A Twitter marketing strategy is the complete plan to create, publish, distribute, and analyze content on the social media platform to market a company’s products or services and increase brand awareness.
Twitter marketing is tricky, yet so versatile that it’s an important ‘to do’ in every marketer’s list. Tricky, since each tweet has a limit of 280 characters and a significantly shorter lifespan owing to heavy tweet traffic. Versatile, because Twitter not only allows various options such as videos, polls etc. to engage with audiences but lets you instantly respond to or attract your target group in this fast-paced world of social media. It’s easier said than done, but to simplify it, we’re talking about the top seven Twitter marketing strategies for 2020 and beyond.
Twitter Marketing Strategies For 2020
Things move so fast on Twitter, that without proper planning and strategizing your Twitter marketing efforts could completely get lost in the swarm of tweets.
According to Internet Live Stats, over 8,000 tweets are shared each second. This number indicates how short the lifespan of a tweet is. It also means, you have limited time and space to showcase your brand and draw your audiences’ attention. So, here are some Twitter marketing strategies for 2020 that will help your brand stand out.
1. Strengthen your profile for better brand recall
Your brand’s Twitter profile is your image and how simple yet appealing it looks makes a big difference to your brand recall value on the platform. This includes everything from your Twitter handle, to profile picture, the header, and your bio.
As a brand, it’s always advisable to keep your Twitter handle as simple and short as possible – one that’s easy to remember and use. This increases the chances of your customers or prospects tagging you in their posts.
For example, the clothing retail brand H&M simplified its Twitter handle to @hm since there’s no way to include the character ‘&’ in a handle. Unlike other similar brands such as Marks & Spencer (aka M&S) which has @marksandspencer as its handle, or the baby care brand Johnson & Johnson as @JNJCares, H&M made it extremely short, simple and recall-friendly by completely taking away the ‘and’ from it.
In trying to make your Twitter handle simple, ensure that it is as close to your brand name as possible. Also, keep your brand name consistent across your social media profiles for better recall.
Next, ensure your profile picture is catchy yet relatable to your brand. Most brands usually go for the logo as their profile picture, as it’s quickly recognizable.
The header space on top of your profile page is a great place to showcase your brand, as you can convey your brand message or personality. For example, check out MAC Cosmetics’ profile with its logo as the profile picture and a header that speaks about the brand and its make-up products.
The next thing one sees in your profile is your bio. Keep it simple yet descriptive so that it talks about all that you do and is informative to your audience. For example, take a look at Walmart’s quirky bio, here.
It says, ‘Where real people go for real good stuff. Save Money. Live Better…’. This a smart message for a retail brand that has not only sustained the e-commerce wave but has emerged stronger over the years.
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2. Tweet when your audience is all ears
There are hours of the days or days of the week when people are most active on Twitter. Usually referred to as the peak hours, this is when your tweet has the best chances of being seen by most of your audiences. During these hours, customers may even engage better with your tweet, owing to time at hand and the level of their attention span.
Research by Dan Zarrella, social, search, and viral marketing scientist at Hubspot, says that tweets posted over the weekends – on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday – had higher CTRs than those posted on other days of the week.
He also suggests tweeting during the second half of a day as tweets posted in the afternoon fetch higher CTRs than those posted in the morning.
Various studies suggest different timings for tweeting, whereas your peak hours would depend on the kind of audiences you are trying to engage. To identify your brand’s best hours, you need to test by posting tweets at different hours and compare how they perform over various times of a day and days of the week.
When you know what time works best for your brand, you can use tools such as Hootsuite and Buffer to plan and schedule your tweets to be released at the pre-defined peak hours.
You can calculate reach by dividing your ‘impressions[1] ‘ number on each tweet with the total number of followers you have. Once you get this number, you can add up and calculate the average for a specific hour or a day.
Otherwise, you may simply use tools such as Followerwonk or Tweriod to understand when most of your followers are likely to come online. These tools can also tell you the best time to tweet based on your tweet performances in the past through Twitter analytics.
3. Use the right hashtags and use them wisely
Hashtags are tricky! You can’t do without them, but overdoing them could cause more harm than good. A post by Buffer claims that tweets with hashtags receive two times more engagement than those that don’t. At the same time, tweets with more than two hashtags witness a 17% drop in engagement.
It is important that you use the right kind of hashtags and in moderation. The hashtags should be relevant to the content in your tweet or to your business, in general. You can use Twitter analytics to find out the hashtags most relevant to you.
There are other tools such as Hashtagify, that help you find the best ones for your tweets, basis the keywords you use in a particular tweet. Hashtagify also tells you the strength of a hashtag so you can decide which ones to should use. RiteTag is another tool that does the job of deciding the best hashtags for your tweet.
With the help of these tools you could get a list of multiple hashtags and feel the urge to use most of them, but don’t give in to the temptation. Use them minimally and wisely to not get lost in the sea of tweets.
