make this message visible in your Twitter profile description.
There are different ways to express this message:
- unique brand hashtag
- emoji
- pun
- formal message
- joke
- quote
- motivational message
- etc.
Here are some handle examples from the world’s leading brands that will help you understand better.
- Nike: #BlackLivesMatter and #StopAsianHate
- Sephora: We Belong to Something Beautiful.
- Gillette: The Best a Man Can Get.
- Ben & Jerry’s: Peace, Love, & Ice Cream
- Slack: On a mission to make your working life simpler, more pleasant, and more productive. Need help? Send us a tweet!
You can get creative but choose your words wisely. You only have 160 characters to reflect the essence of your brand.
Bring Value to the Table
Once you finish setting up your profile, you need to start thinking about the content you’ll be sharing. This is crucial for your brand and the main reason why people will or won’t be following you.
You do have a 280 characters limit, so there’s no room for long introductions, repetition, or redundancy. You need to keep your tweets to the point and aim them at a specific goal.
Here are some of the goals you may be setting for your tweets:
- to start a discussion or conversation
- to engage your followers and hear their opinion
- to entertain
- to educate them
- to solve a dilemma or problem
You can do whatever you like, just don’t publish flat tweets with no goal or value. Tweeting without a purpose is a major red flag and will not earn you any branding points.
In fact, it’ll weaken your brand and turn people away from you.
For instance, Airbnb created a whole separate Twitter account called @AirbnbHelp, just to provide assistance and answer FAQs. Followers use this account to learn how to handle crises, resolve issues, and use Airbnb better.
This content is extremely valuable for the followers and gives them exactly what they came for, practical tips and actionable moves.
Add Images & Videos
Visually rich tweets get more attention than those that only contain text. This is why you need to ensure your brand uses images to strengthen the messages you’re sending.
For instance, take a look at this tweet from Pottery Barn:
It’s neatly organized and simple, as it should be. But, it’s not nearly as effective as it is with the added images:
The same tweet looks and sounds so much better once it includes a strong visual. And, if you take a scroll down Pottery Barn’s Twitter account, you’ll find all images to be of the same style and reflect their brand image.
That is what you should aim for as well. Use recognizable images or videos that boost your tweets and say something about your brand.
Be Consistent in Voice
Branding is almost like building a character that represents your business. It has a personality, a mission, and values it respects. But, if you show inconsistency in any of these elements, then your character falls flat.
That means nobody will believe what you’re saying or find your messages important.
To avoid such negative feedback, you need to nurture a consistent tone of voice. Here’s what that implies:
- always write in the same style
- use consistent vocabulary
- organize your tweets similarly
- choose and apply the same level of formality
- use emoji in the same manner
So, don’t go jumping from one style to the other, and don’t experiment with your tweets. Instead, choose one direction and stick to it. This will give you the credibility and authenticity that your followers are looking for.
Spark Engagement
Your brand isn’t just going to be built on what you send out to your audience. It’s also going to be affected by how your audience engages and interacts with it.
Sparking engagement means being interesting enough for people to respond to what you’ve published. You want them to comment, retweet, mention you, and respond to the content you’re sharing.
This will help you reinforce your brand message over and over again. It’ll also mean you’re building a community of people who are gathered around your brand.
To spark engagement, try these strategies:
- share exciting news and make announcements
- ask questions
- open discussions by asking for an opinion
- make choice posts
- open controversial topics
The more engagement you have, the stronger your brand will be.
Use Hashtags
Hashtags have been around for years and aren’t something you’d normally get excited about. But, the power of a good brand hashtag goes beyond what you can imagine.
The truth is, a hashtag can make your brand widely recognized or your message louder and clearer. If you align it with a specific campaign, you’ll make it more worthwhile.
Here are just some of the hashtags that popular brands turned into a branding tool:
- #justdoit by Nike
- #WantAnR8 by Audi
- #ShareACoke by Coca-Cola
- #ShareYourEars by Disney
- #EndSpeciesism by Peta
- #MovementThatInpires by Kia
Each hashtag combines elements from the main branding message and the specific goals the active campaign has. That means that properly placed hashtags can be powerful on different fronts and help you strengthen your brand immensely.
Explore Paid Ads
Finally, paid Twitter ads and promoted tweets are a great way to boost your brand and get to your target audience. Both strategies will help you with your business branding and build your online credibility.
Promoted Tweets
If you want to reach the people who aren’t following you on Twitter, you should use promoted tweets. It’s quite simple- you pay for the tweets to appear in these users’ search results and News Feed. You get to customize who your target audience is so that Twitter knows who to display the tweets to.
These tweets will appear to the target users just like regular tweets, and they’ll be able to respond however they like.
Paid Ads
Paid Twitter ads are a part of your specific campaign that can aim to reach new followers, get you tweet engagement, increase website clicks, and more.
You choose and set your goal first. Then, you target your audience through settings and decide on a budget.
These paid ads can be used to cross-promote your content from other platforms such as your website blog or YouTube channel. In case you need help writing your blog posts, these free essay samples might help you out. Creating and sharing diverse content is another important aspect of proper business branding.
After your ad campaign is launched, all you need to do is measure the results and learn from them. The data you gather will help you boost your brand further and create better Twitter content in the future.
Final Thoughts on Twitter Branding
Twitter branding for business is a demanding task that requires strategic planning, research, and dedication. But, with clear guidance and straightforward steps you need to take- it’s easier than it seems.
Hopefully, this guide turns out to be your motivation to start or improve your Twitter branding. Use our tips to create your strategy and start applying it today.