Twitter is a Social Media Marketing giant. Fact. With over 21 million monthly active users on the site, if you are not already a regular Tweeter, then it’s now time to dive in and join. To help you really make the most of your Twitter journey, we have put together an essential guide for maximising your engagement on the platform and in turn driving up your follower count!
It can take an age to build your Twitter profile in such a crowded market, however, with the right tips and tricks, we can help you speed up the process by increasing engagement, which in turn can lead to more clicks, increased brand awareness, and more conversions. Sounds good? We thought so! Read on….
1. Always Engage With Other Users Content
This is a no brainer really. If you want others to engage with you, you will need to make sure that you are engaging with other users content too! You can do this by Liking, responding to, and retweeting your users content when you can, and following them can also help. Not only will this increase engagement, but it will also help you start to build a relationship between you or your brand and the users you’re interacting with.
2. Start Retweeting
On Twitter this is kind of the King of engagement and so deserves its own point in this article. You want to do this early and often because this is what most users value the most, not only are you liking their content enough to validate it, but you value it enough to share it. By retweeting your users’ content first, you could have much better luck when trying to get them to retweet and share your own content.
3. Tweets Need To Be Brief
According to multiple different sites and data, the sweet spot for the number of characters for shareable tweets is between 80 and 110 characters, including hashtags and user tags, especially if you’re looking to increase retweets. You want users to share your content; make it easy for them to do so by keeping your Tweets at the perfect length.
4. Put Links In Your Tweets
If you want to get clicks to your site, the best way to do so is to put links in your Tweets. You also want to share content from others, too. With social media, you never want to make it all about you and your brand; Twitter is no exception. This can help increase engagement and send more traffic and new visitors to your site as an added bonus.
5. Pay Attention To Peak Times
Just like with Facebook, there will be certain times of the day or week when more of your users will be active on the site or more likely to engage with your content. By paying attention to those peak hours and posting during them, you’ll get more views and you’ll be more likely to increase engagement and clicks on your post. Generally, one of the most popular times to post, as some studies have highlighted is between 12:00-3:00 Mondays through to Fridays, however, make sure you research when your own audience is the most active.
6. Use Hashtags
As with Instagram, the most successful tweets will come with a bunch of hashtags. Not only do hashtags offer the benefit of helping a relevant audience find you when they search the hashtag you’re using, but they can also increase engagement. Tweets that include hashtags can see as much as a 1,065% increase in engagement compared to a similar tweet without hashtags, and tweets with hashtags are 33% more likely to get retweeted than those without them. Whether you’re using a specific, branded hashtag or one that’s just relevant to your audience or industry, you should aim to always have one on each tweet.
7. Post Images
Some studies have shown that tweets with images get 313% more engagement, so if you are not sharing tweets with images, then you sure should be! You can share up to 4 images in a single tweet, but even using just 1 image is all it takes to drive extra engagement.
8. Post Videos
Just the same as posting an image can boost engagement, well videos continue the trend and can even outperform images. Twitter Video allows you to either record a new video from your smartphone or upload an existing video if you have an iPhone. The time limit is 30 seconds, but since you’ll lose most viewers after 30 seconds, that’s all you need.
9. Request Retweets From Your Followers
This one sounds simple, but it really works. Use the phrases “please share” or “please retweet (or RT)” The key is to use sparingly as if you post often, asking for retweets all the time, it will feel like spam.
10. Keep It Simple
You only have 280 characters to get a click and engagement, so you want to be as to the point as you can be to get relevant clicks while still accurately describing your content in a way that’s alluring to relevant readers. When it comes to getting engagement, don’t be ambiguous or overly complicated, the trick is to keep it simple.
11. Ask A Question
Another simple, yet effective trick is to ask a question. People love to give their opinions and share their experiences, especially if they think the brand who’s asking might listen. You will see engagement rocket and will have appealed to your audience by showing them you value their opinions.
12. Recycle Good Content
There is nothing wrong with reusing great content if done correctly. A lot of big brands frequently recycle their best content. So much content is being pushed out on so many different platforms, people often miss it the first time, and even if they see it on multiple postings, few notice the replication. When you’re recycling content, try to change it slightly (even if this is just replacing a word or three!), stagger it at a different part of the day or week, adding the space of a few weeks later if possible.