How to Get the Most out of Twitter Marketing
On March 21, 2006, a computer programmer named Jack Dorsey sent out the world’s first tweet. It read, inauspiciously: “just setting up my twitter.” Twelve years later, what began as an SMS-based communications platform for groups of friends to keep tabs on each other is now a social media staple that boasts 330 million active Twitter users each month.
Here are some more statistics (from digital marketing agency Omnicore):
· Total Number of Tweets sent per Day: 500 million
· Percentage of Twitter users on Mobile: 80%
· Number of Twitter Daily Active Users: 100 million
Twitter users are diverse – ranging from @KimKardashian, who has more than 60 million followers to @RealDonaldTrump who has 53 million Twitter followers, to Queen Elizabeth (@RoyalFamily), who sent her first tweet in 2014. The Twitter audience is broad and public – and the reason why many businesses make Twitter a part of their social media marketing strategy.
Creating a Twitter Marketing Strategy
A sound Twitter marketing strategy is the foundation for success with the platform. Without a clear understanding of what you’re trying to achieve, and how your activities will help your business meet its goals, your tweets will simply be lost in the Twitterverse.
To help you get the most of your 280 characters, Hootsuite's guide to Twitter marketing has a few tips on creating an effective strategy:
Define success and set goals. List your business’s high-level business objectives. They could be something like:
- Generate leads and sales
- Increase customer loyalty
- Build brand and product awareness
From these, develop specific and measurable goals. For example, “use Twitter to drive 30 email sign-ups per month” is a goal that can help your sales team generate leads. And it’s easy to measure progress and determine if Twitter is helping you to achieve your goals.
Monitor the competition. If you’re on Twitter, chances are your competitors are too. (And they’re probably monitoring you!) Using Twitter Search, you can find out what people are saying about a particular topic, a specific competitor and your business, and adjust your marketing approach and your business activities accordingly.
Engage directly with your customers. Twitter is one of the best platforms for customers to complain if they’re unhappy with a company’s products or service – better than Facebook because their complaint will be read by more people than just their “friends”.
The good news: Twitter allows you to respond directly – and immediately – providing an opportunity to turn that negative into a positive. Twitter also lets you learn more about your customers, including what they like or don’t like about your company and your brand, their favourite and least favourite products and more. It’s pretty cost-effective market research.
Have a personality. And a purpose. It’s tempting to use the same messaging on Twitter that you’re using on Facebook and other platforms, but it’s not the best idea. Each network has unique characteristics and user bases, so using the same approach for everything isn’t going to be effective.
A strategically-crafted Twitter profile will build trust with your audience and improve how your business appears in search results. It will also give your customers a real-time channel to reach out to you – with questions, kudos or complaints.
· Write a good profile. You don’t get a lot of characters for your bio (160) so make sure the words you use have impact.
· Get verified by Twitter. Official verification by Twitter tells your customers they can trust your content and your brand.
· Share it. Create a good profile, then add your Twitter handle to other platforms to ensure everyone can find it. Show it off on your website, email signatures…even on the side of your company car to make sure your customers can find you.
Create great content with great tweets.
- Make sure your tweets say something. Teach or entertain. Give your audience a reason to read your tweets.
· Keep it short. Yes, 280 characters isn’t super-long, but if you can say it in fewer characters, do it.
· Use video. Video continues to be the best-performing post type on Twitter, as well as on other platforms.
Tweet regularly. Tweet at least once a day to attract and engage your followers. Experiment by tweeting even more often, and see what kind of response you get. Remember that people on social media are looking for immediate gratification. If you’re not consistent, they will move on, and probably to your competitors.
Resources
blog.hootsuite.com/twitter-marketing/
www.thebalancesmb.com/top-reasons-why-your-small-business-should-use-twitter-2948523