Did you know that 53% of active users on Twitter are often inclined to try new products or services? This makes Twitter one of the ideal platforms for marketers to connect with a relevant audience and promote their respective solutions.
Twitter marketing is an effective way of generating awareness for your brand and conveying your message to the masses. The platform helps you generate traction organically and capture quality leads.
However, this may not be as easy as it sounds. Twitter has different dynamics compared to other social media platforms, which often makes it difficult for beginners to find success there.
Twitter marketing not only helps you score conversions, but it also allows you to build a community around your brand and engage your target audience.
This makes it possible for you to become a relatable brand and establish lasting relationships with your customers.
However, to accomplish this, it’s important that you understand how the platform works and use it to its full potential to achieve the set marketing goals.
Here’s what you need to know to get started with Twitter marketing:
Creating a Twitter Profile
The first step to getting started with Twitter marketing is to create a Twitter profile. Though creating a profile for a brand may not be a challenge for most marketers, many struggle to come up with one that looks professional.
While the platform clearly prescribes the information required to complete the process, here are a few things that you should keep in mind when creating a Twitter profile.
Choose a Name for Your Profile
When creating a Twitter profile, the first thing you need to do is specify your brand’s name in no more than 50 characters. Plus, you’d have to provide an official email address or a phone number to sign up.
Select a Twitter Handle
Once you’ve signed up, come up with a professional Twitter handle or username that comprises no more than 16 characters. It’d be ideal for your Twitter handle to contain only your brand name.
However, you can also consider adding prefixes or suffixes if the desired Twitter handle isn’t available.
Furthermore, you should always avoid adding numbers alongside your brand name to create a Twitter handle, as doing so kills the professional appeal.
Add a Bio
Proceed to add a professional bio for your brand. Here, you’d give a brief overview of your business or a synopsis of what you offer.
Your bio describes the purpose of your existence and helps a relevant audience learn about the brand at a glance.
Remember that your Twitter bio should be no more than 160 characters. So, be as brief and simple as you can when writing it.
Using hashtags in your bio is also permissible. It will enhance your reach and make it easier for people to find you on the platform, which in turn helps you grow your followers.
Here are a few well-thought-out Twitter bios you can take inspiration from.
Add Your Location
Once you’ve added a bio for your profile, the next step is specifying the location of your business. Here, you simply provide your office location or address in no more than 30 characters.
Add Visuals
After you’ve added your address, all that remains for you is to add your brand’s logo as your profile picture and upload a header for your profile.
Twitter recommends uploading a picture that’s up to 2MB in size. Plus, the recommended dimensions are 400 x 400 pixels for your profile picture and 1500 x 500 pixels for the profile header.
Keeping in mind the recommendations aforesaid will help you create a professional Twitter profile and get you off to a great start.
Getting Started
Once you’ve created a Twitter profile, the next phase is getting noticed by the intended audience by conveying your messages in the right format to the right people at the right time.
Tweeting 101
The current character limit for a standard tweet is 280 characters. However, that’s the maximum limit allowed, as it’s ideal to keep your tweets as short and sweet as possible.
However, this doesn’t mean that you can’t compose longer tweets. But composing short tweets will give you an opportunity to add relevant links to your tweets, which will help you drive traffic to your site.
Plus, the shorter your tweets are, the more room you have for adding relevant hashtags and enhancing your reach.
And that brings us to how you can reach out to the right people via Twitter.
Hashtags
Did you know that Twitter sees a 7.73% year-over-year increase with respect to the referral traffic it sends to websites?
This makes it an excellent platform to connect with a relevant audience and generate high-quality leads for your business.
To reach out to the right people via Twitter, it’s essential to first become acquainted with the interests and preferences of your target audience. It helps you convey your messages to the intended audience through the efficient use of hashtags.
When a person uses a hashtag to look for something on Twitter, the platform groups relevant tweets or threads encompassing that particular topic, which makes it easier for users to access information that interests them.
So, the use of hashtags in tweets can get you more eyeballs and make it possible for you to attract a relevant audience.
However, you should keep in mind that excessive use of hashtags may do more harm than good. So, you should always consider using hashtags in moderation to foster engagement.
Hashtags can also be used to introduce your brand to your audience or generate awareness about it. For this, you have to create custom hashtags rather than using the ones that your audience follows.
Custom hashtags fuel your digital presence and help you get traction in the long run. However, this isn’t something you should look forward to if you seek quick results, as it may take longer for them to get you the desired outcome.
Tagging Other Accounts
Tagging other accounts in your tweets is a great way to attract more people and increase engagement on your tweets.
