Social media is everything a 20th-century traveling salesman wishes they had. I mean, just ask their traumatized knuckles how it felt going rat-tat-tat on every door they came across. Fortunately, you don’t have to endure any of that to sell your services. And this is thanks to the way digital marketing has revolutionized our approach to driving sales.
Take Twitter, for example. Two hundred eighty characters of your insightful, funny, or straight-up ridiculous thoughts are one click away from invading many Twitter users’ minds. And if that’s the case, so are your services. That’s pretty much the whole concept behind marketing and social selling on Twitter. Easy right?
But before we dig deeper, let’s establish why our resident bird app is such a good social media platform for marketing and selling your services. Here are a few reasons why:
- Twitter is one of the largest social media platforms on the internet. It has more than 145 million active daily users, providing a wide pool of potential customers for your products.
- You can also interact with your existing customers on the platform quite easily through tweets, retweets, and direct messaging.
- The platform is based on the idea of sharing thoughts and having (mostly) meaningful conversations. And with such a large number of active users, Twitter is a gold mine of useful insights and opportunities to grow your brand.
- You can find out what anybody is saying on the platform; that is, unless they have blocked you. Therefore, Twitter is an excellent tool for monitoring and collecting information on your competitors’ practices.
- Unlike with other social channels, there is little gatekeeping on Twitter. So as long as you remain a decent human being, you should be able to do pretty much anything that you want.
Thus, Twitter is the door to success every freelancer needs. But when you have that much potential in your hands, you can quite easily get a lot of things wrong. I mean, the whole process of interaction on Twitter isn’t a hard thing to do. But doing it in such a way that benefits your brand is where people tend to get it all wrong. Therefore, many businesses have a hard time successfully marketing and selling their services on Twitter.
If you’re one such person, don’t give up just yet. Here is everything you need to know and do when trying to sell your services on Twitter effectively.
Create a Quality Profile
Your profile is crucial to establishing a presence on Twitter. Why? Well, it’s where potential customers will refer when trying to get a brief understanding of your brand. Think of it as the first impression people will have of you, and Twitter is a place of quick first impressions. So, get it right in a way that accurately reflects your brand’s values and purpose, and potential clients will follow you.
That said, here is how you can optimize your profile to the maximum benefit of your venture:
Profile Photo and Header Image
According to Hubspot, a Twitter account with a profile picture is ten times more likely to be followed than one without. But not just any photo will do; your profile photo should visually represent your brand. It can be an image of your brand logo or a picture of you. If you choose to go with a self-portrait, a professional look with a friendly smile is the way to go.
Next, is the header image, often ignored despite being a useful Twitter feature. You can use this as a billboard to showcase various images related to a brand campaign. Make sure that you use high-quality photos in both your profile photo and header images.
Your Twitter Handle
Your Twitter handle generally consists of your @username and your display name. Since the username is unique to you, tied to everything you do on Twitter, and appears in your profile URL, it should be directly associated with your brand name. The @name allows you up to 15 characters, so don’t worry if you have a particularly long brand name.
You should also keep your display name real. This is the name that appears directly above the username in your Twitter profile. For this, you can use your business name, birth name, or an SEO keyword phrase (as long as it’s relevant to your brand). Avoid numbers and any other unnecessary characters, and try to make it as short as possible.
Your Bio
Your Twitter bio allows you to introduce yourself to curious tweeps in 160 characters. It’s where you tell the world who you are, what you do, and what you value. And since this is a profile geared towards selling your services, include words relevant to your industry and a subtle elevator pitch. Tell potential clients what value your brand brings and why they should buy/follow you. You can also include a call to action, like ‘direct message to order’ or ‘call/email for more information.’
If you have a website, your bio is an excellent opportunity to direct traffic towards it. Include a direct link to the About page, homepage, landing page, or blog post. If you don’t have a website, a link to your LinkedIn profile should be enough.
Also, don’t forget to tag your location. Even when the interaction is purely online, potential customers tend to lean towards services from around their local area. Thus, tag where you live, your HQ, and/or the nearest big city. This will help you connect with clients around your local area, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that you can’t work with those from further away.
