How to Promote Your Small Business on X (formerly Twitter)

X (formerly Twitter) has over 300 million users—and it’s still growing.¹ Most major brands take advantage of X to get exposure through viral tweets, hashtags, and influencers. Even small businesses can benefit from spreading the word about their brand on Twitter because it requires little to no social media marketing budget to increase brand awareness.

If you’re wondering how to promote your business on X, you’re in luck. Even if you’re not familiar with the platform, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know to get started on X, including setting up your account, using the platform, and promoting your business for free.

Is X (Twitter) Good For Promoting Business?

Twitter is excellent for staying on top of the hottest trends and global news content. The platform presents an opportunity for brands to tap into the social interests of their followers.

Benefits of promoting your business on Twitter include:

• Audience insight
• Brand awareness
• Customer service and feedback
• Community-building

You can explore trending topics and hashtags, similar to hashtags on a Facebook page, to find out what content your audience is interested in and use them to build your marketing strategies. Since you can easily interact with users through replies and direct messages, you can provide one-on-one customer support or receive immediate feedback from your customers.

Essentially, Twitter gives you direct access to your brand’s community, which is advantageous for building up your business’ image and finding potential customers.

How Do You Promote Your Business on X (Twitter)?

The best way to gain traction for your business is to create Twitter ads and use Twitter promotion tools to get more eyes on your content. Twitter’s paid advertising options allow you to reach out to a custom audience of your business’s potential customers. These include:

• Twitter ads. Operating much like social media marketing on other platforms, Twitter has tools for you to create an ad campaign. You can choose your audience, create ad copy, and set a budget.
• Promoted tweets. You can pay to promote a single tweet to push it out to the timelines of users who don’t follow you—but it will say “promoted” on the bottom. Promoted tweets are a simple way to find potential Twitter followers and expose your business.
• Promoted accounts. When you promote your account, you enable it to appear in users’ “Who to follow” sections. The users who see it will be those that have shown interest in topics related to your business, making it helpful in finding your audience on Twitter.
• Promoted trends. Unlike promoted tweets and accounts, all Twitter users can see promoted trends at the top of the list of trending topics.

How Much Does It Cost To Promote Your Business on X (Twitter)?

Twitter marketing works much like other social media platforms where you choose your own budget for advertising. Even if you have a small marketing budget, you can put your Twitter ads out there for however much you’re willing to spend. Twitter has no minimum spend.

When you create a social media ad campaign, you’ll identify your Twitter marketing objectives and target audience, determining what you’ll get billed for when someone acts on your ad.

Examples of billable actions:

• Impressions
• Video views
• App clicks
• Website link clicks
• Tweet engagements
• Follows

Twitter advertising operates on a bidding system and will recommend a bid based on the options you choose for targeting. Once you set a daily budget, which can be any amount you want, Twitter will not go over that amount.

How to Advertise Your Business on X (Twitter) for Free

• Use hashtags, especially ones that are trending. Having hashtags in your tweet increases the chance that people will discover your content, but make sure they’re on topic. Stick with one or two hashtags since using too many can hurt your engagement.
• Engage with your audience. Twitter lets you interact with your social media audience through replies, retweets, and Twitter chats. Being active and having lots of positive engagement on Twitter will boost your visibility and gain more followers.
• Interact with influencers. When you reply to Twitter influencers, you have a chance for a massive audience to see your tweet. Rather than mentioning your business or product, reply with something engaging or interesting enough to make people want to check out your Twitter profile.
• Live tweets. Live-tweeting is when you follow an event live and tweet your reaction as things happen. Make sure you use trending hashtags to get exposure. This is common with sports and awards shows like the Oscars.

How to Use X (Twitter) for Beginners

Twitter can be confusing for those who haven’t spent much time on social networks. The platform has unique terminology and unwritten “rules” for using Twitter. Knowing them is essential for developing an effective Twitter strategy for your business. A few terms to know include:

• Retweet: Retweeting is sharing a tweet with your followers. When you retweet someone else’s post, it will show on your Twitter followers’ timelines as well as your profile.
• Timeline: Represented by a home button, the timeline shows the tweets and retweets of the accounts you follow.
• Hashtag: A hashtag is a word or phrase preceded by a pound sign (#) relevant to the tweet’s topic. When you click one, you’ll see a list of people’s tweets that have used that hashtag.
• Direct Message (DM): When someone DMs you, it means they sent you a private message.
• Twitter lists: You can create lists of accounts to make timelines specific to a category, such as a list of political Twitter accounts.
• Trending: Twitter shows words and hashtags that are currently trending, meaning that many people are tweeting them.
• TweetDeck: A free tool provided by Twitter, TweetDeck allows you more control over your tweets than just using the website. You can organize your feeds, track relevant hashtags, and schedule tweets in advance.
• Twitter Analytics: You can find Twitter Analytics on your profile. It allows you to track impressions, tweets, and follower activity to determine how well your Twitter marketing strategies are performing.
• Twitter cards: You can embed tweets on your website or blog posts to drive traffic to your Twitter profile.

