With 330 million active users monthly, Twitter can be a goldmine for business marketing. Celebrities, journalists and politicians flock to this powerful social network daily to strut their stuff and engage with followers. And it’s become a hub for brands who use Twitter as a clearinghouse for customer service concerns and boost brand reputations. However, if you haven’t figured out how to use Twitter for business marketing, you’re not alone.
Tweets fly thick and fast on the platform (nearly 500 million a day), so it’s easy to lose your way in the buzz of trending hashtags. Before jumping into the fray, we recommend developing a Twitter marketing strategy that centers your organization’s priorities — from brand awareness to boosting conversions; Twitter is a fantastic tool to reach your target audience if you leverage it effectively.
How to create a Twitter marketing strategy
Not all social media is created equal. Your Twitter marketing strategy should play to the platform’s strengths while centering around your business goals. Follow these steps to solidify your Twitter marketing strategy and start building a solid foundation for your brand’s social media presence.
Audit your accounts
Whether your brand has a handle you’ve used a handful of times or a patchwork of accounts, take stock of your Twitter presence. Make a list of:
- The profiles associated with your organization
- Who manages them
- What these profiles are currently being used for
Pay attention to metrics like how often the account tweets and how many followers it has. If an account isn’t verified yet, now is a good time to reach out to the Twitter verification team.
Keep an eye on competitor accounts
Once you have a good sense of your own social media presence, it pays to take a peek at the competition. Look for the good, the bad and the ugly in terms of engagement on the platform, as well as reach and whatever else you can learn from any missteps made. Keeping your finger on the pulse of industry leaders can serve as inspiration for how to refresh your presence on the platform.
Articulate your goals
A commitment to improving your brand’s Twitter marketing strategy should start with SMART goals that are specific and measurable. While you may be tasked with a vague sense of improving the brand’s social media reach, setting goals requires quantifying what success looks like. Make sure the goals you set are reasonable and actionable, and break down the strategies you’ll use to get there.
Assign responsibility
It doesn’t make sense to drive traffic to your Twitter account if no one is going to tend it. Discuss who is responsible for monitoring the account and set expectations for response time. Twitter is a fast-paced platform, and complaints can snowball into serious PR issues. Every engagement is your brand’s opportunity to build trust in the public marketplace.
Set some guidelines
If you don’t already have social media guidelines, now is a good time to define them. Communication between various members of the team attending your Twitter account should be consistent and transition seamlessly. Discuss how handoffs with the customer service team will occur and protocols for addressing the most frequently surfaced concerns.
Find your voice
Leverage your brand style guide to figure out what your social media voice sounds like. Set guidelines not only for when you’ll engage with followers but how. While you might opt to use humor or keep it more buttoned-up, the most critical piece of advice for successful social media engagement is to be human. Whether someone is a fickle Twitter follower or devoted customer, people appreciate brands that strive to be authentic and sincere.
Create a content strategy
In the same way that you create a content strategy for your blog or website, you should create a strategy for your Twitter content. Focusing on customer success stories, amplifying promotions or providing industry insights are all ways Twitter content can communicate your brand’s priorities. Studying buyer personas may also help you to flesh out what content your audience craves.
Plan a Twitter content calendar
Having goals for your Twitter marketing strategy is a start, but taking action is paramount. Establishing a social content calendar enables you to control the timing of your messaging for maximum impact and implement effective campaigns across all your channels. There are several third-party services that can help manage campaigns in one place and schedule tweets in advance.
Measure, analyze and adjust
Once you have a Twitter marketing strategy solidified, start measuring your progress. Fortunately, Twitter puts much of the data you’ll need at your fingertips. Here are just a few of the metrics Twitter analytics provides.
- Engagement: You can click to see engagement on each tweet or access overall engagement metrics for your account from the main menu.
- Impressions: Impressions are a measurement of how many people have seen your tweet and the reach of your content.
- Hashtags: Twitter measures the popularity of certain hashtags among your followers, so you know what to amplify.
- Top tweets: See your top-performing tweets, so you know what’s working and can tweak your approach to gain better traction.
If you’re using Twitter ads, you’ll get additional analytics and advice on how to improve performance in the Twitter Business Center.
Twitter marketing best practices you should follow
While there’s no single approach for using Twitter for business marketing, there are some best practices brands follow to make the most of the platform. Here are some ways to get your Twitter handles churning out social media buzz.
Brand your profile
From the images you display to the website your account connects to, every piece of your Twitter profile should align carefully with your brand. Twitter allows users to customize profiles, so make the most of that valuable real estate with content creation tools like the Lucidpress Twitter header template.
Leverage hashtags
Every social media platform has unwritten rules about hashtags. On Twitter, the home of hashtags, the motto is to use them sparingly. Branded hashtags are a great way to amplify campaigns, but sprinkling in too many will trigger Twitter’s spammy senses. Using popular hashtags also helps your brand ride the wave of Twitter trending topics and expand organic reach.
Engage, engage, engage
Gaining more followers is the name of the game on any social media platform, but it’s especially important on Twitter. However, instead of approaching Twitter as an opportunity to build clout, think of it as a chance to build community. The more you engage in the replies or the discussions happening in your mentions, the more you’ll build trust.
Mix it up with media
While Twitter might not be as visually appealing as platforms like Instagram, users still love dynamic tweets with high-quality images, GIFs, and videos. Including a mixture of media creates “shareable” content and enables you to do more with Twitter’s 280 character limit. In some cases, a picture really is worth a thousand words.
Want to create branded graphics for your tweets that’ll pop-off with your audience? Use Lucidpress Twitter post templates.
Promote and advertise
Twitter offers a few different ways for brands to advertise. One method is through promoted tweets, where businesses pay a monthly fee to promote tweets to a targeted audience. The other method is through Twitter Ads, which leverages keyword or timeline targeting. Both promotion methods can be great ways to elevate your brand profile and build a following while driving conversions.
Keep these helpful tools handy
Twitter does offer other bells and whistles worth discussing. One is Twitter lists, which weed through the chatter by aggregating tweets from accounts you select. Creating lists is a clever way to curate content and amplify trends within your industry. Twitter Moments also offers customization by allowing users to select tweets from their own timeline and mix in tweets from other accounts to create a comprehensive take on a topic.
Take the time to listen
Instead of dropping into your brand’s mentions or replies sporadically, set up scheduled interactions with followers by soliciting feedback through Twitter polls or hosting a Twitter chat. Many brands find Twitter chats are more successful if organized around a theme or hashtag and scheduled consistently from week to week.
Know that challenging interactions are par for the course
Twitterverse is notorious for broadcasting customer service mishaps. And your response to those complaints can make or break your brand’s reputation. Once an incident starts trending, it can be hard not to watch the train wreck. That’s why it’s critical to tend your mentions closely and respond quickly. Decide whether it’s a conversation you want to have in a public forum and direct the customer to your direct messages for a speedy resolution.
Whether you’re pruning a Twitter presence or nourishing a neglected handle back to life, you don’t have to go it alone. Lucidpress is here to help with streamlined Twitter templates and resources.
Try these Lucidpress Twitter templates to create a buzz-worthy, branded Twitter presence.
