Most of us are familiar with Twitter as a great communication tool and a way to stay updated with current information.
But did you know you can also use Twitter for lead generation?
If you didn’t know already…
Twitter is a virtual goldmine for businesses.
It’s a leading platform today with a global audience and a great way to generate more leads you can convert to clients and customers.
Here are the best ways to attract leads on Twitter and boost your clientele!
Grab your notepads, and let’s get started.
Quick Summary
Before we kick off, here’s a quick rundown of 9 ways you can use Twitter for lead generation.
- Have a separate Twitter account for your business
- Be active
- Utilize your Twitter profile
- Pin relevant content
- Engage with your target audience
- Use Twitter’s advanced search tool
- Organize a Twitter contest
- Gain recognition in your industry
- Use Twitter ads
Twitter can be used as a funnel to attract your target audience, no matter your field or industry.
Tweeting, retweeting, liking, sharing, and commenting on posts, among others, can go a long way in helping you gain recognition and customers.
That’s not all!
Boosting your business on Twitter will help your brand gain positive visibility, build your network, and attract leads.
For more tips on using social media channels for lead generation, check out my free 5-Step Masterclass training.
How Can I Use Twitter for Lead Generation?
1. Have a Separate Twitter Account for Your Business
Image credit: Flat design tweet mockup
If you want to generate leads on Twitter, it’s essential you have an account for both business and personal reasons.
Using one account is not advisable for personal and business purposes.
You may think it’s a good idea to use your personal account for your business because of the followers you already have. You bet it’ll save you the stress of creating a new account and starting from scratch.
However, the truth is that creating a separate account for your business will give you more headway in promoting your brand.
It will enable you to separate your social media persona from your business and strategize effectively to build a professional brand that will attract leads.
Even Twitter’s founders have their individual accounts alongside separate accounts for Twitter and its other products.
A good tip is to set up the business account and build anticipation and traction for your business before launching it.
You can still promote your business on your personal account by retweeting and sharing content from your business account. You can also tweet about your business and encourage your audience to support and patronize you.
2. Be Active
Image credit: Flat design tweet mockup
Another way to use Twitter for lead generation is to be proactive on the platform.
To expand your business and attract prospective clients, you must maintain an online presence.
You don’t have to be active 24/7, though.
The key is to figure out when people are more active on Twitter and schedule your tweets accordingly.
If you check your Twitter analytics, it will tell you when your audience is most active.
In addition, you can use Twitter analytics to examine your account’s performance and determine the best time to post and achieve significant engagements.
Now…
Aside from scheduling your tweets to reach your target audience, you should focus on your content.
Share content relevant to your brand, industry, and target audience, and make them creative and engaging. In addition, it’s not advisable to post promotional content only, as it can reduce your chances of generating leads.
To attract prospective clients, you should have a good balance of the content you share. This includes your business content, content relevant to your target audience and professionals in your industry, and your brand’s promotional content.
3. Utilize Your Twitter Profile
Image credit: Flat design tweet mockup
A well optimized Twitter profile can help you generate more leads on this platform.
Your Twitter profile allows you to improve your brand image and encourage other users to follow and patronize you.
To make your Twitter profile an effective lead-generation tool, you need to work on your bio, header image, and profile picture.
Provide valuable information about your business in your bio and inform your target audience about the benefits of patronizing you. A bonus is to include relevant keywords and hashtags to let them know you have what they’re looking for.
In addition, you can embed links to your most popular content, website, blog, or newsletter. This will help them learn more about your business and can increase their willingness to patronize you.
It’s also advisable to include a link to the site where they can purchase your products or services directly.
Concerning your header image and profile picture, you have two options.
You can use a picture of your brand’s logo as the header image and one of you and your team as your profile photo, or vice-versa.
The first option will boost your brand recognition and authority among other users. Opting for the second will help people know the faces behind the brand and build familiarity with you, unlike a faceless brand.
Either way, both images will increase your brand awareness and present you as a reliable business people can patronize.
Before you go…
Remember to use high-quality images when showing off your brand or the faces behind it.
4. Pin Relevant Content
Image credit: Flat design tweet mockup
One of the quickest and easiest ways to use Twitter for lead generation is to pin a lead magnet at the top of your Twitter profile.
Having a pinned tweet on your page shows that it is something people HAVE to see when they visit your account.
So, they’ll naturally be drawn to it.
