Twitter - Express Writers

The Top 10 Ways to Improve Your Tweets and Make Them Awesome

December 31, 2020March 23, 2015 by Adam Oakley

Twitter is an awesome tool that can help you generate more followers, and bring in more clicks and eventual revenue for your business. You know it is powerful, and you want to make sure you are doing things as best as possible, right? Well, I’m here to help you further improve your tweets and Twitter outreach with a few awesome tips. Let’s take a look at what can really help your Twitter account out, getting more engagement and clicks! 10 Ways to Improve Your Tweets There are several great ways to get the most out of your Twitter account, and I am going to look at 10 different ones! 1. Use Your #Hashtags Properly. Hashtags are a great part of Twitter, and can be incredibly powerful. There are many different ways people use hashtags ranging from simple business ones to incredibly powerful hashtag moments. When it comes to Twitter, you need to use your hashtags, and use them well. Many people aren’t entirely sure how to use hashtags, but a great way to approach them is to think of them as SEO for Twitter. What are your top keywords, what do you use in your web content and blogs? Use those words for your hashtags, and start grabbing people’s attention. While you use hashtags as SEO, you should also consider making a few fun ones that are unique to your business. A great illustration of doing this is BioWare’s Twitter account for Dragon Age: Inquisition and their #DAIFanQuisition: This week: Amazing Flemeth cosplay, and fun with digital art! http://t.co/knbbz5rZOS #DAIFanQuisition pic.twitter.com/OMiooa1hk3 — Dragon Age (@dragonage) March 17, 2015 2. Make Your Tweets Short and Fun Instead of Dry and Professional. The one thing with Twitter is that you want to make sure you stay fun and informal, even if your company is more professional. This is because you will find that it is easier to get engagement on Twitter if you are fun, laid back, and still reflect your company than when your tweets are constantly dry and boring. You need to loosen up a bit and just have fun because that is one of the main reasons people love social media, especially Twitter. We get enough professional sounding things through work documents, the news, and other professional settings, but Twitter lets people loosen up and have a fun time. Sassy is currently the new fun, and there do happen to be some hilariously sassy Twitter accounts out there to gain inspiration from: “Shorts weather” is a state of mind. http://t.co/dRLlYabUMb pic.twitter.com/DdCVEHQn4I — Orbitz (@Orbitz) March 16, 2015 Thousand island dressing doesn’t come from 1,000 islands, right? Seems like a lot of islands for one dressing. — Arby’s (@Arbys) March 17, 2015 3. Find the Best Time to Post Your Tweets. A great way to make sure you are using Twitter correctly is to make sure you know the best time to post your various tweets. When it comes to the perfect time, it does depend on your client base because people use social media differently. However, there has been some awesome research done to help companies find an optimal starting point for their tweets and when to post them. It is suggested that you post to Twitter mainly on Mondays through Thursdays before 8PM, as this seems to be when people are more active, and if you post on Fridays (which you should), research says to post before 3PM. While this can help you get started, there are two major things you need to do. One is to make sure you are actually reaching people during those times, and tweak your posting times if you aren’t. Two, you need to make sure you share images because people enjoy images on social media. 4. Make Sure You Optimize Your Twitter Profile. Optimizing your social media profiles is really important no matter what site you use, and it can be pretty powerful for Twitter. There are several great brands out there that optimize their Twitter accounts amazingly with incredible photos, a great bio, and a link to their webpage. This is all very important because it shows that an actual person is using the Twitter account, and that the account is your company’s. A bio can help people know more about your business, and that link sends them directly to your webpage. Never leave any aspect of a Twitter profile empty – always fill in any and all information. 5. Don’t Hesitate to Use Twitter Ads. A great way to use Twitter for more of an impact is to make sure you use Twitter Ads. Some companies might be a bit wary to start using Twitter Ads when they would normally just rely on hash tags, but the ads can really help you get more exposure. In fact, Twitter makes sure that people who would be interested in your company will see the promoted tweet, instead of people who wouldn’t be interested seeing it. You can also grow your followers by promoting your account and increase lead generation with ads. Try it out, and you might just be surprised how many people it brings to your Twitter account and eventually your website. 6. Don’t Be Afraid of Acronyms and Emoticons! You can’t go anywhere on the Internet without seeing many acronyms and emoticons. However, many businesses wonder if this is something they can benefit from or if they should simply stay away. I believe that acronyms and emoticons are perfect to use for your business because it can help you create a connection with your followers. In fact, many people react to a smiley face emoticon as if it were a real face – interesting, no? Learn a few acronyms, and use some great emoticons and test just how well they work. Chances are, you will be able to boost engagement, which can lead to more people coming to your site and purchasing from your company. 7. Use Some Psych 101 When Crafting Your … Read more

