When it comes to social media, very few sites have an impact on marketing than Twitter does. Social media statistics indicate the site has over 200 million active users, which means there are multiple opportunities for a business to reach potential customers. However, a successful marketing plan using the platform requires more than simply posting a tweet. There are best practices to take that will allow you to increase brand awareness and audience without making mistakes that can be common with incorporating Twitter into your marketing strategy. Here are some of the main tips to consider.
The first step in promoting your brand on Twitter is also the first thing to do when creating an account: setting up a profile. You want your handle or username to be as close to the name of your company as possible. Adding irrelevant numbers or symbols could make it harder to remember or find online. Use profile images that closely reflect your brand; also, ensure any logos can be legible on a mobile device. If you have a personal brand that is just yourself, add a headshot as the profile image.
Next up is the bio, which gives you the opportunity to summarize your business’s mission and values. While you only have a finite number of characters to use, it’s easy to come up with a listing that addresses all necessary information. The two main goals of a bio are to be accurate about what you do and target it based on who you want to reach. Once you have that, you can edit it to adjust tone and style based on the nature of your business.
If you’ve been on Twitter, you have seen hashtags used constantly. They are a great way to add visibility to your brand. From a traffic standpoint, tweets that have hashtags are engaged with twice as much as tweets. You can search for hashtags that are popular at the moment or are being used frequently among your competitors, or create a hashtag that is exclusive to your business. Doing the latter can help collect and organize content about your brand.
However, while adding hashtags can benefit your campaign, adding too many does the exact opposite. Studies show that a tweet that has more than two hashtags included has their engagement drop by 17%. So, one or two hashtags serve as the best practice. In addition, make sure that any included hashtags are relevant to the context of your tweet. This prevents any mishaps from not understanding what a hashtag is being used for.
Social media marketing can be a time-consuming process. Most businesses are too busy to post individual items multiple times a day. Fortunately, there are numerous paid and free scheduling tools that give companies a way to automate the posting process. Using a scheduler allows you to post content at a programmed time, which gives you the opportunity to put content up at peak times. It should be noted that the peak times are based on overall Twitter engagement and not on a particular audience. Scheduling works best for pre-planned content, such as blogs or links to a video. For responding to feedback or entering a conversation, real-time posting is still the preferred method.
Adding Twitter to your marketing campaign is a great way to increase the visibility of your brand as well as the services you offer. It is important to keep things as relevant to your business as possible, and that the platform offers numerous ways to be creative in what and how you post. Contact us today to see how we can help with your social media marketing goals.