If your business is not on Twitter Nigeria in 2022, you are clearly missing out. With close to forty million Nigerian users doing business, expanding their networks, interacting with brands and companies, and sharing live updates on matters arising on a wide range of topics, Twitter is a gold mine for anyone looking to take advantage of its limitless market space and grow their business.
To Tweet or Not to Tweet
When we ask business owners why they stay away from Twitter, top among the reasons they give is that Twitter Nigeria is too intellectual, they then add that people of Twitter are savage, that is they hop on and amplify errors. And so, in order to avoid bad PR, they just ignore the platform altogether.
While these are valid fears, excluding one’s business from the conversations going on Twitter will not stop the conversations from happening. People will always discuss brands. So, why not be there to speak for yourself when such discussions take place? The truth is that you stand a higher chance of building a positive online reputation when you are on Twitter, talking about your business. But first, you need to understand how Twitter works.
How Twitter Nigeria Works
When you get on Twitter, you are immediately hit by all the possibilities. But don’t get carried away, you need to start by creating a badass profile. Your business profile plays a huge role in projecting your brand to the public.
On Twitter Nigeria, you can easily set up your profile without a hassle.
First, update your profile by adding a short biography, a clear profile picture, a profile name also known as a handle, and a profile image header. All these elements come together to reflect what your business stands for and how interested customers can contact you. For a business account, it’s okay to use your logo as the display picture and your business name as your handle. For instance, our Twitter handle is @slvrwlfdigitale; yours could be @ruffandbubble or @teasandcakes. With your handle, keep it short, sweet, and memorable. If you need further help with setting up a Twitter account, we have you covered with our post on Brilliant Branding Ideas for Nigerian Businesses. After your profile is set up, it is time to focus on your content strategy.
What is your content strategy?
If your profile is the pan, good content is the cake. You can’t grow your business on Twitter without having a well-thought-out plan for the content you want to post and this goes beyond just words. 97% of Twitter users focus on visuals so you need to be creative. Having really good graphics as part of your content is important for boosting engagement on your posts, in other words, you can say more by typing less. Typically, Twitter gives you a limit of two hundred and eighty characters per tweet but with good graphics, you should be able to tell an engaging visual story to your audience while keeping your caption short, fun, and relatable.
For Twitter Nigeria, it is best to share simple, useful, and relatable content that evokes emotions. When creating your content, incorporating your brand colours into the graphics cards and videos will create a sense of uniformity and give a nice flow to the content on your page; once you have done this, it is time to start tweeting.
The Tweets you put out go straight to the general Twitter feed and when you have followers, your content appears directly on their feed. Let us talk some more about followers.
Organic Followers vs Paid Followers
Organic followers are Twitter users who find and follow your account without the help of a paid advert or promotion. These followers do not need an incentive to follow your account. While paid followers are Twitter users who follow your account when you run a paid promotion, an audience-building advertisement, or organise a free product or service giveaway. As a business account on Twitter, the best way to start is by building your organic reach. Nobody likes a Ponzi scheme; people want to see authentic value-added and growth. To achieve this, focus on posting content that is unique, relatable, and in step with recent happenings in your niche. The key is to establish your place in your industry and make it easier for potential customers to trust your business.
How to Build your Organic Twitter Following
1. Tweet regularly
Posting relatable, on-brand and relevant content from your business account regularly will make you visible on Twitter feeds. The more of you people see, the more engagement you will get on your tweets. When people know your business to provide content that is relevant and unique, they are more likely to follow your account and share your content with other users who might find it useful. We know posting consistently for long stretches of time can be tasking, a great way to tackle this is to have a pre-planned content schedule for your tweets.
2. Follow the right accounts
As a business on Twitter, you need to be aware of recent happenings in your areas of interest. An excellent way to do this is to follow the right accounts. These are the kinds of business and individual accounts you want to turn on your notifications for so you can listen, learn and stay on top of important topics. They have a large following and they share the same values and information relevant to your business. Following these accounts makes their tweets appear directly on your feed. You can use this information as a valuable resource to join real-time conversations and share your opinion on topics that are relevant to your business sphere as they occur. When Twitter users notice that you have the answers to questions and opinions on relevant subjects, it can boost your brand integrity which in turn increases your organic reach.
3. Interact with your audience.
Interacting with your audience is a powerful way to connect with them while building your loyal customer base. When people reach out to you on Twitter, be sure to respond to their inquiries by using their ”@” when answering their questions or responding to conversations they start with you. You can also offer to deal with more complex situations directly with your customer using Twitter’s Direct Messaging option. This kind of interaction gives your business a human face and strengthens your social media presence. When people know they are communicating with a brand that cares, it keeps them happy and eager to share, mention you in tweets, and retweet your content.
You can also reach out to your audience before they mention you. For instance, have your audience join you on Twitter Spaces for insightful and fun chats on topics that are clearly connected with or related to your business. Proactively reaching out to your audience in this way helps you set the narrative about your business and keeps you on top of conversations as they happen.
4. Use Twitter trends and hashtags
Twitter trends and hashtags are powerful tools for research. Find hashtags related to your audience’s current interactions. The Twitter Explore page is constantly being updated with trending topics. You can search this section to understand what people are talking about in Nigeria and use it as a guide when creating your content. But don’t jump on every trend or go crazy with unrelated hashtags. That would only make you appear uninformed and unprofessional.
Are you Ready to Grow your Business?
Easier said than done you might say. We agree it might be a little overwhelming, but it is not impossible.
To summarise you need to focus on these four things:
- Set up a clear and catchy profile with your business name
- Have a well-thought-out content strategy
- Build your organic reach by posting regularly, following the right people, and interacting with your audience.
- Use Twitter trends and hashtags
Remember that organic growth takes time and a lot of effort and sometimes the results can be painstakingly slow, but don’t be discouraged. Slowly but surely, you will see the desired results.
With a good understanding of how Twitter works, you might decide to use Twitter, not just as a storefront, but to incorporate some form of online after-sales service or customer care into your bouquet. If you are wondering how you can do this, we are here to get you started with a free consultation.