7 Ways Adagio Teas Wins at Awesome Social Media

December 31, 2020March 18, 2015 by Adam Oakley

Social media can be a tricky field for many businesses, but there are some out there who know how to use it, and they use it well. Have you heard of a smaller, yet big-reach company that has a powerful social media campaign—Adagio Teas? Adagio Teas is a wonderful place with both a physical location on the East Coast, as well as a major Internet presence. They work diligently to bring in more online customers through their social media campaign. Let’s take a look at how Adagio Teas uses social media and see just what you can learn from this small business. A Social Media Success: Adagio Teas I am going to take a look at the top ways Adagio Teas wins at social media, with a few things hopefully you can takeaway for your own social media campaigns. They Have a Great Social Media Presence With Twitter. Adagio Teas knows that the place they are going to get their clients is through social media, and they make sure to have an incredible Twitter presence. When you take a stroll on their Twitter feed, you see the company consistently tweeting about offers, contests, as well as re-tweets from their followers. In fact, Adagio regularly encourages people to use Twitter and it is always nice when you get your tweet re-tweeted by the company. I am going to look into their usage of Twitter further on in this blog, but they do have an incredible presence there, and one that is definitely a great inspiration for small businesses.Twitter is an amazing social media site for small businesses because it allows you to talk to your clients in “real time” and it makes the interaction feel more personal. When it comes to other social channels, people are used to having to wait for a response, but Twitter is where the action is at. If you don’t have a Twitter account, set one up, and get to tweeting and talking to build great relationships with your clients. They Utilize Pinterest to Share Teas, Recipes, and Quotes. While they have a great Twitter presence, they also make sure to utilize their Pinterest account. Pinterest is a great place to share a wide variety of content all the way from memes to product pictures, recipes, and even quotes. Adagio Teas knows how to use Pinterest well and they regularly update with some great photographs of products. They also share some fun, cute little sayings that always involve tea and sometimes include the one thing that pairs with tea nicely – books.Pinterest isn’t a social channel for every business, but it can be useful for some. Many people use this site as a place to collection great DIY tips, as well as fun quotes, sayings, and recipes. If you are in a niche market that can give people DIY tips such as how to brew the perfect oolong tea, then this is a great site for you. If you are in the financial industry, Pinterest might not be the social channel for you. It is always best to keep your channels down to what you will use as well as what will give you the best impact. Adagio Creates Fun Contests Involving Social Media Channels. Back in February, Adagio Teas created a great contest for their fans about the teas people love. The contest rules stated people had to create an individual Pinterest board titling it “I <3 Adagio Teas” and then share the top ten items they loved from Adagio. This was a great marketing ploy because it got hundreds of people to share their favorite products, which meant all of their followers saw it. But how did Adagio make it worthwhile for clients? Obviously not everyone could win the grand prize, but if you created a board, you could email them with a link to your board and get a $10 gift certificate. Overall this was pocket change compared to what Adagio could make with this promotion, and it made all of their clients pretty happy.This is a perfect example of not just setting up a contest or giveaway, but also making it worth your clients’ time and energy. Not many people would have made a board if it weren’t for that gift card. Give your clients something free when you run a promotion to spice things up and add a favorable image of you in their minds. This will help produce customer loyalty, and happy, loyal clients are more than willing to help promote a business that helps them. As Social Media Examiner writes, you don’t always have to use Pinterest; Facebook, Twitter, or any other social channel can work just as well for a giveaway or contest! Tweet About Adagio and You Get Points! One of my favorite ways Adagio uses Twitter is that they encourage people to tweet to receive points. These points add up to a money value, which can take a significant amount of money off of an order. You can only tweet about them once a day, but this is a great incentive for clients to promote a company while getting something in return. Again, this is another great example of encouraging your clients to help promote you while making it worth their time and energy. Allot Points for Social Media Reviews. Outside of just tweeting on Twitter, Adagio also offers points if you review a product and post it to their Facebook page. Facebook reviews can really help a company out, and many people are willing to do this for a business they like. You will find that they are definitely willing to review things if you give them something in return. Each review gives the reviewer 6 points towards a gift certificate that can be used together with the points mentioned above. Everything about Adagio is about promoting the company while helping the customers, which creates an incredible atmosphere for the workers and clients alike. Adagio Knows that Email is Still Vital. While not a … Read more

