The shelf life of one tweet is four times shorter than anything you post on Facebook.
This makes it hard to get your messages to stick and make an impact. It’s easy to get lost in the crowd.
That’s why your tweets and Twitter marketing techniques have to pack a punch to get people to take action and pay attention to you.
But it can be hard to know exactly what techniques work and which ones are a waste of time. Thankfully, you won’t have to spend any time figuring that out.
1. Pick the right handle, profile photo, and header image
Your Twitter handle has to be recognisable, easy-to-remember, and short enough for people to easily tag you.
When someone tries to search your name, they will use your handle to find your page.
Keep your names consistent across all social media profiles. If you use a name that’s different from your brand or company name, you might confuse followers or make your page hard to find.
Take H&M for example. There’s no way to include the “&” character in a handle, so they simply shortened their handle to “@hm.”
The business name “H&M” is already catchy, short, and easy-to-remember, but the handle is even simpler.
They use this handle consistently across all of their social media accounts. No unnecessary characters are added, making their pages easy to find.
If you’re just getting started, choose a Twitter handle that is as close to your brand’s name as you can get.
Steer away from irrelevant numbers or any kind of punctuation marks.
Keep it short and sweet, too. With a short Twitter name, you’ll be more likely to get @mentions from other users and brands.
People are less likely to mention businesses with long Twitter handles due to the character limit of each tweet.
Potential customers might interact more with your Twitter account than they would with a physical store.
For this reason, you need to make sure that your profile picture is recognisable and memorable.
It’s not uncommon to go with a logo, which will nurture brand awareness.
Anytime someone interacts with your Twitter account, they’ll become even more familiar with your logo and recognise it when they see it elsewhere.
Some of the largest brands out there understand how important consistent branding really is, and they almost always use their logos as profile images.
The cleaner and simpler the logo, the better. Stick with a version of the image that can be seen even when compressed, since people will be viewing your profile on different-sized devices.
They make use of their lovable “mascot,” the Snuggle Bear, to keep people entertained.
Don’t treat all of the branding opportunities on Twitter as an afterthought, or you’ll miss out on huge marketing opportunities to gain new customers.
Your bio is another place on your profile that needs to fit in with your brand’s image.
2. Optimise your bio to showcase your brand’s personality
Your Twitter bio is a 160-character location to showcase your company right under your profile photo. You need to create a killer one.
And it doesn’t have to be difficult.
Explain who you are, what you do, the company you founded, and who you founded it with.
Here are a few elements to take into account when crafting your bio:
Keep it accurate. Tell people exactly who your brand is.
Incorporate some personality or humour. Don’t be afraid to tell a few jokes or say something original.
Brag a bit. If your brand has some great accomplishments under their belt, tell people. Have thousands of existing customers? Let people know.
Keep it targeted. Write a bio that will attract people that fit in with your target audience.
Add relevant hashtags so that people can find your account when they search for those terms.
Be sure to tag other brands that you may be associated with in this space.
It also helps to tweet during peak hours when most people are online.
3. Tweet during peak hours
There are certain days of the week or times of day when users are more active on Twitter, meaning they’ll actually be more likely to engage with your posts.
By identifying those hours and days and posting during them, you’ll gain more impressions, boost engagement, and get tons of clicks.
According to Buffer, tweets posted on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday have higher CTRs than those posted during other days of the week.
Your peak posting times will depend on your specific audience, so test how your content performs at different times and days to find out what works best for your brand.
You can also use a tool like Hashtagify to find the best hashtags for your tweets. The tool suggests hashtags that are related to the keywords you enter.
With Hashtagify, you can also determine the strength of your hashtags before you use them, so you’ll know which ones work best before tweeting them out.
RiteTag is another alternative that works similarly to Hashtagify.
Next, focus on running some advanced searches.
5. Run some advanced searches
Wouldn’t it be nice to find people who are interested in your services or products at this very second?
Or figure out exactly what people are saying about your brand?
Luckily, there is when you use Twitter advanced search.
Instead of sending out promotional tweets or writing to your existing customers, find potential ones by searching through industry-specific terms.
You’re more than likely to find at least one tweet from a person looking for a baker in your region or dealing with a customer service issue with another bakery.
Advanced searches put new leads right in front of you. Reach out to those people and tell them how you can fix their problem or help them out.
And add images to your tweets if you want to boost retweets, too. (Who doesn’t?)
6. Add images to tweets to increase retweets
When you add images to your tweets, you’ll get more shares and clicks than the tweets without images.
Make sure only to add compelling images that are relevant and high-quality.
