Any business hoping to have a strong social media presence needs to be active on Twitter.
It’s a great platform to communicate with your followers in a fun and engaging way.
Plus, given its limited word count, it’s a chance for you to get creative and share your business. One excellent tool for you to promote your business or service is through Twitter hours.
But what are they and how do they work?
What are Twitter Hours?
Despite how the name may sound, it doesn’t describe the opening hours of the platform.
A Twitter hour is a period where users can meet and discuss a topic via a #(hashtag) on a specific time and date.
This can be almost any idea or conversation, but it provides a window for businesses to promote their products or services in a timeslot relevant to their customers.
So, with a little planning, you can take full advantage of this window of time to find new customers.
It might seem complicated, but the golden rule in most situations on social media is simply to be involved.
Especially when it comes to Twitter hours – these are conversations you want to be a part of! So, with this in mind, we’ve come up with some tips to help you make the most of your twitter hours.
Find YOUR hours
As tempting as it may be to want to jump into as many Twitter hours as possible, we cannot advise against this enough. Any good marketing activity should be as targeted as possible, and your social media channels should be treated in the same way.
The best place to start is to find the hashtags that are most relevant to your area, product or service.
This is the most effective way to promote your business to people who actually want to hear what you have to say. A good place to find your Twitter hours is here.
Twitter hours are updated regularly, so be sure to keep on top of new tags and those that are no longer getting traffic.
Sterling Biz Hour is a popular Twitter hour.
Be prepared
Once you’ve found your relevant hours, and their respective hashtags, dates and times, the next thing you need to do is to prepare your content.
Why? Having pre-written content allows you to dive right into the conversation with a carefully crafted tweet and frees up time for you to engage in real-time during the hour (more on this later).
For an idea of how to enter the Twitter hour, see how others are communicating during the event. Depending on the hashtag, you’ll likely see multiple businesses interacting with potential new customers. Take note of those that enter the conversation in a positive way – they’ll likely have a good level of engagement. Don’t copy them, but learn what you can from their approach and put your own spin on it! Originality will go a long way here.
To help manage this, you can make use of content management tools that allow you to schedule your perfectly crafted tweets in advance.
Be active
Whilst we’re sure you’ll want to focus on yourself, it actually pays to be active with other users rather than simply waiting for people to get in touch with you. This could be liking posts from other companies (be a good sport within reason), commenting or responding to those with questions asked openly during the event.
Another general tip for social media is that people tend to be as engaged with you as you are with them. So reach out and be genuinely helpful and active where you can, whether it’s to others or those responding to your content.
Make sure you engage with everyone who reacts to your content – whether positive or negative. This will help you build rapport with potential new customers and grow your following on Twitter – two birds with one stone (see what we did there).
Don’t be too promotional
Although you may be promoting a business, and you’re seeking new customers, it rarely pays off to come across as pushy. Be genuine in your approach as putting on a strong sales front will likely cause people to recoil.
At the end of the day, people are looking for something. Explain this without shoving it in people’s feeds as they will be more open to you. Focus on their problem, not your solution, and they will be more receptive and hopefully, open to your business.
Following these tips, you’ll be ready to dive into your next Twitter hour! However, if you feel these tips aren’t quite enough and you’d like more guidance on how to get the most out of your social channels, we can help! We specialise in helping small businesses like yours leverage their socials for real results. So, for more advice on how to grow and manage your businesses social media presence, get in touch with our team today!