The World’s Largest Webinar: #WLW14 with Hubspot, LinkedIN, Facebook & Twitter Leaders

January 1, 2021April 24, 2014 by Adam Oakley

Were you in the loop on the webinar that happened this Wednesday? Over 34,000 people signed up and listened in, breaking the world record for 10,899 participants, set by Hubspot just a few years ago in 2011. The Best Social Media Webinar of All Time We were there, and the event was worth the hype. No less than three of today’s top social media platforms had a senior director or marketing head present during the webinar, with Hubspot hosting: Russ Laraway, Twitter’s Senior SMB Director; Jed Clevenger, Facebook’s Global Head of SMB Channel Marketing; and Scott Engelman, Head of Online Marketing at LinkedIN. The host was @Dan Zarrella, Hubspot’s own Social Media Scientist. Check out the event page on Hubspot. Since the webinar was not recorded, we took direct notes while listening in. Here are our favorite tidbits from the experts who spoke. Enjoy! Twitter Company Page tips shared from @Russ Laraway: “Your first impression on Twitter counts. Use your bio to be descriptive and reflective of your business. Give people a compelling reason to follow your account. Include URL to an important landing page, your store hours, and anything that makes it easy to find you. Feature your logo and visual elements to describe your company. @Bonobos is an excellent example that does all of this for their Twitter profile. Be relevant on mobile. Twitter was born on mobile; 75% of users are mobile; think of your Twitter profile as your mobile website.” Business Facebook Page tips by @Jed Clevenger: “We have over 1 million active advertisers. Setting up your Facebook page is huge for your business. Three things to get started: Fill out complete and accurate information about your business: type, location, hours, URL, contact information. This establishes your business on Facebook, makes it indexed to search. Have great cover pictures and cover photo. Customers want to see that you’re legitimate. Use our free Facebook tools: contact importer, where you can upload all your contacts, and friend invites, where you can invite all your friends. Test new types of content and spend time in your Page Insights to get information on your posts, audience, and traffic. SweetHaus used no advertising dollars to grow their account to over 3,000 likes: promoting to existing customers and finding new customers.” LinkedIN Company Page tips from @Scott Engelman: “Write a company page that is informative and engaging. Use keywords that are relevant to your business to get your company in search results. Think of what image to use—an eye-catching image that invites visitors to learn more. Once it’s set up, invite your company network to follow. Engage with your followers by posting updates.” Of course, we loved this question: So much of marketing in social media is copywriting. Should my Twitter campaign copy be different from other copy? Russ, Twitter guru, answered: “The short answer is no, but it’s safe to acknowledge that Twitter offers constraints – 140 characters. Generally speaking, consider email marketing. I bet everybody here does this. With email marketing, you’re creating and constantly refining a list of interested parties; create content; send it out regularly, with minor adjustments, you can use this for your Twitter audience. Your followers are your lists. Work on shorter-form for Twitter. Most of you will create bigger content pieces like blogs, newsletters, e-books, think of these as base documents that you can carve into bite size pieces and use Twitter to drive those bits. For example, take a newsletter. Instead of tweeting the link with “check out the newsletter,” tweet a tip about the newsletter, a series of tips all day, and link to it or that excerpt in it. You can get a lot of mileage out of what you’re already producing this way, just modify it to make it work on Twitter.” How do you get engagement with your tweets? A great question, and it got a great answer from Russ Laraway: “Forgive me for being obvious, but you can get more engagement with your tweets by giving your audience what they want. Really think about the 80/20 rule. 80% of your content should NOT be focused on what you are selling. Non-direct selling, direct offering of value that is informative and helpful. What can your followers benefit from? Best practices, industry trends, are examples of great kind of content. Tweets that include rich media are more than likely to be shared. If you upload an image that tweet will do twice as well. 20% of your content SHOULD be focused on what you are selling.” I can’t seem to grow, how do I get a relevant following? Russ answered: “It is true that it is really important to build a great follower base on Twitter. Remember, followers are optional. The users on Twitter regularly refine who they follow. There is no friction to stop following an account. So, users are very careful about the accounts they follow. Your followers will be interested to hear from you with regularity. Use the profile tips from earlier for a compelling profile, and jump in on industry conversations with hashtags—like the smart marketers hash-tagging #WLW14! For example, if your target audience is educators, reach out to Alexander Russo and build a relationship with them. If you just tweet out valuable content in order to get a retweet, you’ll get more relevant followers over time.” How do I target content for Facebook industry audience? Jed says: “A lot of the same principles from Russ for Twitter can be applied here for Facebook. We encourage you to start testing your way into great content. We have tools similar to A/B testing. From your page, any post you publish can be available to the public, but not all the public. Target your post by location, country, state, city, language, gender, relationship status, educational status, age—there is a ton of targeting option. Speak with an authentic voice to reach core audiences.” How do I use hashtags successfully? Russ said: “Hashtags are best used for tweets driven for … Read more

