How to Connect to Your Local Community Via Twitter
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
As a local business, you need to be integrating yourself fully into your local community.
Whether you’re looking to boost your client base, make new contacts to assist with the day-to-day operation of your company, or increase local brand visibility; making connections in the right place is hugely beneficial.
One of the best and easiest ways to connect to your local community is via Twitter. Since its inception in 2006, the micro-blogging site has grown from strength to strength, and is becoming an integral part of many businesses marketing arsenals.
If you want to tap into this local Twitter community and enhance your business marketing, keep reading for our top tips:
1. Be relatable
Social media works because it allows ‘the little people’ to connect with big brands and big names on a personal level. I mean, who wouldn’t want to know what Justin Bieber had for dinner?!
And while we wouldn’t suggest you take this over-sharing approach, we would recommend you keep things relatable. Whether you’re running an account on behalf of a company, or a professional page for yourself; you need to be sharing relatable content without being overly promotional.
Share the kind of content that matters to your community and that they want to hear. This will help you connect with more people, on a more personal level.
2. Be present
Social media is all about being timely. If you really want to connect with your local community, you need to be there at the right time. This means being an active user a lot of the time; even out of office hours on occasion as this is when many networking events and twitter chats will take place.
Join in conversations and start your own, ask questions and be on hand to deliver answers, share your content but share other peoples’ too; just make sure that you’re an active presence that your community begins to recognise.
3. Be unique
Being a prominent figure in the industry is one thing; standing out from the crowd without being to contrarian is another altogether.
Use your company’s USP or your unique position within it to really stand out in your local Twitter community. Share unique content in a completely innovative way to really capture attention. This all stems from being relatable and personal, but is a great way to build business connections. This is also a hugely important step in optimising your Twitter marketing to help you really make the most of the social media site.
4. Be engaging
If you want to connect with your local community on Twitter, the content you post needs to be engaging. With so many other brands and individuals competing for attention, it can be nearly impossible to be seen.
The trick here is to know your audience and know your brand. What content does your target community want to see, and how can you share this whilst staying on brand? You need to do more than grab attention though; you need to hold it too.
You need to post a mix of tweets that ask questions, share information, and appeal to your audience. But you also need to be an active member of the local community, joining in discussions and providing answers to other users. Don’t just share your own content either; you need to share other people’s to show that you’re a real team player.
5. Be a connector
If you want to build a strong local community, you need to connect individuals to one another.
For instance, if someone in your circle tweets that they need a local printing company and you know one; connect them on Twitter to strengthen your overall community. This not only brings other users together, but can really strengthen your brand online.
This is the online version of holding a networking or “meet-and-greet”; it can help you build a connected network of individuals who work together to share valuable information. This is the overall aim of your Twitter networking, but is something many businesses fail to implement.
Twitter is a hugely powerful networking tool and by following the advice outlined here you can connect to you local community better than ever before.
Superdream is a full service marketing agency in the UK specialising in SEO, Social Media and all other aspects of digital marketing.
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