Twitter is, without a doubt, one of the most important social media channels for marketers today. Understanding the platform and being able to maximise marketing results from it is an essential skill and it can take time to really get to grips with every aspect of the platform.
As it currently stands, Twitter boasts over 645 million active users. In order to engage sucessfully with this huge audience, what should you do?
It’s often compared to a cocktail party, where participants share snippets of information without burdening the other guests with long conversations that are awkward to remove themselves from. It’s a great way to put carefully chosen headlines out there, and if the other guests are interested, they’ll invite you to say more.
Dress for the occasion
The first thing is choose a suitable profile picture – the company logo is usually best, but if the account is for an individual then make sure the picture is clear and sensible and remember to look professional. This advice also goes for choosing a Twitter handle.
Strike up some sparkling conversation
After your profile has been made to be the best it can be, a business needs to create the right content and understand how and when to post it. This includes keeping posts short – possibly linking to longer articles on your own website – as well as finding the right balance between generating conversations and promoting a product, service or brand. Generally speaking, the split should be around four-fifths conversation and one-fifth promotion.
Get your timing right
Being aware of the best times to post to Twitter is also key and can require analysis of a company’s own follower base. Mobile users, it seems, are almost 120% more likely to access the site during the day, with B2B companies recording more traffic during the working week. This is opposite to B2C brands, which have recorded more traffic during the weekends.
Mind your manners
Next comes hashtags – a phenomenon that has swept across a number of social networking channels but started on Twitter. Make sure that when you use a hashtag it is appropriate for the business – don’t try to muscle in on trending hashtags in a bid to maximise an audience as this is actually more likely to annoy them.By using a hashtag effectively, a single tweet can record up to 20% more engagement than tweets without one. There are a few different ways to use hashtags, including: –
• Using one to be found in searches
• Engaging in a trending topic
• Using one to indicate an emotion
• Adding context to a tweet
Want to know more about hashtags? Read this –
Hashtag Engine Optimisation – the latest marketing trend
Don’t hog the limelight
All these examples should be well-thought out, however, and not every word in a tweet should have a hashtag in front of it, as this is incredibly annoying and will not maximise its impact. Not only will using multiple hashtags seem unprofessional and like you don’t know what you’re doing, but it also uses up precious character spaces. With only a 140 characters to work with, it is essential that a company really refines their tweets to be as effective as they can be. TweetDeck is a helpful tool in aiding companies to keep track of their activity and engagement rates.
Want to know more about social media? Tweeting may seem like an easy enough tool, but as we’ve said above, getting it right can actually prove quite a challenge. Understanding customer reactions and best-practices on the site can be a headache, so give us a call if you’d like us to help out.
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