10 of the Best Social Media Writing Tips

December 31, 2020April 20, 2013 by Adam Oakley

Social media is all around us. What started out as a way for college students to stay connected with one another has now consumed the business world. Most businesses that have an online presence typically have at least one social media profile, and an expert to help them with their social media writing. Social media has opened the door for many businesses to connect to a wider audience. So naturally web writing, when it comes to social media, needs to be specific. Social media encompasses a wide variety of networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and more. Social media is an extension of your overall communication strategy. Social Media Writing 101: 10 Tips for Best Results In order to effectively write for social media you need to keep in mind the following ten tips: 1. Know and Understand Your Target Audience In order to do social media writing effectively, you need to have a clear understanding of who your target audience is. It does you no good to write about hair care products in your posts if your audience is members of the construction field. 2. Know Your Objective What do you want to achieve with your social media posts? What is the main point you want your audience to know? When your objective is clear; your writing can be more focused 3. Write Using Plain Language Sometimes, in writing, it is easy to go off on a tangent and write what is clearly playing in your head. The problem is that when you write in that manner, your audience may not have a clue what you’re talking about. You want to write in plain language that gets your point across but is also easily understandable. Never use jargon or slang 4. Talk In An Active Voice. Writing in an active voice means you’re taking control of the conversation. The verbs you use are the action. Example: This supplement took our client to the next level in her quest for health. The word “took” is the active word. It shows the action 5. Keep Your Messages Short Social media is about getting the facts in a short and simple way. Remember, with social media you don’t want to write a novel. Keeping it short is also going to cause you to be more specific about what you say. Because the posts, tweets, etc. are short, you have to get to the main point and fast 6. Go Sparingly When It Comes to Acronyms Remember, people may not know an acronym right away. It is recommended that you use them sparingly. If you have to use an acronym, be sure to spell out what it stands for “before” the acronym itself. Even if an acronym may seem obvious to you, it may not be so obvious to someone else. 7. Numbers Can Help Make Your Point Clear Numbers can often get to the point for you. However, you need to use them in the right way. So instead of saying “25% of the people” say something like “1 in 4 people”. People tend to relate more to number when they make content easy to understand. 8. Focus On The Positives It’s easy to point out why someone shouldn’t do something. You get more from your message and your readers, however, by focusing on the positives of anything. 9. Encourage Your Readers With A Call To Action A call to action gets your readers to do something. Whether it’s clicking on a link or making a change in their life; get them to act. 10. Make the Content Relevant and Relatable People read and respond to what they feel relates to them and their life. If they can relate to it; make a connection with your post, than you are ahead of the game. By utilizing these ten tips, your social media writing will be more effective, grab your reader’s attention and get them to act upon it. Social media is about being sociable. So make sure your writing reaches your audience the way you intended it to. Use these tips and you’ll be on your way to social media success. Got great social media? If you need help, we offer managed social media packages. Check it out in the Content Shop.