Twitter can feel like your in a traffic jam

Twitter felt like a congested interstate when I first hopped on this popular social media platform. I wondered if it was even worth the hassle to figure out and understand. I assure you it has definitely been worth my time! Twitter offers a great place to meet new clients, continue building relationships with our current clients, and a way to stay in touch with those who are best in our field. Here are a few tips I have learned along my Twitter journey:

Know Your Brand
The biggest favor I did for our business was to begin to  know our Brand. For example, Russell’s Adventures is our blog’s brand name. Our brand’s motto is, Transparently sharing our life out loud. Our target audience is homeschool families, families in general, parents, and married couples. We are also travel bloggers and product reviewers. Knowing who we are as a brand, who we want to reach with our product/services, and where we want to go in the future as a company, helps determine who I will seek to connect with on any social media platform.

Understand Twitter Highways
When I set up my Twitter account a couple years ago, I felt like I was driving the wrong way on the interstate. Tweets were flying past me faster than I could read or figure out what the heck was going on. I quickly shut the app and didn’t look at it for a couple of weeks. When I finally did go back, I went in with a plan! I was going to search, follow, and comment to other homeschool bloggers and companies that sold homeschool curriculum. I was also going to search, follow, and comment on travel blogs, all things related to Minnesota travel, and begin to develop a relationship with them. I began to learn that there were real people, carrying on real conversations on Twitter. It was up to me to figure out our brand and then find my tribe.

Twitter search is the onramp to finding your tribe
How do you find people to follow? Utilizing the search bar in the Twitter app, is similar to using google to find the information you are looking for. Companies, news, information, blogs, and tons of other information will pop up for you to choose from.

Take time to build relationships
Finding Twitter chats that fit our brand has been a great way to figure out Twitter parties and get to know more people in our industry. As I was searching travel mom bloggers in the Twitter search bar, the hashtag #TMOM popped up on my screen. I was intrigued, so I clicked on it, and up popped a whole network of travel blogging mamas! It was like finding paradise in what felt like a dry desert. Now when I post about events going on in our community or other adventures our family is experiencing, I hashtag #TMOM. A whole tribe of like minded travel mama’s jump on the retweeting train and before I know it, the reach has tripled.

Tweetdeck
This handy, dandy tool is awesome! It organizes my messages, notifications, and I can add columns from my lists. When I am participating in a twitterchat, I put the notifications column and the column with the group I’m chatting with next to each other, and it makes it easier to follow the conversations.

Patience
Like anything in life it takes time and patience to get fluent at anything. It is the same concept with social media platforms. As you follow others, they follow you, and the unsavory tweets that show up in your newsfeed, will slow down. They never completely go away, but they do calm down as you grow your followers.

Are you a twitter user? How have you used it to help grow your business! I would love to hear your success stories! Happy Tweeting!