How to Effectively Use Twitter for Marketing

Twitter is one of the most powerful social media platforms of our day. With over 330 million monthly active users, it allows you to reach more people than you could ever do otherwise. And while several other platforms have the same number of users, Twitter has certain advantages that make it uniquely qualified to help you market your business. The most significant of these is that, unlike Facebook and Instagram, everything about Twitter was designed to create interaction. From the character limit of tweets to its re-tweet function, Twitter exposes your content in a way that draws other users in and piques their interest. This guide contains strategies on how to effectively use Twitter for Marketing. The purpose of this post it to help you harness Twitter’s potential by creating an effective and functional Twitter marketing strategy.

Establish Your Twitter Goals

In Twitter, like in life, it’s not enough to do something because it’s the norm. You have to make every action intentional and aimed at a particular goal. Before you set out on working on your Twitter marketing, you should define what you want it to accomplish. What does a successful strategy look like to you?

Most successful strategies incorporate at least some of the following goals:

• Create leads for your business
• Create and/or increase awareness
• Establish an online community
• Get feedback from customers
• Provide support for customers

Setting goals will let you know how close you are to your mark, as well as allow you to correct your course if you ever get sidetracked. Truthfully, setting goals can be challenging, especially when there are so many of them. It’s helpful to begin with primary online marketing goals. Then build Twitter marketing goals around those. For example, you may decide your primary online marketing goal is to establish yourself as a thought leader. You may also want to generate leads and sales calls. If that’s the case, then check and see how Twitter can help you accomplish those goals.

Identify Your Target Audience

Many people believe the most crucial goal on Twitter is to gain followers. While you do need followers, you also need to be specific about the followers you acquire. One of the biggest mistakes you can make is to target every user group on Twitter. Since you cannot possibly create content to satisfy every one of them, your profile will inevitably lose relevance.

Additionally, targeting everyone is bound to sidetrack you from your goals. Instead, use your goals to identify your audience. For example, if your goal is to provide support for your customers, then you already know your customers are your target audience and you can proceed accordingly.

Craft Your User Profile

You need to be able to communicate what you and your brand stands for to your audience. One of the best ways to do that is through your handle, profile picture, header image and bio. The goal here is to make them easily recognizable, as well as interesting.

The Handle

You should get a handle that is as close to your original brand name as possible. This will immediately let everyone know your profile is the real deal. Avoid clever augmentations like punctuation marks and numbers as these will reduce the chances that you’ll be mentioned and re-tweeted. Long handle names eat into users’ tweet characters limit. Plus, they may come across as immature to some users.

Profile Picture

The best way to go is to use your logo [if you have one] as your profile picture. You should resist the temptation to “rebrand” your identity online and use an image that is entirely different from your offline identity. Not only will this come across as inconsistent, but you’d also have to begin from square one, generating awareness and online followership. For personal brands, you should get a picture that represents your brand–a nice clean headshot or a graphical illustration where appropriate.

Cover Photo

There are several ways you can use your cover photo to achieve your Twitter goals. Some brands prefer using it to project a more engaging iteration of their logo and identity, while others use the cover photo space to display a message. Whatever you choose for your cover photo, make sure it blends well with your profile picture and is relatable enough for users. You can look at famous brands’ cover photos for inspiration.

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Bio

Thanks to Twitter, your bio is going to be short, which is a good thing. You just have to make sure it is concise, to the point and descriptive of your company or personal brand. Remember that it will appear directly under your profile picture, so it should complement that. Here are some tips on how to write a bio that packs a punch:

• Incorporate some humor, as long as the regular Joe can relate to it.
• Try to brag about your accomplishments (just a little bit).
• Add some personality and character to the words.

These are just guidelines and you shouldn’t spend too much time stressing about writing the perfect bio. As long as it is short, descriptive and easy to understand, you’re good to go.

Make Your Tweets Worthwhile

So now, you’ve outlined your goals and have set out to achieve them. You’ve created an excellent profile with clean pictures and a killer logo. Users have noticed your handle and have begun to follow you. Next, you need to make sure they consider it worth their time to follow you. Thanks to your goals, this should be a cinch. Your tweets should be simple and easy to read, useful enough to add value to your followers, and informative enough to be shared.

Users are inundated with hundreds of tweets every day, and so, if you want your tweets to get the attention that they deserve, they have to be useful. Make them interesting enough to make your followers look for you on their timeline. You may experience some difficulty achieving this because you only have 280 characters per tweet. But a great way to overcome this is to begin with the large body of text you wish to share and begin to trim it, cutting out irrelevant information. Hopefully, what you’ll be left with at the end is information that is short, useful and engaging.

