Social Media Marketing: Twitter

By: Dave Nicosia

July 5, 2016

Twitter

First of all, Twitter, while a bit more specialized than Facebook, is still an important social media player.

Facebook is about building personal relationships with clients and potential clients. Twitter is about brand visibility and communicating professionally with your audience.

You want to present yourself to your audience in the best way possible, but as a brand relationship rather than the more personal relationship Facebook fosters. Interacting with your users is just as important on Twitter as it is on Facebook.

General Twitter Tips

Don’t over hashtag. It’s much better to focus on one or two that are trending and relevant to your company to push your tweets higher and get more visibility.

Add images. Images add significantly more engagement to posts (18% more clicks, 89% more favorites, and 150% retweets to be specific). Make sure that you add relevant images to your tweets. You can also tag up to ten people in an image, but use that strategically.

Respond to trending events in real time. Bringing yourself into the public conversation can enhance brand visibility. Make sure you’re memorable though.

Share content multiple times. People aren’t going to go on your Twitter feed to see what they missed, so don’t be afraid to repost some of your own content after a little while to make sure you get maximum visibility. Twitter isn’t about what’s happened since you’ve been gone, Twitter is about what’s happening right at this very moment.

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Tweet at the best times for your audience. Think about who you’re tweeting to. Do they work 9-5 jobs? Tweet in the early morning when they get up, when they’re taking lunch, or when they’re getting off work.

Involve your audience. Convince them to engage with your content. Add your own spin on other people’s content. You want your audience to feel like you’re interested in what you have to say.

Make sure that you’re branded properly. Update your bio, your header images, anything that can be branded. Good branding is important.

Interact with experts in your field. This will build your credibility both within and outside your field, especially if the experts are well known outside of their, and your, field.

Get your colleagues involved. If anyone in your company has a Twitter account, especially an active one, ask them to both follow and interact with the company. This will enhance the reach.

Keep track of how your brand is being mentioned. Respond to those mentions if necessary. This feedback will give you a better idea of how the average user of your brand sees you and, if necessary, how to change that.

Interacting with experts in your field can build your Twitter credibility.

Favorite other people’s tweets. Sometimes this is better than other interaction because it acknowledges their tweets even if they don’t necessarily need interaction.

Use promoted tweets, but don’t let them run for too long. If you use these, keep them honest. You’re not trying to trick people, you want them to establish a relationship with the brand.

Plan ahead. You can schedule tweets using Hootsuite, but if you don’t want to use that then keep your content in a specific spot so that you have content in advance.

Be conversational. You have 140 characters, that doesn’t always allow for essay style posts or sentences. Conversationalism allows for people to feel welcome to involve themselves. However, be careful, there is a line between conversationalism and unprofessionalism.

 

Watch for Twitter spammers!

Essentially, good Twitter branding boils down to enhancing and protecting the reputation of your brand. Communicate with your users well and interact with both them and relevant other accounts.