Breaking Down Twitter
I have been disappointed, month after month, with my work on Twitter. My clients deserve better, and I thought I was pumping out some pretty clever content, so I'm annoyed by the declining engagement rates.
Mostly, I'm annoyed that, despite many protestations to the contrary, Twitter is still very much alive and kicking as a social media monster. And baby, it's time I tamed it.
For all you people trying to figure out Twitter, here's a consolidation of what I've learned so far. Feel free to read the original articles as well, but mine is the cliff notes, no frills, just the facts skinny on being successful on Twitter:
Best Practices:
Search and add valuable Twitter followers.
Don't buy your followers, quality over quantity. Add leaders in your industry. Find more of them on BuzzSumo.
Create and monitor Twitter lists. Collect high-value influencers or vocal and loyal customers in lists, and monitor their posts so you can comment when it's appropriate.
Optimize Twitter.
Be visible and easily searchable. Have a simple handle. Optimize your bio to include key hashtags, links, and any other handles related to you. Know the right hashtags to use. Make use of pinned tweets so people see what you really want them to see when they find your profile. Promote your Twitter across platforms (and that goes vice versa for all your other platforms.)
Always be ready to engage.
Balance your promotional content with your conversational posts. 20% promotion, 80% conversation.
Ways to engage on Twitter: Introduce new followers to each other/give a shout out to new followers. Ask important questions. Talk about industry events, especially if you can't attend one. Find a meaningful way for your brand to get involved in a popular trend. Tweet multiple people per day (aim for at least three). Don't bore your followers, so be actionable with your tweets.
Participate in (or host) Twitter chats. Find an industry-related Twitter chat to be a part of, and get engaged in the conversation.
Talk with people, not at them. Reply to @mentions and address both positive and negative feedback. Don't leave people waiting.
Know your Twitter goals.
Set goals that are actually reasonable and achievable.
Possible goals: Get 100 high-value followers (people who are active in your industry). Post 3-5 times per day for a month. Increase your audience engagement (replies, retweets or likes). Maintain a consistent follower increase percentage from month to month. Join 3 Twitter chats in 30 days.
Measure your efforts, use an analytics tool.
Maintain a schedule.
Plan out your tweets with a content calendar. Plan time for outreach and engagement.
Plan ahead: your Halloween tweets, Thanksgiving, and Christmas tweets should be written (or at least planned) before October, November, and December. Campaigns should be in the works 2 to 3 weeks before they need to launch.
Twitter engagement tends to be higher on weekends (especially for B2C companies). Be sure to post during the day time.
In general, between noon and 6 pm (EST) is the best time for engagement, though after 3 pm on a Friday can be a deadzone.
In general, tweet more often and expect more engagement.
Tweet your new blog post more than just once. Spread out your blog tweets to make sure they hit several different times of day over several days.
Spread out your link clicks: too many per day, and the overall click through rate will go done. Not more than 1 or 2 per day.
Writing the Perfect Tweet:
Three goals for your posts: amplify, engage, convert.
Ask yourself: is it interesting and readable? Is it interesting enough to click? Is it compelling and built to be retweeted?
Make tweets conversational. Tweets should not consist of just headlines with a link, inspirational quotes or funny statements. Tweets should open the door to conversation.
Incorporate humor, inspiration, and newsworthy content to draw followers in.
Things to include:
Call to action. Tell readers what you want them to do.
Message. Use good punctuation and avoid abbreviating everything but numbers. The sweet spot on length seems to be around 100 characters total.
Hashtags. Include 1-2 hashtags, in the body of the message, not at the end. Tweets with hashtags receive 2X the engagement. 1-2 is best
Format. Use a mix of headlines, questions, and facts and figures. Track which ones do the best.
Mentions and RTs. Tag others with their handles, and personalize your own retweets.
Tone. Use your own voice in a professional way. Know the difference between voice and tone. The voice will stay the same, the tone will change (be more serious when it's a customer complaint). Keep it professional without being jargony.
Links. Shorten all links. 90% of your tweets should have a link to articles, blog posts, pictures, or videos.
Photos. Photos no longer count against your character count. Use them every time. Also tag relevant people in photos (tagging people in the photo doesn't count against your character count!)
Use video. Twitter has made it easier than ever to share a video on the platform. Videos automatically start playing without sound.
Twitter now allows you to record 140 second videos and post directly to Twitter. Also consider Periscope, a Twitter company for livestream videos.
Use Twitter polls. Do a little market research, get feedback, or spark conversations with a poll. Add a poll to your monthly content calendar.
- Tweet out questions.
- Make at least 30-40% of your Tweets replied to other people
- When Tweeting links, add a line of your own insight to spark conversation.
- Tweet directly to your audience. Instead of "Blog Post Title, [link]", try "What do you think of this new post? Blog Post Title, [link]"
What to say:
Imperative words tell you to do something: see, make, look.
Video and photos do better, include them.
Superlatives: the most, the best, blow your mind.
Audience-referencing phrases: make you, when you, you see.
How-to phrases that explain a process or teach a skill.
Most retweetable words and phrases:
1. you 11. please retweet
2. twitter 12. great
3. please 13. social media
4. retweet 14. 10
5. post 15. follow
6. blog 16. how to
7. social 17. top
8. free 18. blog post
9. media 19. check out
10. help 20. new blog post
Salesforce data found that tweets that specifically asked followers to retweet got 12 times higher retweet rates. When retweet was spelled out, it was 23 times higher than average. Even with just RT, it was 10 times higher.
More adverbs and verbs also had higher click through rates than tweets with nouns and adjectives.
People prefer tweets that are capitalized like a normal sentence.
Measure Your Results:
Set objectives for what you want to achieve with the platform. Possible objectives are:
- Build an engaged following
- Monitor and improve your brand’s reputation
- Respond to customer complaints quicker
- Generate leads
- Get more traffic to your website
- Network with bloggers and influencers
Establish accomplishments that tie in with those objectives:
- Increase @mentions and Retweets by 15%
- Keep response rate above 90%
- Maintain a response time of under 10 minutes
- Generate at least 20 leads from Twitter
- Improve referral traffic from Twitter by 30%
- Add at least 100 new contacts from Twitter
Goals should include a specified deadline. Weekly, monthly, quarterly, whatever.
94% discounts/promos
88% free stuff
87% fun and entertainment
79% access to exclusive content
79% updates on upcoming sales
Cool Tools:
Try www.ritetag.com for real time information on which hashtags will actually help you get seen.
Most viral headlines: http://blog.bufferapp.com/the-most-popular-words-in-most-viral-headlines
Resources:
Sprout Social: http://bit.ly/2ql6Nt4
Marketing Think: http://bit.ly/2qliKyu
Sprout Social: http://bit.ly/2qp07I8
Buffer Blog: http://bit.ly/2qlGySL
Sprout Social: http://bit.ly/2gRmzZy
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