From personal experience, I know that sometimes keeping up with all the different social media platforms can be a straight-up exhausting process.
However, when we’re talking about Twitter it is very obvious that it’s one of the best channels for modern marketing out there at the moment.
The platform quickly went from a place where people type their thoughts and jokes, to a tool that can literally take your business to a whole different level and make your name in the industry.
It allows you to connect to your audience in real-time and to have real-time feedback from their side which can be invaluable.
I am sure you are aware of all of this, but it is not only enough to just tweet and comment on the latest trending topics to be successful at Twitter marketing.
You have to go much, much further with your efforts. You need strategic planning, you need to stand out from the competition, and you need to engage your audience in the right way.
In order to do that, you can’t just sign in to Twitter and start writing content. You have to have prepared content, a tone of voice, and many other things figured out before you can expect to grow your followers.
In this article, I will explain the process from the very start, explain how to get more followers, and give you some tips on how to use Twitter for marketing strategies.
If you are further down the road with your Twitter account, you can “jump in” anytime in the post and see how to proceed.
How to do Twitter marketing?
Here is your complete step by step guide of doing twitter marketing:
1. Handle, profile picture, header image, and bio
First things first. If you are starting from zero, or even if you have an already existing account this is applicable.
You absolutely have to pay attention to the handle you’re using, the profile picture, and the header image as these three things will make your account recognizable.
Your handle should be consistent with the name of your brand on other social media platforms, so your customers can easily find you on Twitter.
Also, the name should be easy to remember so followers can find you again when they need to, or when they want to tag you in a Tweet.
Try to keep the handle short as well since people are much more likely to avoid mentioning a business that has a long handle.
The reason is that tweets have a character limit and long handles just take too much of the characters.
When it comes to the picture, you also have to make sure that it is a recognizable picture that is consistent with your brand or business.
The simplest and safest way is to just put the logo of your business or brand.
This has a positive impact on raising brand awareness since every time somebody interacts with your account, their followers will see the logo and name of your brand and be aware of it in their future purchases.
If you have a personal brand, then just use very clear, professional images of your face.
When it comes to the header of your account, you can get very creative there.
You can promote the brand further, but also catch the eye of new followers by presenting something exciting or innovative.
A good example of that is Target. They always use creative headers that have a message to them.
Currently, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Target has a creative and simple header that symbolizes a love message to everybody.
Another great example is Walmart which currently has a header of a store worker with “happy to help” written on his back.
This comes at a time when store staff is considered to be among the heroes of this pandemic, and with a good reason.
All of this applies to the bio as well. It is a short 160-character description of what your brand is about.
The best you can do is be clear, concise, and consistent. If you want to differentiate yourself from the others, try to be creative and choose something that will attract attention.
For example, UberFacts has an interesting bio that’s for sure amusing and telling it like it is.
2. Tweet often and in the right periods
When in doubt “to tweet or not to tweet”, just tweet. Compared to other social media like for example Facebook or Instagram, Twitter needs a more aggressive strategy when it comes to sharing content.
Some say the best balance is somewhere between three and seven tweets per day. You don’t want to be extremely aggressive as well so your followers will start to get bored of you.
But there are brands out there that tweet a lot more and it works for them.
You should know your audience, their preferences, and according to the type of brand you are and what your competitors are doing to choose the right amount of tweets per day.
The only thing that’s for sure is that you have to tweet regularly to maximize the engagement with your customers.
You have to think about the content that you will be sharing on your account. Avoid promoting only yourself all the time.
Instead, use tweets from your followers, relevant tweets from the industry, statistics, breaking news, creative content, even memes, and jokes, etc.
This way, you can be perceived by your followers as active, engaging, and in trend with the latest happenings.
Filling up your Twitter feed with fresh content lets potential followers know that you’re active, engaging, and well, worth following.
With the help of social scheduling software, you can regularly queue up content without having to constantly tweet in real-time. This effectively allows you to attract new followers around the clock.
When it comes to when to tweet, you also have to pay attention.
The reason for this is that there are certain days and even times of the day when people are more active on the platform.
This means it would be more likely that your tweets get more engagement than in the other days/times of the day.
According to Buffer, tweets shared on the weekends receive a higher engagement than those on a weekday.
Friday, Saturday, and Sunday are the days when you want to tweet more if engagement is your interest on Twitter.
When it comes to the specific time of the day, there are different studies out there showing different results.
Some say between 12 PM and 6 PM, others between 12 PM and 3 PM throughout the week. And this might be true or not, but you need to find out for yourself.
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Your specific peak posting times can depend on a lot of things such as your audience, type of business, etc.
For example, if your target audience is adults and people that are employed, you might not see peak times during the 9-5 working period.
This is something that you should test for yourself and see what’s best for your brand specifically.
3. Schedule tweets
It is important that you’re there for the important day-to-day trends and news and included in the famous topics.
Many of these events cannot be predicted and you have to make a spur-of-the-moment decision to tweet something.
But these occasions are rare and they are the exception to the rule.
In the other time, you should have a clear idea and plan of what content you’re going to tweet in the following days and weeks.
If you did the previous steps, and you know what times are the peak periods and what type of content to share, you don’t need to be there for the tweeting process.
The key is consistency, so you can schedule your tweets and carry on with your other responsibilities.
When you have breaking news or something that is relevant at the moment, you can always go on Twitter and share it immediately.
As I previously mentioned, you can decide how frequently you want to tweet and according to that schedule your posts.
There are a lot of tools out there that can help you do the scheduling.
4. Use Twitter cards
Twitter cards are tweets with visuals and links that lead to a specific site. They are used to improve user experience and present the tweets in a better way.
There are a few types of Twitter Cards:
- Summary card- it’s a card that displays a preview of site content, with title, description, image, and URL.
