Want to use Twitter to drive website traffic and get sales leads but not sure where to start?

Do you feel like it’s too hard to squeeze out the time to manage another social media channel when you’re already doing 100 other things just to keep your business running?

If you want to use Twitter to 10X your website traffic and drive legitimate leads into your funnel, this post is going to be your best resource.

You may already be familiar with some of these strategies, but I’ll be sharing some tactics that aren’t common knowledge, so that you can learn how to generate leads at scale from Twitter.

Here’s what I’m going to be sharing:

1. Why you should spend time on Twitter – especially if you are selling a product or service to a niche B2B audience
2. How to create a great Twitter profile and content that attracts your target audience
3. Unusual keyword strategies that will help you hone in on potential business leads
4. How to engage Twitter users in an authentic way to bring new leads into your sales funnel
5. Tools that will help you save time while building up your social prospect list     

Is Twitter really a good place to find sales leads?

You might be thinking – is my target audience even on Twitter? Isn’t Twitter just too noisy at this point?  

Before you turn away, consider the following stats about this social network.

The number of Twitter users worldwide is expected to approach 370 million in 2020.

In 2017, 75% of B2B marketers worldwide have used Twitter to market their business.

What’s great about Twitter is that it’s a channel where customers actually want to interact with brands.  In fact, “companies that use Twitter have average of two times more leads per month than those who doesn’t.”

This platform is a particularly smart way to reach Millennials, who comprise more than half of the platform’s user base and value authenticity far more than previous generations.  

How to Create a Twitter Presence That Attracts Your Target Audience

1. Pay attention to your profile

Although it may sound cliché, the first thing you’ll need to do is to pay attention to what goes onto your Twitter profile.

If you’re setting up a corporate account, the photo should be your company’s logo. Make sure that your profile picture is clear and distinguishable.

As for the header photo, it’s best to pick something visually striking as it will have the best chances of engaging readers.

If you’re selling enterprise level software that’s complicated, you can create a banner with your logo and a headline that conveys your value proposition.

For your bio, use that real estate to call out who your target audience is, and help this audience understand the problem you can solve for them and how you approach it in a unique way.

Putting it all together, here’s a good example from Engagio, the account-based marketing orchestration platform for B2B marketers.

2. Create a custom landing page just for your Twitter visitors

Although you can include a URL to your website on any Tweet, a more effective alternative would be to create a landing page that’s specifically designed for your Twitter visitors.

You might give people a quick overview of your product or service, or use the landing page to capture email subscribers. By giving people a more direct offer, you can increase your chances of making a conversion.

3. Write lead-generatin’ tweets

6,000 tweets are sent on Twitter every second. This corresponds to 350,000 tweets sent per minute!

Given the sheer volume of noise on Twitter, you’ll want do everything you can to set up your tweets for success.  

After analyzing 6,399,322 social media posts, CoSchedule discovered that the best performing Tweets on Twitter include an image, somewhere around 100 characters (give or take), and no more than 2 hashtags.   

Make sure your tweets are tailored to the platform. Because Twitter views itself as a news platform as much as a social network, you’ll want to craft your tweets to be “newsy” as well. In less than 140 characters, you’ll need to convey why your content is worthy of people’s attention. Be sure each tweet only has one call to action.

Here’s a good example of a lead generating tweet from InvisionApp, a prototyping and collaboration platform for UX designers, product and marketing professionals.

Notice that the tweet is calling designers to switch over to a new sketching tool and learn how to use it by signing up for a free course. The text within the image highlights the core benefit of taking the course, and the bright red button focuses the eye on the CTA.

Modgirl Marketing, a digital marketing agency, also did a good job creating lead generating tweets.

4. Write irresistible copy

When you’ve only got 140 characters to work with, you’ll have to pay extra attention to how you write.  

First, you’ll want to nail down your social media voice and tone so that people can clearly tell when you are speaking. Start with your target audience and ask yourself:

1. What’s the average demographic for our audience?
2. Do we have a casual or professional audience?
3. What sorts of problem does our product solve, or wants do we fulfill?

Your social media voice should make sense for your target audience, your subject matter and have one consistent tone (whether it’s personal, professional, casual, serious).

To learn more about the characteristics of good copy, I recommend checking out resources from RankWatch, Hubspot and Kissmetrics.

After you write a post, you can use Social Media Optimizer to figure out how your post would perform, based on the types of words used in the post, the length and whether imagery or video are included. This tool gives you actionable tips on how to optimize a post.

5. Pin a Tweet

By pinning a Tweet, it will float to the top of your profile and stay there. Use a pinned tweet when you want to drive people to an important action, such as signing up for a free trial or a workshop. To get people to click, try posting an engaging video showing your product or one that features your customers talking about why they do business with you.

InvisionApp, a prototyping and collaboration platform for design-led teams, did a great job of this.

