Top tips: How Twitter can help you market your facilities and generate new booking enquiries…

Twitter is an extremely popular social media platform and is used by a number of different individuals and organisations. Twitter tends to differ from other social media platforms as the focus is so great for public conversation and exposure. If you understand it well, Twitter has the ability to increase your online exposure and awareness of your facilities for hire. Below are our top five tips that will help your business to thrive on Twitter

1. Ensure your username and profile picture are branded to your organisation

Keep things simple, using your organisation name as the username and your logo or image of your venue as the profile picture. It is important that your username and profile picture are recognisable so that anyone visiting your page knows exactly who you are and what you do. If you’re successful enough that your posts gain serious exposure, it will be your username that will be ‘trending’, creating great brand awareness.

2. Build your page

Make sure your profile is set up and isn’t unfinished. Having a good cover photo that fits nicely on both mobile and desktop is a good place to start, this can be an image that explains your business in a little more detail or even something that fits well with the look of your page. You also have the ability to add a Bio (160 characters) and a link to your website. Utilise this and ensure it is updated regularly.

3. Make connections

Once you have your profile set up, it is important to start ’following’ people. These can be those who are relevant in your industry including competitors, suppliers and potential customers.  To promote your venue hire think about following local groups and clubs, franchisees, sporting teams and similar, who might want to hear about what you have on offer.  Following as many people in your industry as you can is important as it will allow you to build awareness within your community. After you have followed related accounts or pages your newsfeed will be full of relevant and interesting posts about your business as well as other pertinent organisations in your area.

4. Engage with your audience

Twitter is one of the best platforms out there for engaging and interacting with businesses and customers as well as the general public, so start retweeting, commenting and joining in on conversations from those you are following and watch your page activity grow organically. You don’t have to dedicate a huge amount of time a day on this -you can manage a productive Twitter account with just 20-30 minutes per day.

5. Don’t always be selling

A common mistake that organisations tend to make, is that they try to sell their products or services all of the time. Twitter isn’t a platform designed necessarily for out and out selling, it’s more focussed on engaging with and generating interest from your customers whilst targeting new audiences. This is not to say you can’t showcase what you have on offer, but more effort should be put into creating a relationship and giving a reason for your followers to want to find out more.

In summary, Twitter is a useful platform for businesses and organisations.  If you haven’t already created an account, set one up sooner rather than later, so you don’t get left behind! If you add these five tips to your Twitter strategy and continue to be proactive, then you will soon create a great platform for raising awareness of your product or service. For more information on how your business can benefit from Twitter, contact me on Domenico.forgione@kajima.co.uk.