One of the most important ways—if not the most important way—to make your business successful is by making sure you get your customers.

But did you know you can start building up your customer list by using Twitter?

That’s right—it isn’t just for celebrities and politicians. Many small businesses around the world in all different types of industries have been using social media effectively and dependably to gain new customers.

But as with any other social media platform, it can be hard to tell heads from tails. Where do you start and how can you get a great ROI (return on investment) on the time and money you’ll spend on Twitter?

That’s why today we’ll look at the 6 best ways to get new customers for your business using Twitter.

#1 Create a great profile

The first thing you need to do on Twitter (and any social media platform in general) is to make sure your profile is optimized.

You should go into your Twitter profile and check your bio, not from your perspective but from the perspective of a potential customer who knows nothing about your business.

Is it clear what you do? Are the products or services and qualifications prominently displayed in your bio? Do you have a link to your website and your location?

If you don’t have these things, you need to add them now.

#2 Pin a tweet highlighting your business

When someone visits your Twitter profile, they will see your bio (which we’ve taken care of above) and a list of your most recent tweets.

You may have great tweets constantly, but in order to really draw in a potential customer, you need to highlight one of your best tweets.

This tweet can be a piece in a local newspaper about your business, the great products and services you have, or free resources that can be downloaded on your website.

What you need to do is make sure to pin that tweet to the top of your Twitter page. That way, it’s the first tweet that they’ll see when they come on your profile.

#3 Find your customers

With great tools such as Moz’s Followerwonk, you can find you potential customers by using keywords.

These types of services work by helping you search by name, location, URL, and other factors.

When you’ve collected your potential customers, you should add them to a list of your choosing. In order to create a list, head to your Twitter profile and click on the Lists tab (by the Edit Profile button), then click on Create New List.

You can then organize your list by naming them however you choose. Afterwards, when you find new potential customers, just simply add them by clicking on the Settings icon next to the Follow button.

#4 Find customers by related topics

Many of your potential customers on Twitter will often tweet about their likes, lifestyles, hobbies, dreams and aspirations.

If you have the proper knowledge of your client demographic, you can try to tap into these related topics to find your perfect customers.

Based on your own research or intuition, you can quickly find out what types of interests your customers have. If there is a trending topic that is related to your niche, you can use that to more effectively market your business and sell to the right people at the right time.

#5 Try contests

One of the most popular ways for you to really get your customers involved in your content and getting their contact information is by creating contests.

You can have a voting contest on your Twitter feed where you offer a valuable prize related to your business. For example, if you are a tour agency, you can offer a free trip to some local destination, such as one night for two plus dinner, etc.

The prize won’t break the bank, but you’ll get lots of people really interested in your offerings.

However, one important thing to remember is to make sure you email-gate your contest. Email-gating means that in order for people to actually be able to vote on your Twitter contest, they’ll have to enter their email addresses.

This helps filter out the serious people from the less-serious, but you’ll also have an email address for future offerings.

#6 Automate your evergreen article posting

Lastly, one of the most overlooked ways to increase your exposure on Twitter and gain new followers is by using some of your old content. So-called evergreen articles are your blog posts that never go out of fashion.

This could be a piece on how to start a company or 15 ways to improve your productivity. These kind of blog posts can be shared for years to come and need little updates. However, we often only share our most recent content and neglect content we published a month, 6 months or a year ago.

A tool like EvergreenFeed helps you to automate this process and posts your best content on a pre-set schedule.

With these six tried and true methods, you can help build up your Twitter feed and gain lots of new followers. With new followers, you’ll have better leads, more targeted customers, high conversions and much better sales.