Unlocking the Potential of Twitter for Business Growth in South Africa

Business owners, we all know how important it is to make our presence known - and what better way to do that than on Twitter? With over 368 million daily users worldwide and approximately 9.3 million users in South Africa. Twitter is one of the leading social media platforms, second only to Facebook, and an excellent audience source for all businesses.

How can Twitter benefit businesses?

Twitter is a powerful social media platform that can help businesses reach a targeted quality audience. With over 300 million active users, businesses can use Twitter to find and connect with potential customers based on their interests, location, and even their behaviour on the platform. It provides a simple way to reach and engage with customers, share real-time updates, and build relationships with potential customers. Creating an account and connecting with people in your industry can increase brand awareness and build a solid reputation.

You can also use Twitter to advertise and promote products, information, services, and events. Additionally, it can be used to gain feedback from customers and answer any questions they might have.

With Twitter, businesses can quickly and easily stay up to date with industry trends, gain insights into what customers want and expand their reach.

What are the benefits of using Twitter for customer support?

Have you thought of using Twitter to support your customer service goals? This innovative platform allows businesses to connect with customers quickly and efficiently, providing prompt responses to customer inquiries or concerns. Additionally, Twitter offers a broad reach, allowing businesses to engage with a wide range of customers and potential customers.

Twitter is an enormously public platform that allows businesses to showcase their customer service approach and highlight customer satisfaction. Through customer feedback, companies can use Twitter to identify areas of improvement and optimise their customer service strategy.

Finally, this platform provides businesses with a great way to increase brand loyalty. By responding to customer service inquiries in a timely and helpful manner, businesses can establish a good rapport with customers, leading to increased customer commitment and repeat business.

What are the advantages of using Twitter for marketing?

One of the major challenges to South African businesses is trying to stay on top of rapidly changing technology and multiple digital channels. One source highlights this, saying, “Businesses need to invest in omnichannel efforts, from email to social media, from their own website to search engine advertisements, and from store apps to third-party messaging platforms. Not only do marketers have to relay a consistent message across all of these various channels, it must be personalised too! According to research by Salesforce, 74% of customers have used multiple channels to start and complete a transaction.”

As we’ve seen, Twitter is already a common communication tool at work in the South African  market. It makes sense, therefore, to leverage it as much as possible.

According to Statista, 67% of all B2B businesses use Twitter as a digital marketing tool. This is because its traffic quality for B2B is high, as businesses can engage with other businesses, industry experts, and potential customers in real-time.

Furthermore, Twitter is prime real estate for conversational experiences that can increase conversion rates. Personalised marketing experiences can be delivered through Twitter, allowing businesses to engage with customers on a more personal level. Twitter also enables businesses to resolve customer queries efficiently and effectively through its customer care function. By enabling businesses to have meaningful conversations with people, Twitter can help businesses build a strong relationship with their customers.

In fact, according to the Digital Marketing Institute, 40% of Twitter users reported purchasing something after seeing it on Twitter. This is a testament to the power of Twitter as a marketing tool. Additionally, Twitter offers a broad reach, allowing businesses to engage with a wide range of customers and potential customers.

The platform's short, concise post length means you can easily share news, updates, and advertisements. You can also use Twitter's hashtags, which can have a significant impact on the success of a marketing campaign. Hashtags allow you to sift through and find conversations related to your industry and then join in to network or engage with potential customers.

Twitter also allows you to track customer feedback and gain insights into customer behaviour. You can monitor conversations about your brand, competitors, and related topics to gain valuable insights.

Twitter analytics allows you to identify your most engaged followers, measure your tweet performance, analyse your followers, monitor your competitors, track your hashtags, analyse your impressions, and monitor your mentions. Twitter's advertising platform allows businesses to create highly targeted ads that can reach specific audiences with precision.

How can Twitter help build brand awareness?

Twitter allows your business to gain visibility and interact with a broad audience where you can share content, engage with followers, and form relationships with customers.

Businesses can ensure their brand is represented accurately and effectively by creating a comprehensive Twitter profile. It should include a profile picture, a brief bio, and a link to your website. Additionally, businesses should add relevant hashtags to make sure their content reaches the right audience.

Another way to use Twitter to build brand awareness is to create and share content that resonates with your target audience. These could be blog posts, videos, infographics, or images showcasing your brand's message and values. Indeed, engaging directly with users can create connections and encourage them to follow your brand.

