Are you using Twitter to its full potential? Twitter is fun and easy to use, but it’s not always obvious how to use Twitter features to engage followers for your business.
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Twitter is a powerful network for businesses of all sizes. Not only are there 229 million active users on the site monthly, but 79.6 million of them are Americans. The fact that there are so many active Twitter users makes it easy for your business to reach your target audience.
Many best Twitter practices can help you build a following, but you could miss out on more ways to engage your followers and improve your revenue. So we’ve compiled a list of the best Twitter practices for your strategy to help you grow your audience, increase engagement, and get some retweets.
Optimize Your Twitter Profile
Someone should identify your company’s Twitter account quickly when they come upon it. This is only possible if you personalize your Twitter profile with your profile picture, colors, and any branding details.
- Handle: Your Twitter handle should match your other social media profiles. For example, your brand name on Twitter will help your followers quickly find you.
- Profile picture: The profile picture will appear alongside every Tweet and comment you send, so make sure it’s professional and polished. Put your company’s initials or logo in it.
- Header image: Since your header image appears on your profile page, you can use it to convey information to your audience. It might show your corporate culture or include data on recent campaigns or events.
- Bio: Twitter bios are 160 characters long, so keep it short. Write your company’s goal statement or a brief description of what you do. Add relevant phrases and hashtags to your bio to increase leads. Therefore, you will likely appear whenever someone searches for a keyword or hashtag on Twitter.
- URL: It’s okay to change your Twitter URL during campaigns and other special occasions. When the event or campaign ends, change the URL to your website.
- Location: A location gives your profile more authenticity and individuality. It’s especially important if you have a physical location since you’ll need to make sure people can find you.
Post Short Videos
Writing Tweets within 280 characters can definitely restrain what you can say as a brand. Hence the importance of visual content.
Visual content is the best way to engage people with visual content, and what better way to do so than with video? Considering videos on Twitter get up to 10 times as much engagement as other types of content, it’s no wonder they’re so popular.
Use Pinned Tweets
The Pinned Tweet function lets you put a tweet at the top of your profile so that people see it right away. Your audience will get all the info they need with this function. The feature is frequently used by businesses to let their audience know what’s new.
Take a moment to consider what you want from Twitter if you are using the platform to generate leads for your business. For example, you can pin a Tweet to promote your opt-in if your goal is to increase your email subscribers.
Run a Twitter poll
Twitter polls let you ask a question and give your followers four options. Simple and entertaining polls keep your audience engaged.
Polls are not only to entertain your audience. These tools let you learn more about your audience, validate ideas, and get feedback. While polls aren’t a replacement for comprehensive research, they provide immediate and valuable information.
Try Twitter Spaces
Twitter Spaces lets you host an audio room where guests can chat about anything. This feature is impressive since it allows for more realistic conversations and one-to-one interaction over typing.
If you plan a Space, you can let your audience know when it’s about to start. You could even record the Space and let your audience watch it later. In addition, brands on Twitter can use Twitter Space for a range of topics, like product announcements and guest interviews.
Schedule your Tweets at Optimal Post Times
A few weeks in advance is ideal for planning, writing, and designing your Tweets and assets. By doing this, you’ll make sure you post them regularly. Then, you’ll never miss posting a critical tweet. You can also track metrics on Twitter Analytics, such as follower growth, impressions, engagement rates, retweets, and more.
However, you can schedule tweets ahead of time using Bulkly to save yourself the time of manually tweeting them and reviewing your metrics. Find out the best time to post based on your performance—using the right time to tweet boosts engagement because you’ll post when your target audience is online.
Even though scheduling your Tweets is excellent, you can’t plan everything. Real-time responses are still required to mentions and direct messages. Planning and scheduling campaigns and blog posts in advance is a good idea (and should be done).
Use the Newsletter Tool
A must-try feature when exploring Twitter best practices is the Newsletter tool. The feature allows users to repurpose their content into newsletters and share them with their audience. Once you add the feature, you can get a button for your followers to subscribe to the newsletter. Your newsletters can then be sent whenever you share content.
Here are some tips to keep in mind when creating a newsletter:
- Make sure that your newsletter covers the topics you want to publish, and that it is easy for people to unsubscribe.
- Helpful content is better than promotional content.
- Maintain a minimal design and make sure your content is the focus.
Start a Twitter Community
A Twitter Community allows members to create and share knowledge by starting conversations or asking questions on specific topics.
Currently, Twitter communities are in beta, and creators must submit a request for their communities to be open. You can invite as many people as you want to your community once Twitter approves your request, and those who join will receive five invites each. The public can view Twitter communities. However, only members of the community can take part in the conversation.