As such, you should think carefully about what you decide to pin.
It can be a tweet that states your business objectives alongside a call to action for people to patronize you, join your online community, or subscribe to your newsletter.
Alternatively, you can pin content about a discount you are currently running, a contest you’re organizing, or a new product or service you’re selling.
Another thing you can pin on your page is your video sales letter. This is a visually appealing and creative way to pitch your business to your target audience.
A good tip is to present your business as a solution to one or more problems they currently face. This will help showcase value, generate leads, and even immediate clients!
With your video sales letter, you have an automated way to generate leads without pitching to people individually. Furthermore, pinning it on your page makes it more accessible when people visit your account.
To top it off…
You can find more tips on creating a persuasive video sales letter to generate leads in step 2 of my free Masterclass training.
5. Engage with Your Target Audience
Image credit: Text message popups
Using free content to generate leads on Twitter is essential for all business owners.
Sharing information relevant to your target audience allows you to interact with them and market your brand directly.
To engage with your target market effectively, get information on their interests and tweet accordingly. If they follow the latest trends or like to use hashtags, you should tweet similarly to encourage them to interact with you.
When you achieve this, ensure you respond to their comments, answer questions, appreciate their opinions, and like their tweets. This will give your brand a hospitable quality and attract more people to your business.
Another tip is to share solutions to your industry’s problems, as it can earn you a reputation as a problem solver in your line of work. This will assure people that they will benefit from interacting with you.
You can also retweet and share reviews from customers. This will present you as a credible brand that cares about feedback and customer satisfaction. As a result, people will be more willing to purchase your products or services.
6. Use Twitter’s Advanced Search Tool
Image URL: Flat design tweet mockup
With Twitter’s advanced search tool, you can seek out prospective clients who can convert into leads for your business.
It enables you to obtain information about leads to determine how well they fit into your target audience. It also helps you to create content based on your target market’s interests at the time.
One of the ways to use this tool is by searching keywords and hashtags that are popular in your industry. This will help you identify current topics that your target audience is interested in.
Then, you can join the conversation by engaging with their tweets, answering questions, and even following them. You can also start a new one by tweeting about the topics and inviting them to interact with you.
Conversing with your target audience enables you to network with them and display your knowledge about your industry. Additionally, it will increase awareness about your brand and make people more interested in what you offer.
That’s not all…
You can also filter your search geographically to locate leads near you, gain recognition among them, and build familiarity.
Another bonus of using this tool is gaining information about your competitors’ activities, so you can strategize better and have the edge over them.
7. Organize a Twitter Contest
Image URL: Media contest page
Another way to generate leads on Twitter is by organizing contests.
Ensure your contest promotes your business and lets people know what you offer.
To do this well, you should have something enticing to offer. It can be a product or service you’re giving for free, a significant discount, or something related.
Then, include CTAs for the competitors to get a number of people to follow you and engage with your content within a timeframe. You can select one or more competitors who bring in the highest numbers as the contest’s winners.
When done well, you’ll earn more followers and engagements from people who are actually interested in your business.
8. Gain Recognition in Your Industry
Image URL: Illuminated neon icons
Networking with professionals in your industry will earn you authority, recognition, and support and boost lead generation for your business.
Search hashtags and keywords to discover the latest conversations in your industry and join them with relevant input. You can also use Twitter lists to keep up with your industry’s activities and the professionals you’re following.
This will help you create relevant content that will showcase your knowledge about your industry and attract people in your field.
It’s advisable to follow industry professionals that are knowledgeable and experienced. You’d be surprised how much easier it’ll be for you to generate leads with solid advice and support from those who have been in the same situation you’re in right now.
For more insight on how to learn from experienced professionals in your industry, watch my 5-Step Masterclass training.
9. Use Twitter Ads
Image URL: Tweetstorm concept illustration
Twitter ads are a great way to boost your brand recognition, reach a wider audience, and generate more leads.
From tweet promotions to video campaigns, Twitter ads will boost your followers and engagements.
To get started…
Choose a topic your target audience is interested in, and create creative and catchy content relating it to your business and what you offer.
I recommend using ads with a sales funnel for best results.
Alternatively, you can use your most popular tweet among your target audience or new video content for increased visual appeal. Including keywords and hashtags can also help to increase your reach.
Then, add a clear CTA, whether to patronize you directly or book an appointment with you.
