Hilary Bird — April 4, 2018 — April 4, 2018
If you, like many other digital marketers, believe Twitter is singing its swan song, Dakota Shane at Inc. would like to change your mind.
He says the network is poised for growth in 2018, citing reasons like real-time conversations, easy networking, & lower advertising costs compared to other social media platforms.
Any of those three items is good cause to focus on developing your Twitter following in 2018.
Here’s what you need to know as you begin to build.
5 Tips for Twitter Success
If you want to build a meaningful relationship with your followers on Twitter, employ the following five tips.
- Identify your target audience. Twitter may not have the huge user base of Facebook or Instagram, but it’s still big enough to draw parameters around a target audience. Get specific. Think about who your customer is, & direct your content to them.
- Develop a strategy. If you enter Twitter without a strategy, your tweets will fail. Connect your marketing initiatives & tone together so that they veer toward the same goal. Doing so increases quantifiable return on investment (ROI) & ensures consistent messaging across communication channels.
- Understand the rules of engagement. Every social network possesses a sort of code for how to interact. Twitter, for example, entails a lot of conversation & retweeting, so you won’t fare well if you exclusively post your own content. You can & should share your posts, but remember to surround them with retweets, replies, images, & GIFs.
- Cross-promote your content. You should never rely on a single channel to get your message across. Instead, use as many as it takes to reach your target audience. But change the formatting from platform to platform—you shouldn’t copy & paste from one network to another.
- Post regularly & consistently. Tweeting once a day won’t get the job done. Twitter requires frequent engagement because the feed moves so fast. Communicating with your followers on a regular basis will enhance your visibility & popularity.
Those five tips aren’t the be-all & end-all, but they serve as good starting points. Use them in combination with other tactics to grow your Twitter following in 2018.
5 Tools to Up Your Twitter Game
You don’t have to tackle the above tips alone—there are plenty of tools out there to help simplify your workload & deliver results. Here are five of the most important to consider.
- Reliable Internet. Without a quality internet connection, tweets, replies, likes & retweets will lag. You don’t want that to happen during a live event or Twitter chat, so invest in a high-speed internet service provider (ISP).
- Audience Analytics. If you want knowledge about your target customer, use tools like Google Analytics & Followerwonk. The first identifies people visiting your site & how they’re getting there, while the second is specific to Twitter & can be used to discover your target audience’s interests & active times.
- Content Scheduling & Management Programs. You could stay logged in on Twitter all day, every day, but you’d never get anything else done. So let digital tools help you here. Many of them offer data-driven insights or integrate other social channels, helping you coordinate communications & save time & effort. Common social media management tools include Buffer, Sprout Social, Hootsuite, & TweetDeck.
- Image Editing Tools. Twitter may be text-based, but images—& GIFs—attract a lot of attention too. Make images to share by employing tools like Canva, Pablo, Stencil, & Easel.ly.
- Built-In Platform Offerings. Twitter gives you rich functionality with Twitter Cards. Use them to increase downloads, signups, retweets, etc. The platform is also moving toward greater accessibility, so you can more easily engage with segments of your audience by embracing the platform’s native image description feature.
As you interact with different tools, you’ll discover some work for you while others don’t. That’s normal. Embrace those tools & forget about the others.
Top Brands to Emulate
Some brands rule the Twitter-sphere. They post charming content & talk about themselves—without repelling their Twitter followers. Study these seven to learn how to interact with your burgeoning list of followers.
- JetBlue Airways. If you want to use Twitter for customer service, look to JetBlue for guidance & instruction.
- DiGiorno. Follow this brand for ideas about how to promote your product or service without coming across as a salesperson.
- Forrester. This research company combines interesting stats & links, driving not only engagement but also clicks.
- Microsoft Xbox. Direct messages (DMs) sometimes feel like a no-trespassing zone, but Microsoft shows how to use them penalty-free with its #TwitterHaloWars campaign.
- Netflix. GIFs rule the online world at the moment, so use them to your advantage. Netflix demonstrates this tactic with its GIF-filled feed.
- Taco Bell. Taco Bell often retweets followers, increasing conversation & engagement. The brand offers a reminder that followers often provide the best content for Twitter & other social networks.
Twitter isn’t on a farewell tour; it’s making a comeback. Take advantage of it with the above tips & tools, & you’ll see your Twitter following grow in a meaningful way.
What tips & tricks are you using to optimize your 2018 Twitter strategy? Tell us in the comments below!
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