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Promoting Your Startup with Twitter

Miles Burke
Miles Burke
Twitter marketing

Whenever I speak to founders about growth, discussion often leads to Twitter. Used correctly, this platform is a powerful tool for sharing your content, building relationships and getting more brand visibility. 

However, whilst most Western Australian startups have a Twitter account, they don’t utilise the platform properly. Let me share some of the knowledge I’ve gathered building up my clients Twitter accounts, let alone the @StartupPerth account, which currently has 10,772 followers and a whopping 267,000 impressions per month, built up in only seven months.

There are no shortcuts

As with all platforms, Twitter takes effort. Sure, you can subscribe to a service to mass follow people, another service to post related content, a service to watch for hashtags, etc, however the personal touch still needs to be involved.

Realistically, you need to set aside 15-30 minutes a day.

Even when I was on overseas holidays recently, I spent time each day re-tweeting, scheduling and replying (whilst on a lounge chair next to my pool).

Be regular

Twitter isn’t a platform to post once every few days. Ideally, you’ll be posting at least a few times every day. The default user timeline moves so quick, it’s easy for your 140 characters or less to get lost, and quick.

Pace your tweets out over the day, and be mindful of time zone. If your audience is local, sure, daylight hours work well, however if you are building an audience say in the USA, you’ll need to post (or schedule) your tweets at the optimum time for that time zone.

As such, the @StartupPerth account tweets between 6-10 times every day, mostly during business hours or early evening.

Have a tight content focus

The reason @StartupPerth works so well is that it is directly speaking to startup founders and the ecosystem of Western Australia. I have a simple question I ask myself with each tweet ‘Does this add value to me as a founder?’.

I use a few tools to share content automatically from 52 local startups with blogs, including Techboard and //Startup News, and have another 140 startups or startup-related WA accounts in a private ‘list’ which I use to retweet a few times a day.

Twitter Analytics
Screen capture, Twitter Analytics

Build audience

The easiest way to build an audience is to research other accounts your targeted Twitter users follow, and follow their audience. That will appear in their ‘Followers’ list, and there is a great chance they will follow you back.

Second tip is to share their content. Sure, you may think that this other account is a ‘competitor’ to you, however there’s nothing to be gained from promoting in a vacuum. Sharing a few of their tweets may make it more likely for them to reciprocate back, sharing yours.

Use hashtags

Just about every tweet that @StartupPerth shares, has a related hashtag. You’ll notice they aren’t the same ones, either. More and more people are using hashtags as a way to discover new content and new content sources, so use them, but wisely.

Sites like hashtagify.me allow you to type in a topic hashtag, and find related hashtags. For example, #startup uncovers #smallbusiness, #growthhacking #startuplife and more.

Engage your Audience

Twitter isn’t a one directional platform, it’s not somewhere to blurt your thoughts and never engage. Take time to thank people for following you, thank users for retweets and answer peoples tweets to you.

Be mindful though that people who have notifications on, or look at your profile will see all of your public tweets, so thanking 40 people a day isn’t a smart move, it can get very annoying.

Don’t use auto-DM’s 

It’s very tempting to jump on the automated ‘thanks for following me’ direct message bandwagon, but I can assure you, that you’ll come across spammy and just downright annoying.

Summary

To recap, accept there are no shortcuts, be regularly tweeting, consider the content you’re putting out there, work on building an audience and engaging with them.

If you found this article useful, I encourage you to follow @StartupNewsAus and myself @milesb.

Get more advice and actionable insights to help you grow your startup.

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Miles Burke

Miles Burke

Miles is the founder of employee survey start-up, 6Q, Founder & MD of an award-winning Perth digital marketing agency, and curates the Australian Software Guide.
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