Twitter is a great marketing tool, but things on the platform move quicker than any other social network – the average lifespan of a tweet is only 18 minutes, and over 6,000 tweets are sent every second!
It’s easy to get lost amongst the chatter. Here are ten of our favourite Twitter tips to help you stand out from the crowd!
1. Tweet regularly
To begin with, you won’t know the best days and times to reach your followers on Twitter. Some users only check Twitter at night, whereas others only look in the morning at weekends. To achieve as much reach as possible, try tweeting throughout the day and over the weekend. This will allow you to test when your posts get the most engagement.
2. Tweet at the best time for your audience
It’s recommended to have a steady stream of relevant content on Twitter, but according to research by CoSchedule, these are the optimum times to post for different industries:
- B2C: 8am – 10am, 12pm, 7pm – 9pm
- B2B: 7am – 8am, 11am, 6pm, 9pm
- Software services: 10am, 2pm, 6pm
- Healthcare: 9am, 6pm
- Media: 6am – 7am, 11am, 7pm – 8pm, 10pm
- Higher education: 8am, 5pm, 7pm, 9pm
Most people do their heaviest web-browsing in the morning and evening – but you’ll also catch people on their breaks in the mornings and over lunchtime.
To make sure you are achieving the most engagement, find the times which work best for your audience and try to stay consistent with the times you are posting.
3. Try not to annoy your followers!
You want to talk to your followers and share useful info, but it’s important not to go overboard! If you tweet too often (e.g. every five minutes) you risk annoying your audience and losing followers.
To monitor whether or not you are tweeting too much, use your Twitter analytics. This will show you how engaged your followers are with your tweets. If you notice engagement drops when your tweet frequency increases, this could signal that you are annoying your audience.
4. Engage with your audience
Don’t forget that Twitter is a social network – not just a content distribution tool! To build your audience, you need to engage, not just broadcast messages and links back to your website.
Some ideas to generate engagement on Twitter include; using Twitter polls, asking questions, and getting involved with public Twitter conversations.
5. Track trending topics
Trending topics can be a good way to participate in relevant conversations, as well as think of content ideas! Most trending topics also have accompanying hashtags, making it event easier to get involved.
Don’t be scared to think outside of the box when it comes to trending topics. The topic doesn’t need to be directly related to your products or services, but it could be relevant to your brand – or just something funny!
6. Don’t forget your Twitter analytics
How do you decide on what changes to make to your Twitter strategy? Twitter’s handy inbuilt analytics makes it easy to track engagement on your tweets. You can find metrics for every one of your tweets, including how many times twitter users have seen, retweeted, liked and replied to each!
You can go even further with your analytics using URL shortening tools, such as Bitly, which allow you to create custom short URLs – so you can track how many clicks the links included in your tweets have had.
Your Twitter analytics make it easy to assess what is working for you and what is not, so you can use your data to achieve your goals.
7. Save time using a scheduler
Scheduling tools such as Tweetdeck and Hootsuite are fantastic at saving you time on Twitter. They allow you to write your tweets in advance, add images, links and emojis, and choose the date and time that the tweet will be published. Don’t waste time writing multiple tweets per day – use the time freed-up by a scheduler to engage with your followers instead!
8. Remember that follower count doesn’t always equal success
Back in the days before Twitter analytics, brands most commonly measured success by follower count – the more followers you had, the better your strategy was.
Today, we can set goals for our Twitter strategies which help achieve wider business objectives. With lots of metrics at our fingertips, here are some useful ways to measure Twitter success:
- Engagement growth
- Brand sentiment on Twitter
- Customer response time
- Leads generation
Before you start your plan, decide what your brand aims to achieve on Twitter. You can then set goals to help achieve this, and pick the relevant metrics to help measure your progress.
9. Don’t go overboard with hashtags
Tweets containing hashtags receive 2x more engagement than those without hashtags. However, tweets containing more than two hashtags actually show a 17% drop in engagement!
The stats show that it’s important to use the right hashtags – but be careful of overusing them. Twitter analytics can come in handy here, as you can find your most popular hashtags.
10. Make use of images
Tweets which include images generate far more shares and clicks than those without. According to Buffer, tweets with images received 89% more likes and favourites! Make sure to only use relevant, high-quality images. Some great sites for free stock images are Pexels and Pixabay. Or, why not use a tool such as Canva to create your own graphics?