Twitter Digital Marketing
Twitter started out as a platform for people to put out their thoughts to the public, now with an approximate of 330 million people actively using Twitter, it has become a robust marketing platform as well. Brands and companies can keep their consumers in the loop in real-time. It is not a facile task however, as randomly posting promotions is like shouting to a huge crowd that your product is good. Not very effective. Strategic planning should be involved when using Twitter as a platform to share your marketing campaign
Twitter Digital Marketing Campaign
There is a Twitter Business handle which helps you set up a marketing campaign for your brand.
The campaign is essential to help promote your brand to people who are in your target audience but who may still not follow you. This helps increase your followers exponentially and also measures the growth in real-time for you.
There are two ways:
You can either go for the general setup where you fill in your preferences on Campaign dates and how much you are willing to spend on it, also create your Twitter Cards, Ad formats and Direct Messages.
Or you can create your Campaign based on what your objective is:
Based on
- the reach you want to achieve
- increasing followers
- getting more people to engage with your comments
- whether you want to drive more traffic to your website
- the number of app installs
- more video views
How to market on twitter
So, as I said, Twitter Digital Marketing isn’t an easy task. It requires solid planning of content, how to handle customers who voice opinions on Twitter and a lot more. Let’s take a look at the tips we can pick up from companies that have already been successful with Twitter Marketing
1. Audit your account
If you already have a twitter account, it’s time to do some investigation. Audit your account to find out how it is doing currently and what kind of posts are appreciated by your audience. To be precise, your account’s hashtag performance, Individual tweet performance and individual Twitter audience are all significant information to get you started. When you have a rough idea, you will have some content to get started.
How to audit account?
- You can visit https://www.twitteraudit.com/ and have it do the work for you. The first audit is free, after which you will have to pay to upgrade to pro.
- You can do it manually by navigating to the Twitter Analytics dashboard and exporting the stats for you to analyse. It gives you the information based on the time period you specify.
- There are many other alternate tools available online, you just have to type in the word ‘Twitter Auditing’ and choose what you think works best for you.
2. “Do what is right, not what is popular”
Bit dramatic for a tweet? Might be. But it makes such a huge difference how genuine you are with the portrayal of your brand on twitter. Do not follow trends just to get on the bandwagon. You can be more casual and fun with your tweets but stay true to the brand’s authenticity.
The epitome of Brand voice is Wendy’s. They engage their audience with some playful roasting but they never cross the line and have to promote their brand as the main focus.
So, find a voice, something unique, for your brand.
3. #Trends
Hashtags ain’t just a millennial thing to say in between conversation. It actually brings in double the traffic than tweets without. But, one should not be covetous about it. Identify Hashtags that are relevant to your brand and you can use it to make yourself identifiable by reeling in people who search for similar tags. Some brands even create hashtags solely for a marketing campaign such as “#BigIndianFestival” for the big sale Amazon held in October.
You can go check out the Sprout’s Trends Report which helps identify what are the trending hashtags and topics on twitter to utilise the hashtags to better your company brand.
4. Promoted tweets
If the organic reach is not doing much you can go ahead and try using the paid ads on Twitter. This can expand your target audience notably. This makes you visible to those who do not follow your hashtags nor your brand.
You have to pay a monthly fee as this service identifies people who have similar interest to your already present audience and advertises directly to them. The only downside is that people can easily identify if it is a paid ad or not
How to go about doing this:
- Log into your account that you want to promote.
- Now navigate to ads.twitter.com
- Choose the package you want:
- “I want to automatically promote my Tweets”, this gets you started immediately
- “I want to launch a Twitter Ads campaign”, you can specify your objectives with this route
- You need to be careful with this next step because they cannot be changed once you’ve created the account. Choose the country whose currency you would like to be billed by and the time-zone you want your campaign to follow.
- Next, you will be redirected to a form to set up your campaign or the Promote Mode setup.
- Go ahead and enter your billing information to seal the deal and you can establish your campaign.
5. When to Tweet?
You know when you post something and you’re just waiting for that one person to read it but you don’t know whether they did because there are so many tweets coming up. It’s the same with the tweets for your brand as well, you don’t know if your target audience read it.