How to Create a Business Account on X (Twitter)

You can create a business account on Twitter in these few easy steps:

1. On the Twitter site, click “Sign up.”
2. Choose a Twitter handle. It should be the name of your business, but if someone else took it first, you could add a call to action (such as @ShopSallysBoutique).
3. Add a profile photo using your business logo, and upload a cover photo that promotes your products or services.
4. Write your Twitter bio. You have 160 characters to state a compelling description of your business. Remember to include your contact details and essential info, like email, location, and website.
5. Follow other Twitter accounts related to your business. You’ll want to join the same social media circles as your target audience.

Business Account vs. Personal on X (Twitter)

You may be considering promoting your business using a personal Twitter account rather than creating a business account or vice versa, but there are advantages to having both.

A business Twitter account with your logo, news about your brand, product releases, etc., increases your brand recognition. People will see your business’ name whenever you tweet or reply to a tweet, and checking out your Twitter profile will lead them to your products or services. Everything you do on this account will be associated with your business.

However, it’s not a bad idea to have a personal Twitter account. Using a personal social media account allows you to have a Twitter presence as the business owner and personal interactions with other users. You’ll have the opportunity to subtly promote your business by having a link to your website or retweeting posts from your business profile.

5 Types of Business Tweet Examples

1. Brand-related content. A tweet can be up to 280 characters long, which is somewhat limiting, but it pushes you to be creative. Visual content like photos is more eye-catching and generally performs better in engagement. Your content doesn’t always need to be a sales pitch, but it should be related to your business.
2. Sales and promotions. Whenever your business has a sale or limited-time promotion, Twitter is perfect for sharing this info and driving traffic to your site, especially if you use the platform’s marketing tools.
3. Polls. Conducting a poll with your followers can drive up engagement. You could ask for opinions about a product or gauge your audience’s interests with simple questions. Creating polls that are funny and entertaining makes people more likely to respond.
4. Relevant articles. Sharing or retweeting brand-related posts can start conversations with your followers. It also makes people more likely to want to follow you if you have a solid stream of good content.
5. Media coverage. When your business makes it in the news or gets recognition, you can share it with your Twitter followers to increase your business’s credibility.

Disadvantages of Using X (Twitter) for Your Business

• It’s time-consuming. To use Twitter to its full advantage, you have to stay very active. This can be difficult for owners of small businesses who don’t have people dedicated to running their social media accounts.
• Complaints are visible to everyone. If someone decides to complain about your business or its products, they can publicly tweet their negative comment at you. This can hurt your image as your followers might see the tweet. Politely responding can help, but you’ll have to reply immediately to make any difference.
• Your content is limited to 280 characters. It can be difficult to convey essential information with such a short message, so tweeting can require more effort than posting on other social media networks.
• Building a following is challenging. Gaining traction on Twitter can take years and require a significant investment of time and money towards marketing.
• Fake accounts & spam. Twitter has a problem with fake accounts, which can be used to spread misinformation and spam. Some spam and inappropriate content can be harmful to users, especially vulnerable users such as children, which your tweets may show up next to.
• Your tweets will get buried. Overall, Twitter sees 6,000 tweets per second. With so much competition, many of your tweets will get swept away in your followers’ Twitter feeds.

Despite its shortcomings, Twitter is still a free marketing tool for your business. Now that you know more about how to promote your business on Twitter and what to expect when you get started, you can dive into the Twitterverse and spread the word about your business!

Considering using Threads by Meta

If you’re looking for a Twitter alternative, you may want to consider Threads by Meta. Threads is a new social media platform that is similar to Twitter in many ways, but with a few key differences. One of the biggest differences between Threads and Twitter is that Threads is more focused on creators. Threads makes it easy for creators to share their content with their followers and to engage with their community.

If you have the resources, it may be beneficial to use both for your business. By using both Twitter and Threads, businesses can reach a wider audience and build deeper relationships with customers. Twitter is a good platform for reaching a large audience and building brand awareness, while Threads is a good platform for building deeper relationships with customers and for sharing more in-depth content.

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Resources:

1. Number of monthly active Twitter users worldwide from 1st quarter 2010 to 1st quarter 2019