Twitter is a great place to connect with prospects and customers, but is Twitter practical to use for local selling businesses versus national selling businesses? My answer is yes, Twitter is a great place for national and local selling firms.
It is very important to know that the user demographics are changing on Twitter. It used to be that Twitter users were typically in the field of marketing and were between the age of 30 to 55. Now, there is a much wider use of Twitter and use by a wider age range.
So how can a local selling business use Twitter successfully? Using location focused tweets with hashtags (# used in front of a single keyword or phrase without spaces) can help to build information on your category of business that can be used for Twitter searches. For example, if you are a Chinese restaurant located in Waldorf, Maryland, your tweets could mention #Waldorfchinese, #ChineseRestaurantWaldorf, or #chineseWaldorf within the tweet. By using your business category and location you can reach potential customers who may be using Twitter on their mobile phone while they are out and about.
Another interesting trend that I am seeing, if you are an online store, is when you tweet coupon codes you can boost website sales directly. We’ve recently done a holiday promotion for an online citrus seller and the sales generation with Twitter has been stronger than the sales generation using Facebook. Others in my industry have shared with me that they are also seeing an increase in lead generation with Twitter versus Facebook as well.
With the ability to use location hash tags, Twitter can be a great place for local selling businesses to connect and drive online and offline traffic.