Use Hashtags Properly

Before discussing anything else about hashtags, you should know that quite a number of Twitter users go overboard and include a multitude of them in every tweet they post. Even though research has shown that tweets with hashtags get twice as many engagements as those that are without, more hashtags does not equal more engagements. Using too many hashtags not only reflects your inexperience, but it is also quite annoying to users. Research also shows that two is the optimum number of hashtags per tweet.

You can use several tools to find the right hashtags for your tweets. For starters, you can use Twitter analytics to find the most popular hashtags at any given point in time, and that can help you position your tweets for maximum exposure. Hashtagify is another tool that helps you find the best tags for your tweets. It does this by suggesting hashtags that are related to your keywords.

Use Twitter analytics to find the most popular hashtags. #TwitterTips #OnlineMarketing Click To Tweet

Tweet During Optimal Periods

After creating amazing content for your tweets, you also have to make sure that your followers see them. As mentioned earlier, lots and lots of tweets get put out there daily, and your tweets need all the help they can get. You should tweet during peak periods, when people are most active on Twitter, and most likely to view your tweets.

These peak periods often vary slightly from audience to audience and understanding your target audience can help you figure out the periods when you’re most likely to get your followers to engage. Generally speaking, most users are active on Twitter during the weekend (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday). Some studies also show that 12 pm to 6 pm on any given day has the highest frequency of online users.

Don’t worry if you can’t find the time to tweet during these periods. There are tools like Hootsuite and Buffer that let you schedule your posts ahead of time. All you need to do is type them, hashtags and all, set them up, and they’ll go live at the predetermined time.

Use Twitter Media to Your Advantage

Even though Twitter is not primarily photo and video dependent like Instagram, you can still achieve a lot with them. Consider the fact that tweets with pictures are 89% more likely to receive likes than tweets without pictures. However, just like hashtags, it is vital to ensure your pictures are high-quality and relevant to your tweets. You can also use simple graphic illustrations and designs to emphasize further what your tweet is about.

As a platform, YouTube is now the second largest search engine in the world. This means people look to videos for content almost as much as they look to words and pictures. All of this is good news for you and your Twitter marketing because Twitter lets users post videos of up to 140 seconds. You can also post videos of up to 10 minutes using its professional publisher tools. With videos, your engagement is sure to skyrocket!

Get Feedback From Your Users by Conducting Polls

If one of your goals is to receive feedback from your customers, you won’t find a better way to achieve it than with Twitter’s polls. Polls “demand” more engagement from your followers than regular tweets because they encourage them to say something. The task is even easier because polls come with pre-defined options. All you need to do to create a poll is to click on the “compose new tweet” button and select polls at the bottom of the pop-up window.

When creating a poll, these tips can come in handy:

• Keep the options distinct and easily distinguishable.
• The language should be simple and easy to understand.
• Ensure your followers are familiar with the subject of the poll.

Use Ads

Following these tips is a great way to steadily grow your follower base and awareness on Twitter. However, with Twitter Ads, you can give your exposure an additional boost and grow your follower base much faster. There are two types of Ads on Twitter and whichever you choose should be in line with your goals.

Promoted Tweets

These are as the name implies, and are a way for you to reach more people with your tweets. Promoted tweets let you select who you want to see your tweets, regardless of whether or not they currently follow you. You should make sure whatever tweets you promote are high quality, and crafted using the tips above. It’s a good idea to see which of your tweets get the most likes and response and use that information to craft your promoted tweets.

Conversational Ads

These are the second type of Ads on Twitter, and they are simply promoted tweets with an edge. You can configure them to feature images, videos and call to action buttons, and they are designed to encourage users to help you share and spread your message to their followers.

Connect With Influencers

As you may know, using Twitter helps you reach more people than you would ordinarily be able to reach. But with influencers, you can take that reach a step further. Twitter influencers are usually experts in a particular field and/or industry who have a large Twitter following. The power of influencers comes from the fact that they are believed to be very knowledgeable about certain subjects, and users take notice when they discuss those subjects.

As a result, a single tweet or mention from an influencer can get you extensive exposure. Influencers have very specific followings, which means that with the right influencer, your business and brand can rapidly reach your target audience. For an effective influencer outreach, you need to first identify the right influencer. They will be the ones who operate in your industry and have your target audience as followers. Then, all you need to do is reach out to them and make your offer.

Summary on How to Effectively Use Twitter