Is Twitter still relevant for your marketing strategy? Your answer may depend on whether or not you've ever had success with this network. More often times than not, many businesses feel directionless when it comes to tweeting, especially when it comes to whether or not posts are reaching their audience.
Some people use Twitter for entertainment, others for news, and still others for following friends. Depending on your audience, your business may have an untapped opportunity to engage with your audience on this network.
The way you approach Twitter as a business shouldn’t be the same as other networks like Facebook or LinkedIn. The main difference between Twitter and other networks is that Twitter thrives on interaction.
Once a tweet receives enough replies and retweets, your content and most importantly your message, has the potential to reach hundreds if not thousands beyond your followers. And if someone else with thousands of followers retweets your tweet, you’ll likely have quite a few new followers as well.
However, the purpose of creating popular tweets should go beyond the numbers – again it’s about creating meaningful interactions, whether that’s introducing someone to your brand, sharing your message, important information, a product, or service.
If you’ve ignored Twitter for some time, there are a few reasons why you should dust off your Twitter strategy and start making some changes.
As shared in an article from Inc., Twitter can be valuable in several ways.
The ability to network with high-profile individuals
With a decrease in noise on Twitter, there may be an opportunity for businesses to engage with potential influencers more than before. By thoughtfully engaging with them over an extended period of time, you can build relationships that might be beneficial for working together in the future.
Increasing costs on other social media
As advertising increases on networks like Facebook and Instagram, Twitter may become more appealing for businesses simply because it is still easy to reach their audience organically.
The utility of real-time conversation and news
Finally, Twitter is incredibly valuable for real-time conversation and news. With many using Twitter as a quick go-to news source, your followers are seeking valuable information – and hopefully connect with your posts. Keep this in mind as your create a strategy.
Tweeting is easy – you create a post in 280 characters or less, do a bit of research around trending hashtags and…ready to post! But that’s not all. Twitter will only be effective for your business if you develop a strategy.
Define Your Success
Before you start or continue to create tweets, first consider why you’re there and how you define success. While you might have a couple of goals, consider what is most important to your business – do you want to generate leads? Build brand awareness? There are many possibilities, so decide how you want to approach success for your company.
Research Competition
While you shouldn’t use competitors as your only inspiration for Twitter, it’s important to be aware of the types of content they are posting and who they are engaging with.
Identify Your Target Audience
Knowing your audience is crucial to being able to reach them on Twitter. Generic tweets won’t help you reach your goals – identify your audience and curate content tailored specifically to their pain points and challenges.
Audit and Take Control of Twitter Accounts
This may mean several things – if your company has several Twitter accounts for different locations or departments, make sure that your brand and message is consistent across all of them.
In addition, make sure that your profile is set up with the appropriate images and information – it might seem like a given, but you would be surprised of the number of business accounts lacking a cover image or not using the company logo as the profile photo.
Include Twitter in Overall Strategy
For consistency, be sure that you’re communicating with whoever is working on the strategy for other social networks (if it’s not you). Since your followers likely follow you in more than one place, it’s crucial that your messaging, brand, and content are specifically created for each network, but also consistent.
Keep Your Presence Unique
Many brands and companies can start to blur together online, especially on Twitter. Also, don’t simply publish the same post across networks – make it unique and again, be sure that posts identify with your audience.
In addition to developing your strategy using the steps above, here are a few additional tips to keep in mind as you build or reevaluate your company’s Twitter strategy.
As we mentioned earlier, Twitter is meant to be interactive. If you’re sending several one-way tweets a week and not engaging in conversation – you might want to rethink your strategy. Whether it’s making your posts more engaging or responding to someone else’s tweets, there are many opportunities to make Twitter more personal.
For many companies, this was done from day one. Whether you’re updating these for the first time or perhaps refreshing your images – make sure these are updated on your Twitter profile:
Your posts shouldn’t sound like a robot wrote them – avoid this by finding your brand’s voice. This means being fresh and original, conveying your brand’s message, reflecting your company's core values, and resonating with your audience.
While you don’t have to schedule posts at the same time, on the same day every week or month, it’s important to ensure that you have some content prepared and scheduled ahead of time. To find the right days and times, review how past posts have performed and based on this information, determine the best times to schedule future content.
As you might already know, video marketing has only increased in popularity over the last couple of years. Twitter is no different. Companies can either use Twitter’s native video feature or utilize the live streaming app, Periscope.
Twitter chats may be another great untapped resource for many companies. Take a look at these tips for hosting a successful Twitter chat.
A thread on Twitter could be a great way to start a conversation! By stringing together several tweets in a row on a topic that people in your industry are interested in, chances are you could have more engagement than ever before.
No one wants to be up at 3:00am responding to tweets – we’re with you there. Regardless of the size of your company, you might want to consider checking in on Twitter even if it is after hours. Whether you’re keeping an eye out for potential issues from customers or simply need to respond to someone’s question, your response times can make a huge difference in how your followers view your brand. Set up notifications so that you can see any urgent responses or messages.
Try to avoid posting the same or similar content over and over again. Your followers will soon notice and perhaps start to ignore your posts if you’re not providing fresh and unique content.
In a previous post, we talked about the importance of humor on Twitter. Not only does it keep your brand human and personal to your audience, but it will also keep them engaged and excited about the content you share.
Using hashtags is important to ensure that your tweets reach their greatest potential to be seen. By doing some research to find the most popular hashtags in your industry and for potential customers, you'll increase the chance that your audience will see your posts.
Last but not least, it's important to go back and review the results of your Twitter posts. Whether you use Twitter Analytics or a tool like HubSpot or Hootsuite, you can review the types of content that are engaged with most through clicks and retweets. Learn which types of content are doing the best and focus on creating similar content for future posts.
Want to learn more about implementing a Twitter strategy as a part of a digital marketing strategy? Take a look at our guide to learn more.
