Tweets can include links to any web content (such as a blogs, a website, and so on), and images and videos. They also allow you to launch ads, especially when the business community is active.

As on other platforms, Twitter users "follow" each other, allowing their followers to read, share and respond to their tweets, creating a great interaction. In March 2016, Twitter had more than 310 million active users.

Twitter's popularity gives it tremendous potential as a marketing tool, but not all companies know how to benefit from their presence on this platform. In this article, we explain how to make Twitter an ally of your brand's digital communication strategy.

Using Hashtags

The first big advantage of using Twitter is that tweets are very easily searchable due to the use of hashtags. A hashtag is a word preceded by a cardinal symbol (#), which acts as a metadata "tag," making it easy for the user to find posts with a certain theme or specific content. The use of hashtags started on Twitter in 2007 and has since been the main platform trend monitoring tool.

For businesses, we highlight three ways to use hashtags on twitter. The first is the use of content hashtags in your publications. Using the right hashtags can be a determining factor for your content to be found by other people who are interested in the topic and still do not follow your company page. Thus, the choice of hashtags can play a key role in reaching your publications and increasing the number of followers and potential customers.

On the other hand, you can create a company hashtag and hashtags for a specific event organized by your business. By monitoring the hashtag with your business name, you can see what users say about you or your products / services. This way you can identify the concerns of potential customers about your company's business area as well as brand opinion.

This is also a great time to interact with your followers and prospects, clarifying your doubts, offering special promotions and additional clarifications about your services or products. Creating hashtags for specific events is also very important, and you can promote discussion about certain topics among your followers.

Finally, you can use hashtags for certain online campaigns, encouraging your followers to share content with the hashtag your company has created to run promotions or prizes, for example. In return, your hashtag will have much more visibility. On the other hand, when people use hashtags created by a brand they are interacting directly with it, increasing the likelihood of becoming customers.

Interact with opinion leaders in your area

On a platform where the exchange of ideas and opinions is the main type of interaction, it is especially important to find out who are the experts in your business area and to interact regularly with them. Making a list of the top opinion leaders in your market segment - journalists, potential clients, bloggers, writers, partners - and following them and interacting with them allows you to create a virtual relationship that can translate into new real business opportunities.

Reply to Mentions

One mention is a tweet that contains another user's @username anywhere in the body of the tweet. The direct responses to a tweet are considered mentions. You should be aware of the mentions that users make you and always respond appropriately and professionally, as more and more customers use twitter to publish their doubts and criticisms. Bad publicity conveys itself very easily and as such you must be willing to interact with your customers.