But won’t you take all the chances you can to make sure they did? That is what scheduling your tweets does. The time with the most exposure is said to be weekdays between the time 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. It is best to release your posts in this time frame to ensure it reaches more people. Wiselytics update that a tweet has an average half-life of 24 minutes. So, timing is paramount with Twitter
Sprout social has a feature called ViralPost that monitors your audience’s activity and suggests the optimal time to get your post-ups. The best part is that it is tailored just for YOUR target audience.
Some general conclusions drawn by Twitter are that:
- Tuesday and Wednesday are the days you want to post
- At 9 a.m. on both Wednesday and Friday is your best bet with the timing.
- Posting on a Sunday is equivalent to not posting at all
- As said before, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on a weekday is your best option
Consistency is key when it comes to Twitter, successful parties recommend tweeting at least once a day to stay relevant in the realm. Some brands tweet 10-20 times a day to stay competitive. It really comes down to how invested you are in making your Brand ‘popular’ on Twitter. Is social media your only form of advertising? Do you have people to come up with content every single day? It’s like everything else, the more the effort put into developing a consistent tweeting system, the more the fruition.
6. Get your followers involved
You need to let your followers know that you care about their opinions. One of the best ways to do this is to engage in conversations with them. You are tweeting for people to read and respond so doing it with the purpose of engaging your audience will bring your brand more recognition.
Whether it is a simple compliment or a query or even criticism, you should ensure there is some kind of response. This helps people understand you care about how your brand and audience. Some businesses even use Twitter as a sort of ‘helpline’ where people post support questions and they get back to them. This part of Twitter really reflects on the customer service your brand provides and it is vital to ensure quality in your replies.
JetBlue is killing it in on twitter. They have a very professional way of responding to their followers and are also very prompt with it. AS you can see below all their replies come within an hour. They also give a lot of priority to customer satisfaction and no query is gone unnoticed.
Why is twitter important for marketing?
Twitter is up there with Facebook and Instagram as one of the most popular social media sites.
Many businesses do not believe in promoting themselves through social media as they feel that there is no guarantee or their brand is too new and will not be recognised.
Twitter is actually a great way to market your brand but it has to be used the right way. It is a very effective way to get your message across to your target audience. Read on to know why it is important.
Purpose
The whole purpose of Twitter is so that people can share their transient opinions and circulate timely news. So where better a platform for you to get feedback from your consumers? You need to identify the purpose Twitter is serving for you as a marketing tool and conduct it as to reap the benefits.
If Twitter is just a way for you to put your brand out there and make people like it. You tailor your tweets such that it serves that purpose. For example, you are trying to advertise a skincare brand. You can just ask people about their daily skincare routine to have them recognise your product and based on that you can suggest your products. Customised products get people talking all the time. This will get people to like your brand and they may retweet your response and so on. So, Twitter provides an effortless medium for you to get in touch with your target audience.
Brevity
The world is moving too fast and people don’t have the patience to read long articles, they want their information quickly. With a character limit of 140, Twitter kind of compels you to shorten your message to keep the attention span of your readers and to ensure what you are tweeting is absolutely necessary. You know what they say, ‘Brevity is a Great Charm of Eloquence’.
Flexibility
Twitter is free and also gives you entire freedom on what you want to promote on your feed. Only you decide the content and they do not post for you unless pre-scheduled.
Easy to Access
Everyone is already on Twitter. All you have to do is get your posts out there for people to see and that is where some strategy comes into place. Besides, it is very easy for people to get access to your content, all they need is a Twitter account.
Social media marketing
Social media marketing is literally the best way to market your product as you know people are definitely going to come across it. As twitter digital marketing has become very popular these days Billboard and flyers do not work the same anymore. Times are changing and methods of advertising are also changing fast with it. A good Social Media presence can be a very powerful thing for your brand. So not only Twitter but have a solid plan for your brand on all Social Media with a purpose for each one.
Big companies have a team dedicated to each social media platform that manages the content that goes up. The strategy that you have planned for your Twitter account should come in line with your other social media handles. You can also obtain the help you need to form social media management platforms that help you join forces across social media and set standards to be followed by the team. Sprout Social and Buffer are some tools that you can look into.