4. Get creative with tweet composition – tweet size, images, and videos
Shorter tweets are known to garner better response and engagement. Dan Zarrella’s research says that 120-130 characters is a sweet spot for tweets that contain a link. It also shows that links see a better CTR when placed at the beginning of a tweet.
Source: http://danzarrella.com/infographic-how-to-get-more-clicks-on-Twitter/Opens a new window
When placing a link, get creative with your call to action (CTA) phrase. Since your purpose of Twitter marketing is to generate more leads, boost sales, or increase downloads, ask for it in ways that your audience finds relevant and useful.
In addition to asking for a retweet or share, include direct CTAs such as these in your tweets:
– Learn more
– Follow us
– Download
– Shop here
– Visit our store
For example, take a look at this tweet.
Here, the furniture store has not only announced a sale but has showcased a product with a compelling price and offered options for online shopping or in-store.
Notably, using images in your tweets increases the chances of it being retweeted. You can expect more clicks and shares on a tweet with an image as compared to one which doesn’t have an image.
Add images that are relevant, compelling, and high-quality. Showcase a product or brand identity along with typographic messages, or when tweeting an article link, use an image from the article or one about it.
You may also use videos in your tweets. Quite naturally, visuals or images are more appealing than plain text, and videos are a step further in engaging people. You can directly record a new video or simply upload a branded video with your tweet. Take for instance, this tweet by Zara, showcasing its new line of denims.
Videos are more likely to be retweeted. Twitter’s annual Online Video Playbook research found that video ads in Twitter feeds are twice as memorable than when found elsewhere. It also says, videos are six times more likely to be retweeted than photos and three times more likely to be retweeted than GIFs.
You can also go live on Twitter and answer popular questions or showcase a tuturial or workshop. The videos can be saved and later posted as tweets on your profile so even those who missed it live can watch it.
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5. Use Twitter polls and tweet chats to interact and engage
Polls are a great way to understand your audience and their preferences better and Twitter polls let your followers engage with you on your page. You can easily create a Twitter poll by clicking on the poll icon at the bottom of the screen in the ‘add’ a new tweet functionality, and add your poll question and the choices.
Another effective way to make your Twitter marketing interactive is to host tweet chats. Through a Twitter chat you can discuss a topic, seek customer opinions, and create a sense of community.
You can organize a tweet chat by deciding a topic, date, and time for the chat, along with a relevant and unique hashtag. Announce this event on Twitter for your followers and across other platforms including your website. People participating in the tweet chat will be able to see all posts, questions, and responses or post their own by using the hashtag.
6. Rope in some influencers for more visibility
Influencers are people who have a large following, and when they endorse a brand, their followers take note and believe in the brand better. Social media influencers come from all walks of life and hence, the first step for you should be to identify those relevant to your industry.
You could begin with influencers who you’ve interacted with. Look at their profiles and analyze if they align well with your brand. Consider the number of followers they have and if all of this is in place, you may DM them or request them to promote your brand in their tweets.
There are specialized tools such as Klout that help you find new influencers. It lets you know how influential certain people are on Twitter. It scores influencers from 1 to 100 basis how influential they are online. For instance, Barack Obama or Justin Bieber have scores of 99 and 92, respectively.
While influencers relevant to your brand, may not necessarily have scores that, it’s all about reaching the target audiences, and that’s what you should concern yourself with.
7. Leverage Twitter Ads to boost promotions
Twitter Ads can help you engage with your followers or prospects quicker while reaching out to a larger audience.
Twitter Ads bring you on top of your target audiences’ or prospects’ profiles, giving you more prominence in their stream of tweets.
While using Twitter Ads make use of keyword targeting to reach your target audience at the right time when they actually need your business, content, or services. Twitter Ads allows keyword targeting as one of the components and in two forms – search keyword targeting and timeline keyword targeting.
Search keyword targeting allows you to determine search topics relevant to your business such that when a user searches for these, your tweet or ad shows up on their timeline. For example, if your business is a speciality salon for pet dogs and cats, you could target users searching for pet salon, dog grooming/ groomer, cat grooming/ groomer, dog bath, pet care, and so on.
Timeline keyword targeting lets you leverage users’ feelings, emotions, thoughts, and actions that they may have tweeted about on their timelines. You may target tweet phrases or keywords relevant to your business. For example, if you are a baker, you may look for user tweets with phrases such as ‘craving a muffin’, ‘love for cookies’, ‘need a sugar-free dessert’, ‘looking for cake recommendations’ and so on.
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There you have it – be easily identifiable, say the right things at the right time to engage with users, leverage polls, hashtags, video, and influencers, and you can be all set to build a connection with audiences on Twitter.
Which Twitter marketing strategies do you swear by? Tell us in the comments below. For the latest news and trends update in the world of marketing, follow us on TwitterOpens a new window , FacebookOpens a new window , and LinkedInOpens a new window .