How to use Twitter for small business marketing

Twitter is a social media platform with several unique features that can help you market your business. Learn about each of Twitter’s unique features and how you can use them to advertise your business in this guide.

Find out: 

• What makes Twitter unique
• Twitter’s features and how to use them
• How to market your business with Twitter
• How Countingup can help

Creating efficient marketing campaigns for your new business takes time and expertise. As you’re trying to get your new venture off the ground, learn how Countingup can help.

The key difference between Twitter and other social media platforms lies in the posts (or ‘tweets’) themselves. Twitter requires tweets to be less than 280 characters and doesn’t allow users to edit posts once uploaded. These restrictions on user tweets have created a fast-paced micro-blogging environment, allowing users to discuss topical events in real-time.

Because Twitter prioritises fresh and real-time sharing, newer tweets tend to appear at the top of your Twitter feed while older ones appear further down. Marketing your business with Twitter requires you to understand the different features and mediums you can use to share your marketing materials. We’ve provided a breakdown of the various features available on Twitter to date.

A ‘tweet’ refers to any regular post made on Twitter. A tweet can contain text, website links, images, videos and more. 

Using the ‘add tweet’ feature when creating a tweet, you can post a series of linked tweets, known as a ‘thread’. Threads are a way of getting around the character limit by breaking up your message and marketing content into tweet-able chunks. You can also use the ‘reply’ feature to create or add to threads later. 

When marketing your business, posting images and video content can be an excellent way to catch people’s interest initially. Then, by creating a thread, you can signal to other users that they can learn more about your product/service/advertising promotion in the thread you create below. Try to use a mix of text and image/video content, and link to your website for customers to easily find out more.

You’re also able to reply to other Twitter users’ tweets (using the same reply feature) or mention them (tweeting ‘@’ followed by their username). This can be useful if customers tweet your business sharing a happy experience with your product or with a complaint.

Twitter allows users to share tweets in two ways: retweeting and quote tweeting. 

Retweeting is where a tweet is shared with your followers as you see it. This can be useful for you when retweeting happy customer testimonials or to remind customers that your business’ giveaway is closing soon.

Quote tweeting allows you to add a caption above the initial tweet, creating a slightly different version than the one your saw for your followers. Using the examples above, you can quote tweet “Thank you!” to the happy customer or “Closing soon!” about your competition. Quote tweets also count as your own tweets and can therefore be retweeted or replied to by others, which can be useful for your business’ visibility. 

Getting engagement on Twitter is key as this can allow your business’ posts to stay popular and appear on users’ feeds even hours or days after being published.

Polls encourage interaction between users, asking them to vote on various questions for a small window of time. Polls are a flexible engagement tool, depending on the question you publish, allowing your account to be a more active hub of customer interactions and feedback. 

For example, polls allow your business to ask your followers/customers for feedback on what your account can be sharing more of, or whether they’re cat or dog people. 

Hashtags allow you to ‘tag’ tweets by typing ‘#’ followed by a word or term you’d like to use. 

Hashtags act as internal links to other Twitter areas, showing users all tweets linked with the specified tag. Hashtags allow you to contribute to existing conversations or to create your own. 

For example, when hosting a giveaway to customers, you can ask them to tag all their tweet entries with ‘#[your business’ name]Giveaway’. Because hashtags act as an internal link within Twitter, you can find out how successful your promotion is from the number of tweets with your specified tag and pick a giveaway winner more easily.

Hashtags can be an acronym or can include numbers. For example, a tweet about the Olympics can be tagged with ‘#Olympics2024’. Words are generally more accessible for new customers to understand the tag’s meaning, so they should be used more. 

‘Fleets’ are content posted by a user which is only available to see for 24 hours (similar to Instagram or Snapchat stories). Fleets are not shared on Twitter’s feeds the same way tweets are. Instead, fleets are only viewable on user’s profiles or via a bar on Twitter’s homepage.

Fleets can be a great way to entice customers with ‘behind the scenes’ information that adds a personal touch to your marketing, or to hype up customers for big announcements.

Twitter also has a direct messaging platform, ‘moments’, GIFs, and live video broadcasting. However, with the main features outlined above, you can begin to market your business effectively.

Twitter also has advertising and paid promotion tools available to businesses to help find your customer audience easier and faster. For more information on how to market your business with social media using ads and other content ideas, read our article How to Use Social Media for Business. 

We break down the difference between marketing your business with and without paid promotion tools and suggest content ideas for your marketing to make your advertising more engaging and effective.

Marketing a new business on your own is challenging: it takes time and expertise that you’ll need to develop.

Joining trending Twitter topics and sharing eye-catching graphics all while launching a new business means you’ll need to find time to spare. 

Using the Countingup app, we can give you just that.

The business current account and accounting software in one app, automates your financial admin. It means you can stay focused on creating great marketing content and attracting more business.

With automated invoicing, handy expense reminders and real-time profit and loss reporting, you can have all your business’ key financial metrics available at a glance and already taken care of. Find out more here and sign up for free today.