One more thing…
It’s advisable to select Website clicks or conversions as your campaign objective so you can track the number of people who click on your CTA.
Twitter ads is one of many great paid advertising channels you can use for lead generation.
10. Build a target audience using Twitter tools
With Followerwonk, you can search for people based on keywords, such as job titles and location.
For example, you can search for people with the following job titles:
- Managing director
- CEO
- Founder
- President
- Director
- Business owner
And then you’ll see a list of results:
Play around with different keywords and see who you find!
Then you can follow any of these relevant people. As soon as you follow them, they’ll be notified and if they like your Twitter profile, they will follow you back.
Crowdfire is another Twitter tools where you can do something similar. You can follow people based on the keywords in their profile simply by clicking on “Keyword Follow”
You can also “copy followers” from accounts that your target audience is likely to follow, such as other organisations or your competitors.
11. Generate leads with Twitter direct messaging (Twitter DMs)
Another way to generate leads on Twitter is by using the Twitter direct messaging feature.
What should you say in these messages?
For a message to be effective on Twitter, it must:
1. Be targeted (not random messages to random people)
2. Provide value (not just trying to sell your product or services)
Your first conversation with a prospect should always be to help and provide value to them.
How can you help your target audience and provide value to them?
The best way is to offer them free content.
Content such as videos, guides, blog posts, articles, webinars, etc.
(And no, a “free consultation” doesn’t count as “free content” – that’s still too salesy at this stage in your marketing and sales process)
One of our most popular lead generation strategies on Twitter is to invite potential customers to free webinars. We normally generate about 100 leads each month from Twitter by inviting potential clients to an automated webinar on social media.
Whether you use webinars, a free guide, an article, a video or something else – remember to give away your free content in return for a name and email address (that’s what we count as a “lead”).
What if you don’t have any content to give away?
Believe it or not – that’s still not a problem. The great thing about Twitter is you can have conversations with your potential customers before you’ve created the content.
We’ve done this many times in the past (for ourselves and with clients) to test and see if a piece of content will be interesting to those in our target audience.
For example, we’ve sent out a message to people on Twitter along the lines of:
Hi [Their Name], I’m thinking of running a webinar on “How your business can generate leads using LinkedIn” next month and I wanted to see if that’s something you’d be interested in for you and your business? If so, just enter your name and email here [link to landing page] and I’ll keep you in the loop once it’s ready.
This message does two great things.
1. I can test a piece of content with people in my target audience to see if the content is worth creating in the first place
2. I can easily generate leads without any content.
Of course, you still need to create the content at some point in the future, but if you have a list of people who say “Yes, I’m interested in that!” and those leads are your potential customers, then why wouldn’t you create that piece of content?
In the LinkedIn webinar example above, we actually generated over 100 leads; people who said “Yes!” to attending a future webinar I will create on LinkedIn.
The amazing thing is we didn’t even use fancy landing pages. We just set up a basic Google Form page:
Top tip: Remember, the goal of lead generation is always to capture your potential customers name and email by providing something of value – usually in the form of a free piece of content.
The Bottom Line
Twitter is a great platform that can help you increase your brand awareness and authority and boost your clientele.
Utilizing these strategies effectively will present your business well and make a good impression on Twitter users. As such, you will get a significant boost in engagements, followers, and lead generation.
When you get these leads, it’s important to keep the conversation going and ensure to convert them to customers.
For more direction on generating leads and turning them into clients, my free 5-Step Masterclass training is here to guide you.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Can I generate leads and appointments through Twitter?
Yes! There are different strategies you can use to boost lead generation on Twitter. This includes maintaining an online presence, engaging with your target audience, and sharing relevant and insightful content.
You can also enlist help and support from professionals in your industry. In addition, including a video sales letter on your page will help you attract leads without having to pitch to them individually.
Do I have to pay for marketing services to generate leads on Twitter?
Of course not! Sure, there are many credible growth marketing services out there that can help you generate leads. However, you can attract leads without having to spend money.
From brushing up your Twitter profile to utilizing Twitter’s advanced search tool and boosting engagements, you can generate leads on your own.
Ashley Davis (or ‘Ash’ for short) is the CEO & Founder of Skyline Social. For over 15 years, Ash has been helping business owners get high-quality leads, appointments, and clients each month. He has extensive experience working with B2B & B2C industries in finance, insurance, marketing, sales and beyond. Learn more about the author here.