How To Sell on Twitter

Ever since its creation in 2006, Twitter has grown exponentially, and has become most people’s go-to platform to document their everyday life, share funny memes, or rant about what’s on their mind. Businesses have noticed the power the social media platform holds for their brand image and influence and have thus started to utilize it these past few years.

Twitter counts 330 million monthly users and 287,8 million global monetizable daily active users. Think about the amount of people you could reach with your content!

Also, businesses are a lot more popular on the platform than you imagine. 79% of Twitter accounts follow brands to keep updated with their content and new releases — and 63% of them follow small businesses. They also like to interact with the brands as it’s much more convenient to directly ask a question on Twitter, rather than going through the sometimes tedious “contact us” protocol.

The short answer is: anything!

But there are some products that are better suited for selling on Twitter. The first one is an obvious one: your own products! No one is better suited than yourself to sell things online that you have created. So if you have a pottery, clothing, watch, or even hot sauce business, why not give it a go?

Digital products are great to sell on Twitter because of how convenient it is to advertise and sell them on a social media platform. This includes online courses and workshops, licenses, stock photos, and videos, as well as photo editing presets, fonts, CV templates… The list goes on and on!

Top Tip: Digital products are a good option because you don’t have to worry about a physical inventory cluttering your space.

You can also sell your professional expertise, such as a private trainer workout plan, accounting help, memberships for private guitar lessons… Whatever your skill set allows you to offer!

Another alternative is to sell other people’s products.

A very popular choice is dropshipping, which allows you to outsource the products, the warehousing, and the shipping to a third-party seller. With this method you avoid having to stock your products, you simply act as a middleman. It helps to reduce costs and you can thus focus on the marketing aspect of it — through your Twitter account!

Making money online and especially selling products on Twitter can seem like a daunting process but it doesn’t have to! It’s a relatively new thing, which means that there’s no textbook way of doing it. You have lots of creative freedom, but here are eight tips on how to sell on Twitter:

Build a Killer Profile

The first and maybe most important thing to do is to set up the best Twitter profile possible. It needs to be visually attractive, and customers must be able to understand straight away what you’re selling.

Choose a striking cover photo and put your logo as your profile picture to make your brand visuals clear from the get-go.

Then, in 160 characters or less, describe what you sell and what you stand for in your biography. Put a link to your website on your profile and if your online store is compatible, use the “Twitter Shopping” features that allow you to put a carousel of up to five products (“Shop Spotlight”) and display a “shop now” button (“Twitter Shop”)

Another useful tip is to pin your most important tweet at the top of your profile, so that it’s the first thing that your customers will come across. This is your perfect opportunity to advertise your latest release!

Build a Following

This is crucial if you want your products to reach the biggest audience possible! The key to a fast growth in followers is being active and consistent on your account. You don’t need to tweet a hundred times a day, but have a good posting rhythm to please the demanding Twitter algorithm!

Try to stick to a schedule that works for you and your audience as part of your social media strategy. To make things easier for you, you can use a third-party website to schedule your tweets in advance.

Network

Networking will help you build your audience and boost the engagement with your Twitter account. Create interaction by responding to other people’s tweets and make yourself known in the twittersphere!

You can also get in touch with influencers you think would like your products. If they do and they decide to give your brand a shout out, then they will bring their audience to your account.

Use Ads

You can use ads to promote your content to a target audience and appear in their feed, even though they don’t follow you. Focus on one specific product or aspect of your brand that you want to highlight, find some really strong visuals and words, and you’re good to go!

Use the Search Bar to Find Customers

The search bar is probably the most underused Twitter feature. It’s a very powerful tool to find people who could potentially be interested in what you have to sell. Twitter has an “Advanced Search” feature that lets you include or exclude keywords, accounts, hashtags, dates… If you perfectly tailor your search, you can find your perfect customers!

Make Curated Lists

Twitter lists are another feature that’s not commonly used on the platform. They allow you to create curated feeds that can be private or public. You can make one based on other businesses or influencers in your field, or even potential customers you could interact with. It makes networking easy!

Use Twitter Analytics

To see what your audience engages with, you can use Twitter Analytics. When synced up with your account, you can see what works and what doesn’t or the demographics of your followers. If you study your account engagement, you can improve your content.

Vary Your Content

The key to an interesting Twitter account is to make sure your content remains interesting and varied. Tweet some pictures, videos, repost some articles or retweet other accounts: ensure that your posts aren’t predictable!

You can also use hashtags to direct people to your content. But make sure not to use more than one or two, or the Twitter algorithm will consider your tweet as spam.

Without a doubt, Twitter is one of the best social media platforms when it comes to selling products. You can interact directly with your audience and scope out potential customers easily — all while posting short-form but striking content.

So now that you have all the information on how to sell on Twitter, all that’s left to do is to set up your own account, and start tweeting!