Twitter is a very effective social network for marketing purposes. But it is also the social network where many people give up for lack of understanding. In my home country, Germany Twitter has a huge problem to fight off the prejudice it would mainly be for news.
And even people who already have some considerable success on Twitter do most of the time not know all about tweaking their Twitter activity and optimize for more success and better results.
So here is a collection of 16 quick tips and tricks to get more out of your Twitter activity.
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FREE Step-by-Step Twitter Marketing GuideFREE Pinterest Marketing Ebook
Fill out your profile
This is so basic it does not deserve a number in my list of Twitter tips. But I still need to mention it once before going on. Before you can expect people to follow, listen and trust you, you need to take the time and efforts to fill out your profile: Upload a profile picture, include a Twitter header on your profile, fill out the bio and tell people what they can expect if they follow you.
This is not a joke, far too many treat their profile with not enough care. They think about tweets and how to get their sales message across, but they utterly fail with the basics.
1. Add a link to your profile
Many Twitter users link to their website in their Twitter profile – and that is totally ok. But you can use your Twitter profile to promote something more special. For instance, if you recently published an ebook, you can include the link in your Twitter profile. Make sure to add a call to action: “You can download her free ebook on TOPIC here LINK”
Even though the Twitter bio does not allow for long form text there is still enough room to get the message across and do a little promotion without being salesy.
2. Share (a lot of) value
Talking to people about using Twitter I often get asked what I tweet all the time and if they should split up their product description into a series of tweets.
They got it all wrong.
Twitter success is not about talking about your products or services in an endless repetition. Twitter is about sharing value for your target audience. And believe me, there is a ton of valuable content out there for every niche you can think off. And all this valuable information allows you to tweet again and again without repeating yourself. Include some valuable information from yourself and you are on a good track to grow your Twitter audience.
3. Schedule your posts
Do you manage all your social media activity in one hour per day, half an hour in the morning and half an hour in the evening – simply because you have to cope with your “real” work for the time in between? There is nothing wrong with that – apart from the problem that all your tweets will go out in a 30 min span – the remainder of the day your Twitter account is quiet.
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In a social network where the average lifespan of a post is 8min, that means you are losing out – especially since your target audience is most likely active in their working hours when your account is not visible because you do not tweet.
That is why you need a scheduling tool. The easiest to use is Buffer – and even better Buffer is free for scheduling up to 10 tweets at a time. You can choose your own schedule according to the preferences of your target audience.
4. Tweet more often
I have seen a lot of advice on how often should you post in social media. The truth is that most of the time the answer is „More often“ – at least if you have enough value to share.
It is a simple equation: when your tweet has a lifespan of 8 min. and you tweet twice a day, you are invisible on Twitter for over 23.5 hours. That cannot be your goal.
This does not mean that you need to send a tweet every 8 mins. But one tweet per hour is usually by far not too much. And to be honest, who do think is going to be annoyed by one tweet per hour, if your tweets always contain valuable information?
5. Start and Join conversations
Twitter is one of the easiest networks to come into a conversation with a total stranger. And often you can even talk to influencers. The trick is to have something to say.
Of course, it is always nice to get comments like “nice post” – but it will not start a conversation. Much better would be a comment like: “I enjoyed your article but don’t you think you should also consider ARGUMENT?”
You want to stand out, but you do not want to be a hater. Inspire thoughts and show that you have an opinion of your own.
6. Use lists
There are many use cases for Twitter lists. You can collect the most interesting Twitter users from your niche and then follow this list. You will never miss another interesting tweet again.
Twitter lists can also help you set up a chat. And you can also put people on lists in order to make them aware of you. Some of them will eventually follow you.
7. Use the @mentions with care
Did you know that a tweet that starts with a Twitter handle (@dreckbaerfrau thanks for sharing my article) will only be seen by the user with the Twitter handle (in the example by me) and people following both parties in the conversation. Tweets starting with a handle are meant for a rather personal conversation.
If you want to tweet to all your followers but also mention a Twitter handle, you either need to add „.“ Or „ „ in front of the Twitter handle or include the Twitter handle at another place in the tweet.
You can find more about using the @mention in tweets in this article.
8. Retweet and get retweets – there are tools for that
There is a lot you can achieve with retweets. One thing you may not have thought of: retweet some tweets from other Twitter users and get some retweets of your own tweets in exchange.
