9 Ways Offline Businesses Can Use Twitter to Grow

While it may seem as if everyone knows about Twitter and Social Media, this isn’t necessarily so. There are offline businesses of all sizes and types, B2B and B2C that have never heard of Twitter. And there are also businesses who, while they may have heard of Twitter, have no clue what it is or are confused with all the social media jargon and don’t know how Twitter can benefit their business.

If you have an offline business or serve a business who is yet to use Twitter, this article offers 9 practical tips on using Twitter to grow your business. They require an investment of time, but cost little or nothing and can pay off in spades for your business.

1. Monitor your industry – Type in your industry keywords into Twitter’s search and you can find what people are saying about the industry, trends and more. Twitter can give you a wealth of information. You can also follow your competitors, see what their followers are saying and they can follow you.

2. Monitor your competitors – Once you open your Twitter account start following people and include your competitors. You can follow their tweets and conversations. They can follow yours too, so look at this in the context of sharing rather than simply competitive intelligence.

3. Track conversations about your company and brand. Whether you are taking part in the conversation or not people are probably talking about you. They are talking to their friends and people they know. Twitter allows you to listen to what’s being said as well as join in.

4. Enhance customer service. Smart businesses are using Twitter to help out their customers and seeing the dividends as they are able to answer many questions in real time, creating more loyal customers

5. Grow sales. While selling directly isn’t recommended on Twitter you can grow your sales pipeline simply by being seen as the place where people can get answers. If people are interested in you and trust you they could become customers and sources of referrals.

6. Gain exposure. Does your company have the solution to a pressing problem? Write a useful article and tweet about it on Twitter. Not only will your article get you traffic, your followers will immediately go and read what you’ve written and may re-tweet it to their friends. If you post it on your website that could mean more traffic from Twitter.

7. Tweet your blog posts. These days if you don’t have a business blog you’re nearly invisible. Blogging is an inexpensive way to get found, find new business and get your name out. You can “tweet” each new blog post from your business blog.

8. Do market research. Want feedback from customers? Post a poll on your website. Use twitter to invite people to take the poll. Then share the responses via Twitter. Post them on your business blog and don’t forget to tweet that you’ve posted them. Market research doesn’t come much cheaper than this.

9. Launching or re-launching a product or service? Tweet about it to your community. Get them involved in the build-up and they are much more likely to tell their own followers and friends about it.

Whether you are a B2B or B2C offline these are just a few of the ways you can quickly use Twitter as part of your marketing. Make sure you take advantage of them.