The Twitter community feature is still in beta, but you can start a community for your brand. Creating a community outside of promotional tweets might make sense for your brand. A community allows you to position yourself as an industry authority and a friend.
Capitalize on Twitter moments
Twitter Moments is an excellent source of breaking news and trends. Users can access Moments to see the latest and most influential stories worldwide. In addition, sharing relevant content and keeping consumers interested is possible through Twitter moments.
The “best of” or “only on Twitter” recap has long been a great way to repurpose content and prolong its shelf life. It is possible to create a Moment from Tweets that allows for a natural back and forth and a straightforward narrative for audiences to follow.
It can assist you in leveraging powerful events to improve engagement and your social media presence. For instance, stories of people fundraising for a cause could be woven into inspiring storylines as part of a Twitter Moment.
If there has been a significant event or news story in your industry, create a Moment around it that shares all relevant Tweets on one page. A Twitter Moment allows people who may not have seen these Tweets individually to see them together in one place — which could mean more clicks and followers!
Review Your Twitter Conversation Settings
Your Tweets may generate a lot of conversations. Managing all the engagement on your brand’s public Tweets may prove challenging if you receive a lot of traction. Conversations can derail if anyone can respond to your tweets, and your content’s value is diminished.
You can choose who can reply to a new Tweet when you start one. A globe icon next to the compose Tweet box indicates Everyone can reply. If you tap or click this before posting your Tweet, you can choose who will reply to you.
Also, midway through a conversation, you can adjust who can reply to your Tweet to reduce unwanted replies.
Your brand may want to limit its use of this feature if it uses Twitter to start or join conversations. However, it’s possible to maximize the potential of this feature in 2022 with a bit of planning. For example, creating discussions with a few replies allows your brand to start Twitter “interviews” with industry peers, leaders, or influencers.
Remember to Not Overdo With Self-Promotion
While Twitter is a fantastic platform for reaching a large audience, remember that people are on Twitter for a reason. A Twitter follower is looking for helpful content or posts from someone they follow. It is possible that your followers may become annoyed when your brand regularly bombards them with information about sales or promotions. Your brand’s actions may cause one of your valuable followers to unfollow your profile.
Followers are more likely to trust your brand if you humanize it. Showcase the people behind the business and focus on relevant topics that might interest them. The more personal touch you can bring to your account, the more likely people will click on your links and respond to them positively.
Another helpful tactic is responding to customer service questions in real time via social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Hence, users know they can turn to you if they have a question or concern about something related to your product or service.
Don’t Be Afraid to Touch Upon Social and Political Topics
The social media landscape is constantly changing, not just because of the rise of new platforms like Snapchat and Instagram. As users’ expectations change, so do brands’ priorities.
As a brand, you should know people expect you to engage in conversations and support causes on Twitter. They also want you to cover cultural and political issues in meaningful ways.
It would help if you considered what you want to tweet about a topic. Think about your brand’s ideal customer, what it stands for, and how these factors relate to the situation. Also, there are tools that help you discover tweets of your interest which make Twitter an amazing platform for niche-focused marketing.
If you’re going to tweet about something controversial, make sure you’re familiar with all sides of the issue before posting anything so that you don’t offend anyone or create confusion among your followers.
For example, @benandjerrys tweets concerning social and political issues are balanced with tweets about ice cream flavors. Twitter posts by the ice cream brand sometimes blend both topics in a way that engages customers while also advocating for serious causes.
Consider Joining Twitter Blue
Twitter Blue might be worth a look if your brand wants to get even more from Twitter. American Twitter users can access this paid subscription service via the left-hand menu starting in November 2021. At $2.99 a month, you can fix typos, add missing tags, or completely rework your message to ensure it sounds perfect.
Twitter Blue isn’t designed for every user — it’s aimed at business owners, marketers and social media professionals who want to ensure their posts are as polished as possible before they go live on the platform.
If your company relies extensively on Twitter to stay in touch with users, there’s a strong possibility that the monthly fee will be well worth it. Here are some examples of possible applications:
- If your team uses Twitter for customer service, you can pin direct messages (DMs) might help you keep track of conversations that still need to be resolved.
- You can bookmark folders to organize content and permissions if you collect user-generated content (UGC) or testimonials on Twitter.
- If you wish to take part in significant industry conversations, the Top Articles feature can remind you to share popular information.
This list isn’t exhaustive, but it should give you an idea of how you can use Twitter Blue to enhance your social media marketing strategy.
Get More Followers With These Twitter Best Practices
There are many ways to use Twitter, and choosing the ones relevant to your business is essential. There is no “one size fits all” approach in social media marketing. Like anything else, it will take practice and dedication before you can effectively use this social media platform for your business. With these Twitter best practices in mind, you should be able to boost your Twitter presence in no time.