Twitter for eCommerce—Let Your Social Media Strategy Take Flight

Twitter is one of the most used social media sites on the internet. Some might go so far as to say it’s the town square.

Therefore, you’d imagine it’s suitable for ecommerce, and you’d be correct. Join us as we look at the home of the bluebirds and explore how you can use Twitter for ecommerce. 

How Can You Do eCommerce on Twitter?

Twitter has a full ecommerce suite in the works for direct selling, but this isn’t available just yet. Currently, Twitter is best for promoting your brand and fostering connections with customers and others in your industry. 

First, let’s check out how advertising works on the platform before moving on to some tips about making the most of the site.

Twitter Ad Prices

On Twitter, you can pay for promoted tweets, to have an account promoted for a set period, or to have a trend promoted.

Having any of these promoted will push them into the feeds of people that don’t follow you but may be interested, and boost their presence in the general search of relevant categories.

Promoted Trends

By getting a trend promoted, you can have a hashtag pushed in a specific region. This is something massive companies do because the Twitter ads price for it is around $200,000.

A fun fact to know, but not a practical possibility for most.

Promoted Tweets

With a promoted tweet, you’ll pay per “action.” Every time someone likes or retweets the tweet, you’ll be charged anywhere from 50c to $1.

You’ll also be charged per view if you have a video attached. 

The logic is similar to PPC and PPM advertising.

Promoted Accounts

If you have your account promoted, you’ll be charged per follow. The average price per new follow is between $2 and $4. 

The benefit of promoted tweets and accounts is that you only pay after a follower is acquired.

You need to be careful with budgeting, however. If you get thousands of followers, that’s great, but the costs of Twitter content marketing could stack up. 

Also, keep in mind that bots are prevalent on the platform. No one knows exactly how prevalent, but the topic has received renewed interest following inquiries by Elon Musk, as he seeks to spend some of his $227 billion fortune acquiring the platform.

Of course, when it comes to followers, they can always unfollow.

That’s why it’s essential to optimize your strategy.

Optimize Your Strategy

Optimizing your Twitter strategy is about getting your profile in order, researching, promoting offerings, and interacting with your audience and industry partners.

Getting Your Account in Order

First, you just want to review your account and ensure it has good branding and a solid corporate design.

You want the aesthetic of your Twitter content strategy to match your ecommerce store and broader branding. 

Use your logo as a profile picture, and make use of the profile banner to promote your main offer. You’ll change the offer every month or so.

If you have a social media manager or even more than one, it’s important to keep the “voice” of your tweets consistent. 

Go over each tweet before approving it.

Don’t tweet “off the cuff”, or let employees do so. This might seem inorganic, but Twitter is a very heated environment, and so in this case it’s better to be safe with what’s posted.

On that note…

Promote Interactivity 

While you need to be careful about Twitter strategies around tweeting, there are other ways to interact with customers that are more structured, and therefore safer. 

• Polls

Polls can be a great way to get customers to interact with your account and do market research at the same time. Interlace polls with an objective, such as finding out what customers want, with other light-hearted polls. 

• Behind the Scenes

Post photos and videos of your business behind the scenes. Users often find this content interesting, and it will humanize your business.

• Respond to Customers

While tweets shouldn’t be off the cuff, customers’ tweets should still be responded to. 

Great Twitter marketing strategies focus on anticipating the sorts of questions customers may ask, and having templates prepared for each one. Leave some leeway for your team to tweet in a natural way, while covering the main points, and avoiding any contentious issues.

Research Competition 

Aside from researching your customers, Twitter can be a great tool for researching your competition. Keep tabs on what they’re doing, but also search what users are saying about them.

See if you notice anything users love about their business, anything they hate, and if there’s anything they wish they were doing. According to Twitter statistics, 80% of users have made at least one tweet about a brand. 

Use this information to optimize your own offerings.

Network

Make sure to embrace “ecommerce Twitter” and follow any businesses partnered with you and influencers within your niche. By building good relationships with them, not only will you stay on top of new developments, but through retweets, they may advertise your business free of charge. 

Influencers have already proven to be highly effective in TikTok ecommerce. 

Use Hashtags

Hashtags are a central feature of Twitter, and so you should use them. See what’s trending and find a way to naturally incorporate them into your posts in order to boost visibility.

Don’t partake in “hashtag stuffing” where you just stick irrelevant hashtags in tweets in order to get more visibility.

Surprisingly, unlike keyword stuffing in SEO on sites like eBay, ecommerce hashtags stuffing on Twitter still works. However, it’s a tacky move, and shoving irrelevant posts in users’ faces is likely to annoy them, and reflect badly on your brand.

Schedule Posts

Lastly, make sure to schedule your posts.

Research the times when your target market is most active on Twitter, and set your tweets to be posted then.

To make it all seem a little more natural, set posting times for odd times i.e. Instead of 12:00, choose 12:13. 

Wrap Up

As you can see, using Twitter for ecommerce is almost an entire skillset on its own.

However, it’ll be no good if your core offerings aren’t up to scratch.

In order to make the most of this form of social ecommerce, you need to ensure good offerings and a tight business model.

Make sure to understand the intricate dynamics of the platform before venturing into it, and it will serve you well.