6. Schedule out multiple tweets to max your impressions

When planning your broadcast Tweeting strategy, consider adopting an application that will help you schedule your Tweets such as Buffer, Hootsuite or Oktopost. These applications enable you to send out multiple tweets a day. Tools like Edgar will automatically repost old tweets on your behalf.

According to Study, the lifetime of a tweet is just 18 minutes. This means that older tweets simply get buried in the stream. You’ll want to tweet important announcements multiple times in a given day and space out the tweets to maximize impressions.  

Once you’ve optimized your Twitter profile, it’s time to use keywords to discover your target buyer persona and reach out to them proactively

7. Using Keywords to Find Your Target Buyer Persona on Twitter

By going to someone’s Twitter profile, you’ll learn a lot about what they do, what their interests are, whom they are following and where they are located. From their tweet, you’d be able to decipher what they’re interested in, and whether they’re actively doing research for new products.

On Twitter, you could identify your buyer persona based on the types of actions they are taking and the keywords they are using in their tweets. Consider using these keywords and hashtags to find new leads for your business.  

Use job titles and descriptive keyword phrases found on people’s Twitter and LinkedIn Profiles

Use Keywords related to business activities and key topics in your space. If someone just mentioned a key topic that’s relevant to your business, or shared an article from an influencer in your space, or retweeted a tweet from one of your competitors, he or she can be a good lead for your business.

For example, if you are looking for marketing professionals who are engaging with the digital media ecosystem, you might search for people who are:

1. Talking about topics such as “consumer research”, “media consumption”, and “user engagement”
2. Following certain marketing publications such as @MarketingLand

If you’re looking to connect with IT audiences who might be looking for software to streamline their IT operations, you might target people who took actions such as:

1. Mentioning a technology topic such as “Active Directory”, “Mobiledev” and “managed services”
2. Following or engaging with IT influencers such as @CIOMagazine, @CIOOnline, and @InformationWeek
3. Following or engaging with a cloud infrastructure player such as @Azure or @AWS

To learn more about how to select the right keywords to reach your target audience, take a look at my post How to Use Twitter Keywords and Hashtags to Find Leads.

8. Use direct messages to start one-on-one conversations with your prospects

Use Twitter’s Direct Message feature to make initial contact with your target audience and bring them into your sales funnel. Direct messages are similar to email in that they can be sent privately. They’re not limited to 140 characters, so you can provide more content. And because only its sender and recipient can view a DM, the channel provides authentic one-on-one interactions.

When you use a DM in the right way in the earlier stages within a customer journey, you can pierce through the noise of inbox spam to reach customers as individuals on their terms.

Depending on your goals, there are a couple of directions you can take with your DM.

9. Send an offer to drive traffic to a landing page.

Putting a link in your DM to a landing page or downloadable resource is a great way to move new prospects into the buyer’s cycle. Make sure to tailor content to what the person tweets about. Once you check out a person’s previous posts, followers and retweets, you’ll find ideas on how to tailor your content.

Going back to the IT audience example mentioned earlier, you might send an IT Director following @CIOMagazine a DM that recommends a whitepaper showing benchmarking data about IT Operations to pique their interest in what their peers in IT are doing.

To keep your DM from sounding like an ad, use the customer’s name in your message and mention why you’re reaching out. Make sure to be specific in your call to action and explain why the person would want the content that you provide.

Here is a DM the Socedo handle received after we followed an SEO agency.

Here is another DM the Socedo handle received. This one drives to a landing page for a workshop that teaches business owners how they can find business leads online. They built a tailored landing page for their Twitter followers.  

10. Ask a question to start a conversation

Starting with a question is the best way to get a response and learn something about your prospect. Make sure the question is easy to answer, focuses on the person’s needs and follows the next logical step towards a sale. Here are some types of questions you can ask:   

1. Ask permission: “I’d love to learn more about your business, do you have time?”
2. Start broad, then get specific: “What kinds of strategies do you use to drive new leads?”
3. Build on previous responses: “You mentioned you are using social media to drive new leads. What tools are you using to help you with this process?”  

To learn more, you can check out these 10 tips for drafting the perfect conversation starting DM.

11. Use tools to put your social prospecting on auto-pilot

As I mentioned earlier, there are tools out there that help you grow your social media presence automatically so that you don’t have to spend your precious time on routine tasks.

One of my favorite tools in this category is Socedo.

Socedo is a web app that lets you find your target audience based on keywords in their job titles and in their tweets, mentions of certain brands and influencers, as well as the handles they follow.

The tool collects and analyzes new tweets 24/7 to find people who fit your criteria. It automatically follows people who show interest in your space, and it can send customized direct messages to those who follow you back.  

Using this workflow, you get on your target prospects’ radar, gain new Twitter followers and ensure that they see your content.  You can sync new contacts with any social engagement status (i.e. people who followed you) into your marketing database or CRM.

Conclusion

Since Twitter is a completely open and public social network, you don’t have to second guess if there are people interested in what you have to say. With tools that help you hone in on your buyer persona, you can quickly find the people who are showing interest in your space, increase engagement with your followers and turn them into leads.