Find Your Market and Join/Create a Community
Unless your service has you developing the formula for world harmony, you can’t try and talk to everyone. In the Twitter business, talking to everyone is essentially talking to no one and is far from as effective as finding and following your specific market. Thus, take your time to identify your target audience in the Twitter demographic.
This may seem like a challenging task, but it’s easier than you would expect. You can start by following specific topics relevant to your niche when setting up your account. For instance, if you’re selling copywriting services, follow copywriting and SEO topics. That way, your feed will occasionally (or mostly) display stuff related to writing and SEO.
Once you have a Twitter feed relevant to your niche, you can quite easily find/create a community of similar professionals and potential clients. A good place to start is in the comment sections. Here, don’t let the opportunity to engage in meaningful discussions with curious clients and other freelancers.
At the end of a discussion, ask them to follow you and follow them back if possible. That way, you’ll build a community that you can target with your niche-related tweets.
Another way to find your market is by identifying keywords important to your service. Start by typing the keyword on Twitter’s search bar and follow the search results. Even better, you can track them using a keyword-tracking tool.
With graphic design, for instance, you can use keywords like graphic, illustrator, design, digital, logo, Adobe, and visual, to name a few. Your tracking tool will email you an analysis of these keyword mentions.
What this does is lead you straight to relevant tweets and discussions that didn’t appear on your feed. Here again, you are presented with an opportunity to reach out and build relationships with people. It’s actually easier to find people interested in your specific services by tracking relevant keywords.
Keywords also keep you updated on current trends in your marketplace. You’ll be able to identify current hot topics or trends and see what other brands are doing. This allows you to weak your service catalog accordingly and digital marketing plan.
Find and Follow Influencers
Influencers can go a long way in pushing your services on Twitter, especially if you’re new. They are usually at the top of every interesting trend in their niche and play a significant role in guiding the buying decisions of many customers.
Now, dealing with influencers almost always means parting with a significant sum of money. But if you’re smart in your approach, you may as well get away with it for free. And no, I don’t mean scamming them, but rather, building a relationship with them. Find players who are well-known and respected in your niche and connect with them.
However, don’t just storm into their DMs with a lengthy elevator pitch. There are already enough people doing that daily, and a good number of them are already blocked. The trick here is to use the same gentle approach you use on potential high-paying clients. Follow them, retweet, and/or comment on their tweets.
If you’re patient and meaningful in your approach, they may return the favor and follow you. From here, focus on building a positive relationship that benefits both you and the influencer. They will likely endorse your service to a wider group as they would for a friend (scream ‘for free’). They may also guide you to some high-paying clients that they know.
How You Tweet
Selling your service on Twitter means tweeting; a lot. And while many people interpret this as constantly promoting their service, that can be a big mistake in itself. So instead, you want to cut down on the promotion and focus more on sharing interesting or even entertaining (but relevant) information.
If you’re constantly pushing a deal or a product, Twitter users will lose interest in you too quickly. So, many Twitter marketers have a ratio of 75% content and 25% promotion in their posts. You even see this in influencers; most of the time, they’re trying to be funny, cool, weird, or whatever it is influencers do to stay relevant. In between are the occasional marketing posts and Twitter ads that almost always succeed as a result.
You’re probably not as funny or as cool as they are, but you also have a deeper understanding of your niche than most people out there. So, 75% of the time, give people some useful tips and tricks of the industry. Grace their timelines with facts, run polls, share chats, and even memes if you feel confident enough. Personal posts are also welcome, albeit with a little restraint.
The goal here is to drive engagements that create a ready and willing audience for your marketing campaigns. And speaking of marketing campaigns, this post is exactly what you need if you want to learn more about social media advertising.
Tip: Keep in mind that Twitter moves really fast. There are about 6,000 new tweets every second, and it can be pretty hard to find a particular tweet. Therefore, when you run promotions or do a product launch, don’t forget to use hashtags and tag your loyal following. You can also pin posts on promotions and offers to make them easier for your audience to find.
Be Consistent
Last but still key to your success is consistency. Once you start selling services on Twitter, don’t lose pace. Keep the weekly posts coming, engage with other community members, hunt for new clients, gain more followers, and ultimately, you’ll achieve your goals. You can even grow your campaigns to include other social media platforms like Instagram.
And, you can always mix up the monetization with affiliate marketing too as an additional revenue stream.
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