6 essential elements for your Twitter strategy
As a social media manager, it is easy to feel overwhelmed.
New platforms are introduced every single day, and the platforms you currently use seem to undergo frequent updates that change the way you interact with and/or analyze your efforts on them.
There are dozens of articles posted every day touting new tools and tactics that you can try to optimize your posts and expand your reach, but it’s hard to know where to start.
You find yourself thinking: What channel do I tackle first? Which tips will give me a real return?
- Photos: Posting photos is critical, as they tend to results in much higher reach and engagement rates than plain text statuses. (Statistics show that tweets with images get about 2x the engagement.) Twitter auto-expands images in your tweets, so it makes sense that strong, high-quality visual will be a tremendous boost to your efforts on the platform. Since I started using TweetDeck for Twitter one month ago, my organization has seen a 6% increase in our average engagement rate for tweets. For each blog post I promote on Twitter, I tend to use a photo (used in the blog post) to accompany the tweet; this has been tremendously successful! To find photos to use, I recommend using Flickr, Unsplash or the free stock images from iStock. You can also use Photoshop to create your own images!
- Build curiosity: Since Twitter restricts you to 140 characters, it is a great platform to build curiosity and give teasers. For example, Twitter restricts you to 30-seconds when it comes to posting video clips. You could post a brief clip of a video with a link to see the full video. Another idea is to ask a question on Twitter and insert a link to encourage your fans to click to find out the answer.
- Change it up: Twitter is the channel that you can “bombard the most” with content, so try changing it up! It isn’t recommended to ever post the same content multiple times during the course of a day, but Twitter is the only platform that you can actually get away with it because of the fast-moving stream. Try posting at various times of the day, using various forms of media and calls to action. For example, you can try tweeting a link with a headline and photo. If you don’t see much engagement, try phrasing it as a question. You can also try to include a trending, relevant hashtag to see how that performs.
- Engage: The quickest way to grow your following and increase your engagement rates is to get engaged! My organization tags our customers whenever we’re mentioning them on Twitter. Using @mentions is a *must* if you want to create a conversation with your audience and show them you are personable on the platform.
- Be consistent: Tweeting regularly is the first way to build a loyal audience. The second step is to be consistent with the type of content you post. Posting consistently, and consistently sharing quality information, is how you become a valued resource to your audience. When you become a sought-out account to your followers, they are much more likely to help spread the word by sharing and/or engaging with your content.
- Use hashtags: According to statistics, tweets with hashtags get 2x more engagement than tweets without. My organization consistent uses one specific hashtag whenever we’re sharing news or events from our customers; now our customers know to use that hashtag to search for the latest updates. We also have a specific hashtag that we use for our recurring event series so that we can see the engagement (and growth) year over year. Consistently using the same sets of hashtags helps your audience learn to associate the use of those hashtags with your brand. While there are tons of tools available, I recommend using TagBoard to analyze the results of your hashtag usage.
While I can’t guarantee that you will become a powerhouse overnight, the above tactics will definitely be successful in expanding your reach and increasing your engagement on Twitter.