Here’s Why Twitter Is Still An Incredible Marketing Tool

Twitter marketing has been in the shadows since Pinterest and Facebook began to steal the spotlight this year in 2012. Although Facebook has been the leader for a while, they received a lot of additional media attention due to the whole IPO fiasco.

Many business owners and professionals still don’t get why Twitter could possibly be significant to their business. I can’t blame them since I felt the same way at one point. What could possibly be significant in 140 characters?

Twitter Marketing Secret Weapon: Advanced Search

Your greatest Twitter marketing tool for discovering conversations surrounding your brand, industry or company is arguably Twitter’s Advanced Search. Why?

Let me give you an example. If you’re a restaurant, you can search for anyone tweeting the word “hungry” in your local area and it will provide you with instant results, in chronological order starting from the most recent tweets.

This is a HUGE opportunity. If you’re a restaurant, these people ARE your customers, so reaching out to them at this moment in time could be a critical turning point for your business. Offer them a special discount code that they can use that day to come in for a meal at your restaurant. (Click the picture on the side to see an enlarged example of this search)

Related: Saving Your Restaurant From Bad Reviews Online

If you are a chiropractor, searching terms like “back hurts” or “neck sore” might be a good place to start. Fortunately, it seems that people have a tendency to discuss their ailments online so it’s great timing if you can offer the cure!

Obviously, this method can be adjusted to fit any industry as long as you adjust the keywords accordingly.

The Best Spent 10 Minutes On Twitter

If you only have 10 minutes a day to spend on social media, this is what you should be doing. This brings you into a direct conversation with current and potential customers – how could you possibly ignore that?

A handy app for tracking keywords on Twitter is Twilert. It will send you regular email notifications when your chosen keyword, hashtag or user is mentioned online. It’s ideal to use Twilert for your brand name, product names and unique keywords that reveal your customers. Keywords that are too vague will bombard your inbox with a flood of alerts so choose carefully and experiment!

In my opinion, this is the most powerful part of Twitter marketing and it’s often completely overlooked. For a video walkthrough on using Twitter’s Advanced Search, click here.

Related: 9 Things That Make You Look Bad On Twitter

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