Finally, to maximise brand awareness, businesses can use Twitter advertising. These may  include promoted tweets, accounts, and trends, which can help increase brand visibility and reach a larger segment of users. Some businesses partner with influencers for more reach.

How can Twitter help increase website visitors?

By creating a solid presence on Twitter, you can build an audience interested in your website. Sharing relevant, engaging content on your page can help to attract potential customers, while using hashtags and keywords can help to ensure the right people see your content.

Engaging with other users can also draw attention to your page, as well as using Twitter Ads to reach and attract a larger audience. With a strategic approach, Twitter can be a powerful tool to help drive more people to your website.

What are some tips for using Twitter effectively for business?

1. Keep your messages brief: Since Twitter only allows 280 characters in a tweet, keep your messages concise and to the point.

2. Use visuals: Adding visuals to your tweets can help draw attention to them and make them stand out. Use images, GIFs and videos to help enhance your message.

3. Post frequently and consistently: Staying active on Twitter can help you gain more followers, so aim to post a few times each day.

4. Engage with others: Interacting with other users on Twitter can help build relationships and increase engagement. So make sure to reply promptly to comments and mentions, retweet other users, get involved with networking and join relevant discussions.

5. Monitor your analytics: Use Twitter’s analytics to measure the success of your campaigns and adjust your strategy if needed.

6. Use hashtags: Hashtags are a great way to categorise your posts and make them easier to find. Use relevant and popular hashtags in your tweets to help them reach a wider audience.

7. Grow your following: Grow your audience by boosting your profile with hashtags, strategic keywords, and phrases for maximum promotion. You can also promote your account by sharing it on other social media platforms and running ads

8. Make use of customer feedback cards: A Twitter customer feedback card is an effective way to gather feedback from customers in real-time, providing businesses with valuable insights into their customer's experience. By implementing a customer feedback card, businesses can improve customer satisfaction, build stronger relationships, and ultimately increase customer retention.

Yes, there is much to learn if you’re not familiar with the platform. However, one of the most important things is maintaining a consistent presence on Twitter. Post regularly and respond timeously.

How can businesses measure success on Twitter?

Measuring success on Twitter can be a challenge for businesses. However, with the right approach, you can track the performance of your Twitter presence and understand how it is affecting your bottom line.

First, you should decide on the goals you want to achieve. These include increasing brand awareness, driving website traffic, growing your follower count, or increasing engagement. Once you have a plan in mind, you can start measuring success.

One way to gauge success is by tracking the number of followers and looking for steady growth. You can also view the number of retweets, likes, and replies for each tweet and the total engagement for each post. This will give you an indication of how well your content resonates with your target audience.

You can also track website visits or app downloads generated by your Twitter presence. To monitor this, link your website or app in your profile, and use tracking links or UTM parameters in your tweets, which will give you a detailed view of the traffic that comes from Twitter.

By keeping track of these critical metrics, you can gauge the success of your Twitter presence.

Maximise Your Twitter Account with Mobile Service Cloud

In summary,  institutions or organisations that share global messages via Twitter, Twitter DM is an effective and affordable way to interact with their audience. With its ease of use and global reach, Twitter DM can help organisations to engage with their audience on a personal level and build meaningful relationships.

Similarly, for companies that want to start interacting with a relevant audience, Twitter is a powerful tool for targeting potential customers with sponsored content or Tweets, and adding a Direct Message link to start the conversation. With Twitter DM, businesses can listen to their customers' feedback and respond in real-time, strengthening customer relationships and increasing brand loyalty. Overall, Twitter DM is a valuable tool for businesses looking to engage with their target audience in a meaningful way.

CM.com's Mobile Service Cloud is a cloud-based platform providing a comprehensive suite of tools and services, allowing you to access and manage multiple messaging channels simultaneously. This one-stop-shop offers centralised support, automation, chatbots and more, resulting in next-level customer service.

Integrating your Twitter account into the Mobile Service Cloud allows you to provide customers with a five-star service experience anytime, anywhere.

With the Twitter for Business API integration, businesses can also take advantage of Twitter's advanced features, such as segmentation, targeting, and custom audiences. This allows businesses to send personalised messages to their customers, boosting engagement and increasing customer loyalty.

Will you be a part of the Twitter movement? Join your customers and start a conversation today.