There are tools that handle this exchange of retweets. An example is JustRetweet.
Simply keep in mind that you want to retweet stuff that is of interest to your target audience.
9. Pin a tweet
On Twitter you can pin a tweet from your list of tweets to the top of your Twitter page. This tweet will get more attention than other tweets from all people who visit your Twitter profile.
Whenever you have a special message or even something to promote, you can get a little extra attention by pinning it.
10. Follow people
I recently had a discussion on one of our blog posts that following people would not be a good strategy to gain followers because it was against Twitter rules. That is not true. As always with Twitter OVERDOING it is not allowed.
Twitter is against aggressive following, but Twitter is also against aggressive liking or retweeting. You can get your account locked or banned for that sort of behavior, too. So whether you follow people, like tweets or retweet, do not overdo it!
And the truth is that many of the Forbes top social media influencers have build their Twitter accounts based on the follow-unfollow-routine. Some of them openly admit it.
So why should you miss out on a strategy that others are using to their tremendous success? Only beware that there are limits to it and you need to know them. For more information please read this article.
11. Include images
Most social media marketers know it for a fact that posts on Facebook without an image get far less attention than the posts with images in the right dimensions. For Twitter the same rule applies. A tweet with an image is much more visible in the feed, it catches the eye of a Twitter user.
You need to test some images, some work far better than others. And you should consider the format for the image so that Twitter shows the right excerpt of the image especially if you includes some text.
If you need help with designing images for Twitter, you may want to take a look at Canva.
12. Include hashtags
On Twitter tweets with 1-2 hashtags get far more retweets than tweets with either no hashtags or more than 2 hashtags. Choose you hashtag with care, it should help to identify the topic of the tweets and it should be a hashtag that people may search for if they are looking for the kind of information you tweetet.
13. Clean up your following
There is actually a hidden message in the ratio between followers and friends on Twitter. If an account follows more people than are following the account it inspires far less trust. If you have a ton of followers but are following far less people it can easily be assumed that your account is wrth to be followed and has a lot of value to share.
In order to get a better ration in your following you can use a tool to help you identify accounts you do not want to follow any more: inactive accounts, spammy accounts or accounts that tweet in the wrong language. ManageFlitter can help you with your cleaning up.
14. Share your Twitter handle outside of Twitter
There are many opportunities to mention your Twitter handle and many of them are not on Twitter. When you guest blog on other people’s blogs, include your Twitter handle in your author bio. My very first couple of hundred followers on Twitter I gained with a guest post on Jeff Bullas’s blog. Make sure to combine the Twitter handle with a call to action: “You can also follow Susanna on Twitter LINK”.
An author bio is not the only place where you can mention your Twitter account:
- on your blog
- in a speaker bio
- on your business cards
- in your email signature
- cross-promote social accounts: mention Twitter handles on Facebook, Facebook Fanpage on Twitter etc.
- …
15. Test and Optimize your tweet text
Tweet the same article with two totally different texts and see what happens. Most likely one will get far more attention in form of retweets than the other. There are proven titles that work well on Twitter like list posts. Emotional words can also help a lot – a good example is one of our recent guest posts which works very well in social media: How to Effortlessly Create Captivating Headlines and Subheads
Whatever you use as a tweet text, try to leave some space for retweets and comments. Do not use the full 140 characters.
16. Monitor your results
There are always some things you do that will work well and others that will not work as you expected. In the long run, you want to know what works and do more of that in order to get better results from Twitter.
To get there you need numbers. You need to monitor how people react to your activity, do they retweet or click? Are you gaining followers? Are there activities that inspire more people to follow you?
If you are using some social media management tools, most of these provide you with some metrics and data. Use it!
The least you should do is go to your Twitter Analytics and check what your followers like: what interests do they have, do they interact with you and so on.
Final Words on Twitter Marketing
At first glance, Twitter may not seem the most complicated social network. And simplicity is one of the beauties of Twitter. But still, there are so many tweaks and changes that can help you get more out of your efforts that you always need to keep your eyes open for more ideas and keep learning. I am using Twitter for more than 5 years now and still, I discover ways to get even better results.
If you are still new to the Twitter game and need some help to get going, here is your step-by-step guide to starting a Twitter account!
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