Many small businesses use Twitter to market their businesses. But it is it worth promoting your chiropractic business on there? The answer depends on how much time you have, and if enough potential customers from your geographical area use Twitter. And the results you can expect will also depend on the way you actually use this social media platform.
Some businesses use Twitter consistently for months, without seeing a return on investment of their time. While many large organizations use Twitter to re-enforce their brand, David Lifson, CEO of Postling, a social media tool for small businesses, believes that Twitter marketing is not the same for small businesses. He says, "Small businesses need to be focused on ROI and not so much on brand image."
And some small businesses do see a great ROI on Twitter. According to Mari Luangrath, owner of Chicago-based Foiled Cupcakes, 90% of leads and word-of-mouth referrals come to her through Twitter.
It doesn’t cost anything to join Twitter, so you have nothing to lose if you would like to give it a try. And these tips should get you started on the right track.
- Don’t add thousands of random people, so that they will automatically follow you back, and don’t automatically add people who add you. It will be far too difficult to interact with potential customers if you do this. Add potential clients and networking partners from your own geographic area.
- Remember that Twitter is a two way stream, not a running commercial. So take the time to interact with your Twitter followers.
- Bombarding followers with commercial Tweets about your business is the fastest way to get un-followed. Vary your Tweets, ask questions and provide links to useful articles and resources, in addition to mentioning your business and offers.
- Do offer special discounts to Twitter users. Apart from your time, or the money you spend outsourcing your Twitter activities, Twitter is free to use so you can afford to offer great deals.
- Save time by using tools that make your Twitter marketing efforts easier. If you plan to use other social media accounts, in addition to Twitter, use a tool like Ping, which enables you to post to all your accounts at the same time. TweetAdder is another useful tool as it finds Twitter users in your target market and geographic area and automatically adds them to your Twitter account.
If you want to test out Twitter, don’t forget that you don’t need to spend several hours a week using it. If you try it out and you find it is benefiting your business, you can easily outsource your Twitter marketing activities.