Like Instagram and Facebook, you can market and grow your followers on Twitter both paid and organically.
But it’s a bit more tricky because the shelf life of every tweet is about 18 minutes (half of Facebook) and it’s easy to not get noticed.
People want current, relevant and catchy information – it’s like telling a story by using the least number of words possible.
How to grow on Twitter organically?
● Profile –
start with the basics. Your username should be simple, catchy, and easy to remember.
Nobody wants to tag a complicated business name.
Along with your username (handle), your profile picture and the header image must go hand-in-hand.
You can get as creative as you can – use the right colors and design templates so that it’s eye catching to the viewer.
● Bio –
this is your strongest suit after the content you post.
Your bio should speak about your brand.
Not just what they do, but also the tonality of your brand. Are you friendly and casual? Or professional and strict?
Eg – if you’re a brand who sells luxury perfumes, you cannot use the words “Cool, bro, awesome etc” because it doesn’t match with the product or service you are offering.
“Elegance, timeless and beautiful” are the words you could use instead.
● Hashtags –
Yes, hashtags and keywords get your tweet to the people you want it to go to – but using too many is a turn off for consumers.
It shows that you are in a desperate attempt to gain as many retweets and likes as possible.
This doesn’t mean you don’t use hashtags at all. Use them but only sparingly. Less but precise hashtags are the way to go.
● Peak hours –
this goes for any social media platform there is: post during the peak hours!
There will be so many more people that will look at your tweet and your chances of retweets increases greatly.
This also ensures greater engagement and if there is greater engagement then your followers are bound to increase.
● Add pictures and videos to get more people to notice you.
Pictures instantly up your game because let’s face it, plain text is not as appealing to mobile users.
● Polls and other engaging activities to interact with your followers.
Paid marketing on Twitter
1. Twitter ads –
They are a bit more expensive than Facebook ads, but get the job done especially if you don’t have a large following.
First thing you need to do is go to Twitter Ads and fill in your location and time zone. This narrows down the local area of your profile for twitter.
Next you need to tell Twitter what your objective is.
What do you want?
Views?
Website clicks?
App installs?
Followers?
Engagement?
Depending on this, twitter will customize your ad before sending it to the audience.
You will then choose the budget and duration of the ad and finally customize the demographic that it has to reach – region, gender, interests, language, devices, features etc.
And you are finally ready to launch!
2. Marketing packages – a lot of websites offer marketing packages. This covers business page creation, key-word rich bio optimization, tracking influencers, sending direct messages, mentions, retweets, infographics, video optimization, target audience behaviour analysis and much more depending on which package you choose.
Let’s now look at a few tips that are needed for every Twitter marketing strategy.
- Audit your account.
An audit is an inspection. The most used and most useful audits are SEO (Search Engine Optimization) audits which tell us whether our SEO efforts are paying off or not. Inspect your account. See the current engagement, status, following, growth so far etc. unless you have a good measure of where you are lacking and where you are strong, you cannot move forward.
- Assign roles.
This is more of a soft skill than a hardcore strategy but has proven to work before.
Obviously, if you are well established already then you will have a team working for you. My suggestion to you is to NOT use one person for one platform. Assign based on skill. One person may be good at designing so they’ll handle the design of the posters for all your social platforms. Another may be good at communication, so they will be in charge of replying to DMs, reaching out to prospects etc on all platforms…so on and so forth. Play to their strengths and you will definitely see results.
- Content calendar
Yes. You should plan out your content. It takes time… planning content for an entire month, even a week is tiring. You need to incorporate so many factors – timing, special days, offers, holidays etc. but guess what? Once you’ve established a calendar, you’re good to go, because now all you have to do is post. Think of it like being prepared beforehand. While planning this out, you can have a good idea of what kind of problems or even opportunities you might encounter. It’s better to be prepared beforehand than to be surprised in the moment – especially when it comes to marketing.
- Create lists.
Twitter is vast and dynamic. Everything is changing so fast, you barely have time to keep up. It’s easy to get lost in this world, so this is where lists become helpful. Lists are curated feeds from selected accounts which helps you to tune into conversations and discussions that are relevant to you. This includes conversations by influential people or even competitors in your line of business. - Hashtag master.
Hashtags are powerful if they are used correctly. Especially on twitter because so many hashtags come in and out of popularity in so little time, so you have to be on your feet. If you master the art of hashtags then you can push out your content and posts at the right time, place and to the right audience.
● Find the right hashtags
You should know which hashtags are the most frequently used in your industry. You need to research and keep a list of them ready – all of them! Both popular ones and the ones that are not so famous but cater to a smaller audience in the same market.
● Create branded hashtags
This is simply YOUR HASHTAG. For eg- H&M will use the hashtag #hm because it is unique for your brand. Create a hashtag for your business and use it in all your posts and stories! This creates a niche for you on the platform and creates more brand awareness. You can even ask the consumers to interact with you using the same hashtag!
● Follow trends
Especially if these trends are in your business or industry. Every industry has its trends and a lot of users follow them, so should you! You don’t want to live under a rock while the world goes around a ferris wheel!
● Keep it simple, sophisticated and neat. Do not over do it.
Using a lot of hashtags can piss off the audience because you will come off as desperate. So be very very specific and use only the necessary ones that will bring you traction.
CONCLUSION
Without engaging with your followers and being ready on your fingertips, don’t expect anything to happen. You NEED to put yourself out there but this doesn’t mean you become an annoying brand to its consumers (tweeting a lot, tweeting boring content etc).
Undoubtedly, every brand’s Twitter marketing strategy is going to be different. But in all the strategies the above mentioned steps will pay off and come in handy if you follow them closely. But before you start your strategy, make sure you know WHAT exactly you WANT from gaining traction on your socials. It may be for brand awareness, conversions, sales, anything. Lots of brands may spend a lot of money and still not get any results at all, ending up with static, unimpressive pages and content.
So be confident about what you want from this, and then go ahead and plan out your strategy!