- Summary with a large image- additionally has a full-width image.
- Player card- presents video and audio clips by and displays them with a full-width or full-screen (on mobile) thumbnail.
- App card- used to promote content related to apps that includes name, description, ratings, cost, and URL or has a download button to the app.
There are some advantages of using Twitter Cards like the fact that they increase traffic because the rich media experience encourages people more to click on the links presented in the cards.
If you are promoting an app, the downloads will grow since you will draw attention to the direct link for the specific app.
5. Research the hashtags
We can’t have a post about Twitter marketing without mentioning hashtags.
Hashtags are a way to do SEO on your Twitter account and make your tweets searchable.
Tweets that have at least one hashtag in them receive more than 12% engagement compared to tweets with no hashtags in them.
Insert one or more relevant hashtags in your tweets as a fast way to increase the likelihood of making new followers like your content.
It only takes a second to put some hashtags, and it can make a big difference in the bigger picture.
Tacking on a couple of hashtags to any given tweet is a quick way to increase the likelihood of new followers finding your account. Plus, doing so only takes a couple of seconds and there are plenty of hashtags to choose from.
What you want to avoid is overusing hashtags and making your tweets look too spammy.
If you’re using the right hashtags for your industry, one or two can go a long way and there is no need to just stack hashtags.
To find the most relevant hashtags for your industry, try looking for important keywords, or research the most-used hashtags currently and try to include them.
6. Use Twitter ads
Promoted tweets
I am sure you already know what promoted tweets are, but on the off chance that you’re not familiar with them, they are regular tweets that you pay to be promoted to people that do not follow your account.
Users that are not among your followers can see these tweets, can like them, retweet them- overall as they do with regular tweets.
This way, you can reach users that are not aware of your account or brand and if your content is good enough, you have high chances of getting some new followers.
The best thing is that you can choose which audience specifically you want to target, so the followers you gain will be relevant to your brand.
Promoted accounts
Promoted Accounts work on the same principle. If you decide to promote your account, it will put you in the spotlight so new followers can be reached.
You will choose the targeted audience, and they will be able to see your account on their timelines, suggestions, and even in the search results.
It is a very good investment to make if you are looking to increase your followers with relevant users.
Promoted trends
The trending topics that appear on every user’s timeline shows what’s happening at the moment that’s relevant, and what people are tweeting about.
On the mobile version, these trends are on the discover tab.
Twitter gives you the option to have promoted hashtags that will be shown as trending to your picked audience.
What’s more, if users do click on those hashtags, they will see a promoted tweet from your account in front of all the other accounts that used the same hashtag.
These are not only promoted ads that you can do on Twitter, as you can choose ad campaigns that are based on whatever you want to achieve.
For example, if your goal is to have more engagement, you can just use the promoted tweets option, but if you want to gain followers you will choose to use a promoted account where the objective is to actually gain new followers and not only engagement.
Relevant: Expand your business with these Twitter strategies
7. Engage with your followers
It’s not only important to create good content that will engage your audience and promote that content.
People, especially now, have a lot of information at the tips of their fingers and with a simple Google search they can find out everything.
If they chose to follow you is because they are interested in what you have to say and they think what you have to say is relevant.
The best way to keep them interested is to indulge in communication with them since Twitter is a two-way street when it comes to communication.
First of all, you have to define what type of brand you want to be presented as and keep that image when engaging with your audience.
It is always good to have somebody in charge of communicating with the followers, just make sure that the person responsible is very familiar with the brand, the rules, the policies and knows what to say.
Try to respond in a very professional manner when people are tweeting complaints, or when they are asking genuine questions connected to your business or work.
However, in practice, the accounts and brands that get the most attention to them are those that are replying to something trendy, relevant, and using humor.
One example of that is Netflix. They are always engaging with their followers in the most creative and funny ways which in return gets them a very large number of retweets and responses.
Their jokes are inside jokes from shows they broadcast. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Netflix released a reality show called “Too Hot to Handle” that everybody liked immediately.
They brought those two subject in one tweeting the following:
It’s relatable, it’s funny, it’s trendy. What more do you need?
Even if your brand or business is more serious and has a target audience that is sophisticated, a joke or two within the borders of the industry can never hurt.
Those are the types of engagements that might blow up your Twitter account and help you gain more followers.
8. Bring your followers from other platforms
Another way that you can go about gaining new followers on Twitter is to try to get to them from other social media platforms except Twitter.
Make sure that you invite your website visitors to follow you on all social platforms including Twitter.
Locate the icons in a place where it’s visible and easy to access.
Add your Twitter account on your Facebook profile too. Just write it in the about section, and don’t be afraid to share some tweets sometimes.
You can come up with very interesting ways to promote your Twitter account on your other social media platforms.
For example, you can include a funny or successful tweet in your newsletter strategy.
You can invite new followers on Twitter by using their email addresses.
Conclusion
To sum up, Twitter is extremely important as a platform in this day and age and the possibilities to reach new people are very vast.
Being creative, visually advanced, and using Twitter videos can mean a lot in the battle of differentiating yourself from the others in your industry.
Try to give your audience what they want. Give them memes, or articles, or important facts, or FAQs about your business.
Experiment with your tweeting and analyze the results. Don’t be afraid to tweet in a new direction and to shift your initial tone of voice if you see that it’s just not working out for you.
In the end, only you can know what’s best for your business and what your audience may respond to.
Did you find this post helpful? If you did, don’t forget to check on my other useful posts on improving on other social media platforms:
- How to Get More Snapchat Followers and Make Money [2020]
- Make money with Instagram
- Get more followers on Tiktok
Let me know in the comments below which of these tips you already tried and what were the results. You can also follow me on Twitter for quick digital marketing, social media, and SEO tips.
