Of the various social media platforms available today, Twitter is one of the most powerful for marketing. Twitter’s reach is vast. The social media giant currently reports having 145 million monetizable daily users. Better yet, it’s free and allows you to post content within seconds.
With that big of a potential audience, you might be tempted to just start posting random Tweets. There’s more to it, though, if you want to truly be successful at Twitter marketing.
The trick to capitalizing on Twitter’s user base to boost your marketing efforts is to treat Twitter as a legitimate business activity rather than an afterthought, employing a strategy for who you want to reach, what you want to say, and how you’re going to ensure that your efforts are succeeding.
Creating a Twitter Strategy
To make the most of your Twitter marketing efforts, you should first create goals for what you want to accomplish. You want a good sense of your audience, what messages you’re trying to deliver, and what outcomes you’re trying to achieve, whether that’s attracting new clients, promoting new services, establishing expertise, or something else.
Start by researching your current and potential clients, your colleagues, and your competition. You should follow all of them on Twitter to get a sense of the current market climate and the kinds of messages your followers might want to see. Decide what your content will be (more on that in the next section) and commit to a schedule for posting that content. Even if it means hiring a social media manager or working with an outside firm, having someone responsible for regularly engaging with your followers and gaining new followers is key to any successful Twitter marketing campaign.
Choosing Your Content and Growing Your Engagement
Twitter is unique among the social media platforms in that it has a 280-character limit for every post. That means you need to be effective with limited words. Short tweets don’t mean your content has to suffer. Your content should be varied in both subject matter and complexity, ranging from simple tax deadline reminders to links to in-depth thought leadership pieces.
Before you tweet anything, though, you need to clearly brand your business and services through your Twitter handle, header, and profile picture. Whenever someone sees your tweet, you want them to instantly know it’s coming from you. Every time they see your photo or logo, your brand is reinforced. You should also include a short bio on your Twitter profile, along with your company’s URL, to drive traffic to your website.
In addition to standard content, Twitter also offers specific advertising options in the form of promoted tweets and Twitter ads that can help you reach a broader audience and make it easier for users to find you. The goal with Twitter is to always be engaging new users and growing your number of followers. Anything that helps those followers find you more easily, including directly interacting with other users by commenting or retweeting content, will boost your marketing strategy.
As a business, you can also apply to have your Twitter profile verified. This will earn you Twitter’s coveted blue checkmark and add an additional layer of legitimacy to your posts.
Twitter Marketing Best Practices
As with any internet content, you want to make sure your Twitter posts and ads include targeted key words that will help users find your content. With Twitter, it’s also crucial to be using the right hashtags, since they’re the key way Twitter users can sort through a massive sea of content.
Any Twitter marketing strategy is only useful if it’s successful. In your Twitter dashboard, you can find Twitter Analytics, which allows you to export useful data on your follower engagement, how well your promoted tweets are doing, which hashtags are successful, and more. If something is working well, do more of it. If certain content or hashtags aren’t engaging your desired audience, it might be time to shift the focus of your strategy.
When used strategically, Twitter can go a long way toward improving your brand awareness and attracting new clients. Social media is a crucial component of modern marketing, and a comprehensive Twitter strategy will put you on the path to making the most of it.
