When you think microblogging, Twitter is likely the first platform that comes to mind. The nature of tweets forces Twitter users to be concise, witty and conversational, unlike on other social platforms with less drastic character restriction.
The conversational flow on Twitter creates the right environment to ask peers for recommendations, share reviews and interact casually with brands. That's why it's critical for brands to have a prominent and approachable presence on Twitter, which is easier said than done since tweets have limited visibility.
- According to Moz, 18 minutes is how long a tweet stays in your followers' feeds.
- Wiselytics found the average life of tweets to be 24 minutes.
This post shows you how to expand your value and visibility on Twitter.
Participate real-time in events
Brands have a lot to gain from participating in main-stream live events. For example, look at what Oreo did during the Super Bowl.
The post was released on Twitter and Facebook in response to a power outage a few minutes after it occurred at a Super Bowl a few years back. It's still one of the best examples of real-time marketing on Twitter.
If you can participate in relevant conversations around live events, you can reach and impact a large part of your target audience. Provide real-time commentary while demonstrating your experience and value, and use the event hashtag to associate your tweets with the event.
Use wit & transparency
Wit and transparency are huge hits on Twitter, when you get them right. It's important to consider your target audience when crafting these tweets, because not everybody relates to the same content. Old Spice is great at using dry humor and blatant transparency to gain their followers' trust.
Characteristics like wit and humor are always associated with being human, so if you want to make a connection with your fans, there's no better way.
The idea is to find opportunities, think and act like a human, and take the leap.
Include stunning visuals
Visuals impact viewers better than other types of content and are easy to add to tweets via apps or directly on Twitter.
Almost anything you like on the Internet can be captured via screenshots and quickly shared with your social media audience (keeping in mind copyright laws and respecting their importance).
In all of your tweets, try and increase the visual element while reducing your dependency on text.
Create better headlines
Most people work on headlines keeping their blog posts in mind, and forget to rethink them for social media. This is a huge mistake because the traffic and engagement you generate on social media depends heavily on the text you choose for posts.
Have you tried testing the same link with multiple text versions? You may have noticed that some perform better than others.
Tweets that inspire action, "How-to" posts, provocation, mistakes, worst-case/best-case posts, are all great ideas for Twitter.
Optimize promotion cycles
Sometimes, it isn't enough to share a link once. To get the most traffic to a page, you have to promote it several times. The hitch is that you can't share the link with the same post text over and over. You have to switch up the text to prevent yourself from appearing spam-like.
Some brands share the same posts at different times, ensuring that they aren't seen by the same people more than once.
It's key to keep posts saved, so you can recycle the ones that are evergreen. Evergreen posts get a huge amount of engagement over time.
Use tools to improve engagement
Any tool that helps you execute the tactics discussed above is a good candidate for helping you create better tweets.
SerpStat's "Cluster research and questions" - This tool is known for its SEO benefits, but it can also double-up as a great research tool for writing.
Cluster research, for instance, helps you find related search terms using Google's SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) as a basis. These terms can be great for creating multiple versions of tweets for the same links.
Questions are a great way to catch the attention of easily distractible Twitterati. SerpStat helps you look for popular niche questions using Google Suggest.
DrumUp's "Content libraries and visual features" - This tool is primarily for social media scheduling, but has nifty features to improve engagement on social posts.
Content libraries are organized folders in which you can store your tweets and tweet versions in-app. These libraries can be set on automatic posting or repeat posting schedules to maximize engagement on certain links.
When creating custom posts or tweets on DrumUp, you can easily add and edit images, add GIFs (sourced from GIPHY) or emojis to increase the emotional engagement value of tweets before scheduling them.
Hashtagify for "Hashtag research and optimization" - It's clear that hashtags play a critical role in tweet engagement and this tool helps you find the best hashtags to you.
Hashtag research on Hashtagify yields information about which hashtags are best to use, based on volume of appearance on Twitter and who is tweeting them. Additionally, if you have brand hashtags, you can measure their popularity and usage using the tool.
Get Started
Twitter is where customers want support and engagement from brands. The best way to succeed at this, is by creating better tweets and increasing their visibility and reach. This post is a great way to get started.
Author Bio
Disha Dinesh is a content writer at
Godot Media, a leading content agency. Her interests include social media and content marketing. When she's not writing, she's on the hunt for social media trends and inspiration.