If your business relies on local customers and you would like to attract more people who live close to your business, practice or event, then Twitter should be among your list of marketing channels to use.
There are 5 ways you can use this social network to perform local area marketing.
The first, is using Twitter’s advanced search tool to find tweets by location. To access this feature, simply go to: https://twitter.com/search-advanced
This tool allows you to look for people according to different criteria such as: keywords used in their tweets, hashtags used, their location and more. For example, should you have a local fitness centre in London and want to find tweets by location, you could look for people living in London and have used the keywords “gym”, “fitness centre” or “exercise”. Alternatively, to search tweets by location you could perform a search for people who live in London and have used the hashtags “#fitness”, “#training” or “#personaltrainer”.
Then, go through the search results to start performing local area marketing.
If you’re unsure about what keywords your target audience would be looking for, you can use Google’s keyword tool at googleeasysearch.com.
Simply type in a keyword relevant to your industry, such as “fitness” and click on “get ideas”. Once you do, this tool will list all the relevant keywords people usually type into Google.
The first column lists the keyword and the second column lists how many times every month this keyword is typed into Google. The higher the number, the more popular the keyword is.
The second way is using Twitter ads. To access this feature, simply go to: https://ads.twitter.com to set up your advertising campaign. You will need to add your credit card details in order to open and activate your Twitter advertising account.
If you already have a Twitter advertising account, simply click on your profile picture, and click on “Twitter ads”.
You can then choose to either promote a tweet, media or a Twitter card. If you choose to advertise a tweet to local people, click on “tweets” and then “new tweet” in order to create your ad. Make sure your tweet has a compelling headline and description and has an eye catching image. Once your ad is ready, simply follow the prompts and make sure you fill in the “select locations” box accordingly, when defining your target audience. If you only want to target London based people only, then choose “London”.
With Twitter ads, you can define your audience further by choosing gender, languages, even according to the devices they use to access their Twitter account. The key to running successful Twitter ads, is testing multiple campaigns. Create up to 10 different ads, trying different headlines, different descriptions and different images. After a day or so, you’ll clearly be able to see what converts better and invest more money into the ad that gets you most results.
The third way to search Twitter by location is by leveraging hashtags. Most local Twitter users would be using hashtags according to their geographic location. Therefore, to find out the appropriate hashtags to include in your tweets, you can use tools such as http://hashtagify.me. To use this tool, simply enter your geographic location in their search box, such as “London” and all relevant hashtags will be listed.
Then, start publishing tweets relevant to the conversations happening around that hashtag, and include the hashtag in your tweet. Alternatively, if you want to search tweets by location, find Twitter users who include these location-specific hashtags in their tweets by simply typing the hashtag in Twitter’s search box. When you do, Twitter will list all the tweets which include that hashtag. You can then start conversations with these people by clicking on the arrow below the tweet.
The fourth way to search Twitter by location is by looking for tweets published by people living in the location of your interest. To do so, simply type in the search box on the top right hand side near:{location name} and click on the magnifying glass. For example, to search tweets by location should you be marketing a London based business, type in near:{London}
When you do, all the people who live in that area will be listed according to how recent their last tweet was. Then, you can build a relationship with these people by replying to their tweets using the arrow below, by liking their tweets, following them and also mentioning these users in your tweets by including their username in your tweet. This will definitely help you get noticed by these local people.
Lastly, to search Twitter by location and find local Twitter users, attend “tweetups”. A tweetup is an offline meeting with people who initially met on Twitter. By attending tweetups, you’ll be able to take your local marketing to the next level fast. To find out when the next tweetup is happening close to your geographic location, you can use the networking site Meetup which has a special page for listing and tracking tweetups.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this video on local area marketing thanks to Twitter, remember to leave a comment below and subscribe to our Youtube channel to receive the latest social media tips straight to your inbox.
About the Author
Corinna Essa is known internationally as the go-to person when it comes to social media marketing.
Corinna owns a social media marketing company helping businesses around the world leverage the power of social media without doing any of the legwork. Her company has been featured in many media outlets including Sky Business news, Working Women magazine, Ymagazine, Tasmanian Times, Channel 7 and 101fm.
Corinna is also the author of 2 bestselling books “Money On Demand – The 16 Fastest Ways to Becoming a Millionaire Online” and “Reach: The SECRETS to converting your social media audience into your network marketing downline fast”
Twitter is one of the best platform for doing this. You have described it well. Subscribed your blog.