Never use an image that doesn’t relate to your tweet just for the sake of adding an image.
If you’re tweeting about a recent blog post, add an image from the article with a link where users can find more information.
Or, if you want to tweet about a new product or service, include an image that showcases it.
You may even be running a promotional deal where followers can get discounts. Use a tool like Canva to create a simple graphic like this one and add it to your tweet.
Photos aren’t the only thing to focus your attention on, though. Use video as often as you can.
7. Utilise Twitter video for even more engagement
Images get more attention than plain old text, but videos outperform images.
Twitter video allows Twitter users to record a new video from a device or upload an existing video.
According to AdWeek, videos are six times more likely to be retweeted than photos and three times more likely to be retweeted than GIFs.
Videos are a great way to share new information with followers, share behind-the-scenes content, elicit emotion, and give your tweets a longer lifespan.
You can also go live with the live video feature. Live videos are automatically posted as tweets, which are still watchable once the live video ends.
Next, focus on conducting polls that people can interact with.
8. Conduct polls to interact with followers
One of the easiest ways to create more activity on your Twitter page is to create a Twitter poll.
All you need to do is click the same button you always click to add a new tweet, then click on the poll icon at the bottom of the screen.
Polls aren’t just fun for followers to complete. They can also be used to conduct consumer and market research, get feedback, and initiate engaging conversations with followers.
Anyone can create a poll, but creating unique and engaging questions takes a bit of thought.
Look to other brands that are using polls consistently and successfully, like Airbnb, for inspiration.
And don’t forget to use creative calls-to-action (CTAs) that you can easily tweet out to drive sales or boost downloads of your latest app or e-book.
9. Use creative CTAs (beyond asking users to share posts)
The entire idea behind Twitter marketing is to drive sales, generate leads, boost clicks, and increase downloads.
Creating posts to drive these actions, when used sparingly, can boost your engagement in huge ways. Adding a CTA to a few tweets is the quickest way to do this.
You’re probably already using CTAs asking users to share your posts, which is great. But this isn’t the only CTA that you should be using on your Twitter profile.
Use some effective action words and phrases to get users to do other activities, such as:
Use the word “free” as often as you can, too. Everyone loves freebies.
Using effective action words and switching up CTAs will drive engagement and boost your CTR, send more traffic over to your site, generate new leads, drive downloads, and boost sales.
10. Use Twitter to double A/B test headlines
Twitter is the best network to test headlines.
Testing headlines on Twitter is a great idea because the visual elements aren’t as prominent on as they are with a platform like Facebook.
After you publish an article, use a tool like Tweriod to find out when your followers are online.
Then, tweet three to five headlines with trackable links during those peak times. Make sure that the headlines are different.
Track the performance of each link. Next, put the same headlines into an A/B-testing service like Optimisely.
Now, track user responses to the headlines there.
You can compare those responses to the responses you got from the same headlines on Twitter. By using two sources, you’ll have a clearer answer about which headlines perform best.
Then do some influencer outreach to put yourself in front of audiences that aren’t following you yet.
11. Reach out to influencers for more exposure
It’s now easier than ever to pitch your ideas to someone with a large following. If they like what you bring to the table, they can change your brand’s world with one simple post.
The first step to influencer outreach is identifying which influencers are out there for your specific industry.
First, look at influencers that you’ve already been interacting with. Maybe they’ve liked a few of your tweets, or maybe you’ve responded to some of theirs.
Look at their profiles.
Do their posts align with your brand message? How many followers do they have?
If they seem like a good fit, send them a DM asking to promote your company in a tweet.
Another option is to use a tool like Klout to find new influencers you don’t know about yet.
The tool can give you a good idea of just how influential certain people are online.
Everybody that is active on social media receives a score between 1 and 100. The more influential a user is, the higher that number will be.
Download the Klout Chrome extension to see everyone’s Klout score right beside their name on Twitter.
12. Harness the power of Twitter Ads
When you need to boost engagement as fast as possible, Twitter Ads are the way to go. Especially if you don’t have a ton of followers just yet.
Twitter Ads can be a bit more expensive than Facebook Ads, but they will boost engagement when you need it most. Promoted tweets are the best option for this purpose.
Once a user clicks on their choice, a tweet composer opens with a brand message that users can customise and share.
Once someone tweets this their selection out, they’ll automatically receive a thank you message.
Conversational ads are powerful because you won’t just gain engagement on your post, your paid post will inspire tons of organic posts that are directly tied to your brand.
This feature is currently in beta testing, though, so it isn’t available by default. Twitter is directing users to send a direct message to @TwitterAdsHelp to request access.