Service businesses often have trouble writing tweets without spamming their followers. It’s not uncommon for service businesses to leave their accounts abandoned after the first few weeks. There are a lot of reasons for abandoning an account:
- Lack of content to post
- Lack of resources
Oftentimes, if a business doesn’t see a quick ROI, they’ll abandon their social media accounts. The issue is that social media takes time to bring in leads. Businesses need to nurture their followers, educate them and then when the time comes, the followers will eventually become a paying customer or client.
But what should businesses be posting to keep their followers engaged?
Every business is different, but the following types of Twitter posts work very well for service businesses:
1. Questions or Comments for Followers
When you’ve built up a following, it’s important to keep that following engaged. Questions that your audience may have or that you may have for your audience do very well. A great example of this comes from the Cole Plumbing Twitter account:
“#DidYouKnow 1.8 billion people don’t have access to clean drinking water?”
This question was followed by a link to a blog post discussing the issue. What’s great about questions and comments is that the follower feels important and is involved in the conversation.
Make sure to comment back on all comments and answer any questions that the follower may have.
2. Offer a Free Service in Contest Form
If you’ve built up a small following on Twitter, you can leverage this following to gain more followers. One great idea is to offer something for free to one special follower during a Twitter contest. The idea can be simple:
- One free service for the follower that brings the most people to your account.
- In the contest rules, ask followers to @mention your account to their followers.
- Ask new followers to say how they found your account.
The person that drove the most followers to your account wins. You can also do this through your website’s analytics program where the # symbols followed by a referrer name is added. You’ll then be able to see who provided the most referrals to your website during the contest.
3. Information Snippets and Links
Service businesses can help expand their local customer base, engage followers and stay relevant by providing free tidbits of wisdom to their followers. An auto mechanic may provide tips to locals on how to best maintain their vehicle for the upcoming winter storm.
This information, when it can be condensed, can then be expanded on in a blog post.
This is a great way to bring traffic to your website and educate your audience. You can do this with any service business. Come up with common questions your customers have, answer these questions thoroughly in blog posts and then link to them on your Twitter account.
It works very well.
Twitter is also a great option for images and video, so don’t be scared to test out different post types and try finding the post that works best for your audience.
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