https://www.canva.com/design/DADyfaz4JAk/view
Twitter has gained ground as a marketing tool that is essential to all business models. Your tweets help with your search engine optimisation and it has the potential to distribute your message far beyond the limits imposed by other marketing channels.
How to use Twitter
To use Twitter effectively, you need to attract a following. While you just start following everyone who is suggested, your marketing efforts would be more richly rewarded by making careful selections about who you follow and how you grow your audience.
Developing a follower strategy enables you to target relevant followers. This can be achieved in a number of ways:
- Analyse your competitor(s) followers (using a tool like Followerwonk), and follow those who are relevant to your business.
- Feature ‘follow’ buttons on your website to encourage organic growth.
- Upload mailing lists (containing email addresses) to find customers/prospects/suppliers/partners on Twitter.
- Tweetadder contains various search tools to help pinpoint potential followers. Bio searches, targeting keywords and filter by geographic location (if appropriate) can help you find your audience.
- Promoted Tweets can be used to target current and potential followers using keywords in timeline, interest, geography and device. Promoted Tweets in timelines that requested a follow will see your traffic increase.
The best frequency and timing of Tweets
You need to understand your audience in terms of timing. Knowing when to tweet is as important as what your tweet. There is no single answer to this question. However, there are things you can do to learn more about what will work.
- Tools like Followerwonk and Tweriod help analyse the times of day when your followers are most active.
- If you have geographically diverse followers, and Tweet regularly, consider posting the same Tweets at different times of the day to match your followers time zones.
- Test your analyses to ensure that you get the most engagement. To optimise your live engagement opportunities, go online at that same time and respond/ retweet during that period.
- Twitter recommends tweeting 3-5 times per day for business, however, you need to take into account things like your audience and your intent with each tweet. You need to find the balance – too many tweets per day and your company will overwhelm user newsfeeds to the point that people will unfollow you. Not enough tweets and you will get lost in the Twittersphere.
- Many studies have determined Tweets during “busy hours” (8am – 7pm) receive 30{21dc2fe1b43c4cf57a2e25a56b286f09fbb32a45ddf34dcf04be366972dd7b06} higher engagement rate than Tweets posted at other times.
- For B2B marketers, Monday to Friday during office lunch hours and during the general commuting time has shown to be effective in reaching an audience. However, the content you post also needs to be reflective of the time – at lunch, just quick updates suffice, while after hours you should post links to white paper and other long content.
How to increase the reach of your Tweets
Hashtags and mentions can help increase the potential reach of your post: hashtags are helpful for organic searches and can be treated as a form of SEO. Mentions are useful for reaching new leads. Recognition of your peers will lead to greater awareness of your brand within the industry, improve your credibility and your reach.
- Use appropriate hashtags that push your content before a wider audience. Properly tagging your content means it can be discovered by users searching for information around a given topic.
- Don’t overuse hashtags; two per tweet is more than enough. Hashtags are a useful way to get your tweet out to people who are actually interested, but too many hashtags can be overwhelming and look like you are casting a net too wide.
- When referencing other companies in your Tweets, be sure to use @mentions to encourage them to retweet your content – as this will be seen by their followers, who will hopefully want to follow you too.
- “Promoted Tweets” (a form of paid-for advertising) can be used to target current and potential followers using keywords in timeline, interest, geography and device.
- Leverage your employees. Ask them to become brand advocates. It is an easy way of expanding your corporate reach, as they are likely following your competitors or business partners.
How to increase engagement with your followers
Using Twitter as a B2B tool to promote thought leadership, brand development, and/or lead generation can be difficult. However, there are methods people have been using for the past five years that have proven to be effective.
- Providing a psychological reward is key to establishing and maintaining social relationships. You should retweet, like, and/or respond directly to those who want to be aligned with. Monitoring tools can be used to alter you when your brand is mentioned, and you can then respond promptly.
- Identify key targets. Segment those with a higher social authority/influence. Monitor Tweets from these lists and prioritise interactions with these accounts.
- Favourite a key target’s Tweet and they’ll be notified and gratified. Use @mentions to encourage them to retweet your content – this will be seen by their followers.
- Tweets that include a link increase URL clicks. Tweets that feature this CTA also increase clicks.
- Use photos and videos. According to research, a linked photo results in a 120{21dc2fe1b43c4cf57a2e25a56b286f09fbb32a45ddf34dcf04be366972dd7b06} increase in engagement and a 350{21dc2fe1b43c4cf57a2e25a56b286f09fbb32a45ddf34dcf04be366972dd7b06} increase in clicks.
How to improve the quality of Tweets
Your content needs to be carefully considered. If you are posting the same newsletter that you send in an email blast, you are not making the most of the diverse marketing opportunities that you have at your disposal.
- Use a mixture of curation and creation to generate enough content to Tweet several times per day.
- A 10-4-1 ratio is a general guideline to providing content.
- For every 10 Tweets with links to third-party articles, Tweet four times with company updates or blog posts, and one link to a target landing page.
- Search for industry-relevant news stories and use tools such as BufferApp to automate sharing of industry-relevant news at appropriate times for your followers
- Retweeting others is a best practice in terms of relationship-building on Twitter. If you retweet, others are likely to return the favour. This grants you exposure to their network.
- Keep your tweets between 120 and 130 characters. While tweets can be up to 140 characters long, keep them slightly shorter so that people can retweet and add a comment.
Welcome to Our Blog
We want to share our expert knowledge with you, and that is why we want you to know that all of our blogs are written by our in-house writing team.
Our writers do the research, discuss the topics and form their own opinions. They do not write for a commission from any sites, products or services mentioned, and we do not publish advertorials or paid reviews.
We enjoy writing for you and will continue to be transparent about our blogs, which are only opinion pieces.
