In the early days when you’re laying the ground for your startup, the founder or co-founders and the core team do whatever it takes to make it work. You are a funny mix of engineering, testing, marketing and the ultimate sales machine. But how are you promoting your product?

It’s summer in the Northern Hemisphere and many people are on vacation, but traffic on the social networks hasn’t slowed down any bit. Twitter is one of the best media for business. It’s not difficult to use and the ROI is much better compared to other social networks. Let’s find out how you can leverage its power to make your voice heard and people aware of your product or service.

Interaction

Twitter is all about interacting with other people and such interaction has a propagation effect. There are five methods to do that, plus direct messaging.

1. Quote & answer

Interacting with other users stays at the core of Twitter. Start a new tweet by quoting another user or directly answer one of their tweets to begin a conversation. However, this is a strategy that’s only worth pursuing if you think it might spark a debate, which would bring you a lot of attention and new followers.

2. Like

Those little hearts ❤ that everybody loves are based on a volatile, but highly efficient strategy employed by social networks, known as social validation. There is an entire science behind it, but the most important thing to remember is that it can help you interact with other people.

They will notice it! Even if they don’t react in the beginning, you will certainly grab their attention when it’s repeated. Not for the sake of just liking them, but simply because you obviously share some of those ideas and this is a way to express it.

3. Retweet

It’s great when you agree with the message, but don’t have anything to add. Use it also when you agree, but it’s wiser not to add anything more. Politics for example 🙂

4. Retweet with comment

This is the best method you can use from multiple reasons:

• You show other users interest for their message.
• You share your knowledge and ideas on top of what the other person already expressed.
• You draw their attention and in most cases they’ll like or even retweet it.
• Thus you’ll reach their audience as well, not only yours.

Reaching their audience is what the propagation effect is all about.

The more you interact and engage, the more your message will be propagated in return and more people will see it.

5. Mention

Allows you to mention others within your tweets. It can be tricky, but it’s doable and has the same benefits like no. 4 above.

Just don’t forget to do some due diligence first:

• Make sure it’s a subject of interest for the person you’re mentioning.
• Choose your words wisely.
• Be politically correct.
• Use your common sense, it’s the best!

And it can be used with multiple people at the same time.

Actionable key point: Twitter is all about interaction and has a huge propagation potential. Use it!

Amplification

Finding the best time to tweet amplifies your message. There are many tools out there that analyze account traffic and will give you some insights, but the best way is to experiment. Because this highly depends on the geographical location of the people you’re targeting.

From my experience, if you have an intersection of Europe, East Coast and West Coast in North America, the best time frame is between 10 AM – 2 PM EST.

You can of course tweet at any time you want, but finding this sweet spot will help you with the amplification of important messages. You basically increase your chances for the right people to see your tweet and help you propagate it better.

So, don’t tweet about an important thing late on a Monday night and waste the opportunity, better do it on a Tuesday 🙂

Actionable key point: On Twitter, amplification influences message propagation. So it’s very important to get it right.

Engagement vs. direct sales

This social network is not the best when it comes to direct sales. You grow your follower base and increase their engagement. This is how you can growthhack your startup and make people aware of your brand.

On Twitter, people are highly reticent to sales speech, that’s why personal accounts are far more followed than brand accounts and thought leaders, also known as influencers, have gained so much traction.

By all means, you can promote your product or your company, but do it through others. This might sound a bit abstract, so here’s another short example.

Let’s say a third-party has written an article about your product or service and tweeted about it. Don’t simply go and tweet a link to that article. Use their tweet and share it by retweeting it with comment. This way, beyond all the benefits listed above, you also add a lot of weight to your subjective opinion – you’re backed up by a trusted source. Expert advice works on Twitter!

Actionable key point: Twitter is about generating engagement and brand awareness.

Bonus actionable key point: Expert advice backs up your claims and helps you get your message through.

240 characters

The definition of productivity is using the available resources in the most efficient way. How can you be highly efficient on Twitter? Simply by using the resources it provides at maximum extent possible.

Think about it this way. A tweet can have up to 240 characters. If you are sharing a link, the message will display a small thumbnail with the link’s title and featured image. So, you shouldn’t waste your limited space by copying the title that’s already beneath.

Space is a resource and, like time and readers’ patience, it’s highly limited 😉 Use such resources wisely and they can help you propagate your message even further.

Actionable key point: Use all resources you have in the best possible way. And those 240 characters for that matter!

The art of the hashtag

You might find this a bit of an exaggeration, but there is art in using the proper hashtags.

As everybody engaged in startup life knows – entrepreneurs, core team members, board advisors, VCs – people can make or break your dream?. This is no startup myth?, it’s a fact?! Choosing them right is highly important.

Now think of a hashtag in the same way. That funny looking keyword with # in front can make all the difference in the world.

When you have a small follower base, a brilliantly used hashtag will be for your tweet what a smart hire is for your core startup team?. The hashtag can literally save a tweet from going unnoticed and gives you far better chances of proper message propagation and amplification. It’s the law of large numbers, the only numbers that matter!

Actionable key point: Use hashtags in your tweets and get them read by people who could never find you otherwise.

One tweet for your team

I’m the co-founder of Hubgets and an entrepreneur for more than 19 years. I’ve been using Twitter for the past 9 years and although I’m not an expert in growthhacking, I know from experience that Twitter works well for business.

Regardless of how many followers you have and how you generally promote and sell your product or service, Twitter can definitely help you.

But in order to be successful and efficient, you have to go back to the basics: location, location, location! Adapt to the specifics of this social media and you’ll get the best results you could have hoped for.

So how are you tweeting these days?