Here, you tag other people or businesses active on Twitter if your tweets or the content that you share concern them in one way or another.
This increases your chances of engaging an audience that’s been following the accounts you tagged or seeking information about them.
Remember, it’s important to consider moderation when tagging other accounts in your tweets. For starters, you have a 280-character limit to work with. Plus, tagging other accounts excessively may end up having a negative impact on your engagement.
Tagging other Twitter accounts is also a viable strategy when you work alongside them on a project.
It’s a great way to boost your engagement and attract a new audience. So, it’s a win-win if you know how to pull it off effectively.
Adding Relevant Links
Adding links to your tweets is an effective way of getting traffic to your website or blog. However, it’s not mandatory to use links every time you tweet.
Sometimes, it’s good to show a conversational side of your brand and simply participate in threads where you’re tagged.
This will not only help you engage your audience but also make you a relatable brand that people feel comfortable connecting with.
Plus, when your core focus is to generate awareness about something or maximize your reach, adding links to your tweets may not be necessary.
However, when you publish a blogpost on your blog and want people to know about it, adding the article’s link to your tweet becomes essential.
Overall, it all depends on what you’re trying to achieve, and that dictates whether or not you should be adding links to your tweets.
Knowing When to Post
The key to ensuring engagement on Twitter is knowing when it is the right time to post. Unfortunately, there’s no sure-shot formula that will help you identify it.
However, you can use Twitter analytics to come up with a publishing schedule that drives promising results.
For starters, it’s highly recommended that you come up with multiple publishing schedules and post at different times to see what works for you.
It all depends on when your audience is most active and likely to be engaged by the content you share. So, compare the performance of your posts shared at different times to know when it is the best time for you to tweet.
We found that morning tweets on a Sunday performed much better than the morning tweets on other days to drive users to our games. Getting timing and schedules right takes time and experimentation.”
Neal Taparia, Solitaired
Knowing What to Tweet
Marketers post a variety of things on Twitter and may have divergent ideas when it comes to sharing relevant content on the platform.
This is because the results they drive from sharing certain types of content may vary from one use case to another.
So, there’s no right or wrong here. You can try different types of content and stick with what works best for you. Here are a few recommendations for you to consider:
Questions or Polls
Tweeting a question for your audience to answer or sharing polls requesting certain information from people is an effective way to gather useful insights.
By posting questions, you enable your audience to interact with you and share what’s on their minds. Furthermore, polls help you get acquainted with your audience and allow you to identify their choices or preferences.
This makes it possible for you to provide personalized solutions and tailor the experiences you offer to ensure lasting customer relationships.
Industry News or Updates
Twitter is used by marketers worldwide to share relevant industry news or insights concerning their respective businesses. The core objective here is to generate awareness and educate the intended audience about the things they should know to make informed decisions.
Announcements
Twitter is the go-to platform for marketers when it comes to sharing brand announcements and keeping their audiences up-to-date.
These announcements can be about an upcoming product launch, current product developments, important company events, promotions, discount offers, or other important things that a business may want its target audience to know.
It helps marketers create hype and generate a variety of upselling or cross-selling opportunities for their respective brands.
Blog Content
Content is king. It allows you to connect with a relevant audience and helps bring traction to your website. However, simply creating relevant content isn’t enough. You have to promote it using the right channels to get more eyeballs.
Twitter is one of the leading social media platforms that come in handy here, as it allows you to promote your content, drive relevant traffic and grow your business overall.
So, if you haven’t been doing it already, feel free to tweet your blogs each time you publish a new one on your site.
Visual Content
Did you know that our brains are capable of processing images 60,000 times faster compared to text content?
Visual content has more appeal and may likely drive more traction compared to other content formats. Therefore, it’s highly recommended that you consider sharing visual content to engage the intended audience via Twitter.
Whether it’s images, GIFs, stock videos, or infographics, sharing visual content is a great strategy for marketers to get people’s attention while they’re scrolling through their feeds.
Social Proof
Social proof encompasses reviews, testimonials, or success stories that customers share with their preferred brands to let them know about their experiences.
People are generally indecisive when it comes to trying out new brands and often rely on recommendations they receive from others.
Showcasing the positive experiences others have had with your products or services can help you reassure your potential customers and get them to try your solutions.
Twitter is one of the leading social media platforms that can help you do that, as it allows you to cast a wider net and reach out to the masses with ease.
Final Words
There you have it, the beginner’s guide to Twitter marketing. Whether you’re struggling to devise a stellar strategy to engage a relevant audience or are simply new to the platform, the recommendations provided in this article may come in handy and help you grow as a Twitter marketer.
