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:
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:
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 Tweets. Not many people consider basic psychology when they craft their tweets, but all of the engagement you are likely to receive stems from psych 101. Not everyone took a psych 101 class, and that is completely fine, you don’t need a psychology degree to learn a few basic tricks. You can learn some things to do such as using the “bandwagon effect” to bring in more engagement. What is the bandwagon effect? It is simple saying things like “join our team” or stating something and asking, “who agrees?” It seems like you are involving a lot of people (even if you don’t feel like you are) and people are more likely to respond if they think others are responding as well. There are some other great basic psychology things you can do and Social Media Examiner has a handy list to get you started!
8. Always Make Sure You Define Your Goals for Twitter. A basic step some people might not consider at the beginning of their Twitter usage is what goals they have in mind for their account. This contains knowing who you want to reach on Twitter (age, location), knowing what you want to accomplish with a Twitter campaign, and know who will be crafting and sending out your tweets. These seem very basic, but it can help tremendously if you have goals set up for your Twitter account. Your goals can also change and grow throughout the years, so make sure you are constantly reviewing them.
9. Create a List for Your Company Name to Avoid Missing Mentions. One of the major problems a lot of businesses have is missing when they are mentioned on Twitter. This can be a detriment because people love when a business re-tweets or mentions them, and if you don’t see it, you won’t interact with them. In addition, if someone says something negative about your company, you won’t be able to meet the problem and work to resolve it.
The biggest problem with this is that people don’t often use the @ to mention the company they are talking about. A great way to make sure that you don’t miss a single mention whether they use the @ or not is to create a list with your company’s name as the search term. You will then be able to track who says what, and give you the chance to reach out to people who didn’t mention your company. This promotes engagement, and can also help in reputation management.
10. Utilize Twitter Analytics to Help Tweak and Improve Your Tweets. A great thing about the Internet is when you’re able to use analytics to see just how well your site is doing. However, what can you do to see if your tweets are having the best impact or not? You can use Twitter Analytics to figure it out! You can look at specific tweets or an overall report to learn more about your Twitter usage, reach, and overall power. This will help you see what types of tweets your followers engage with, as well as the best times to post to your specific Twitter account. You can use Twitter Analytics to make sure you get the reach you want and need, which is incredible.
Tweet, Tweet and Grow Your Followers!
Twitter is the perfect way to reach out to your followers and have more engagement with them. It is also a great way to direct people to your blogs, and help you generate more revenue. Don’t skip out on using Twitter if it scares you.
You don’t always have to rely on using the Twitter account yourself—we know it can be hard as a business owner wearing a lot of hats! Take a look at our awesome social media packages that not only help with Twitter, but can help with Facebook and Google+, as well.
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 specific social channel, email does have a social quality that many people end up ignoring. Many think that it is a thing of the past when it comes to marketing, but that is simply not so. Adagio understands this and sends out great emails to encourage their clients to try new teas or products. When they send out an email, it isn’t the typical mass generated one that every single client gets. In fact, it is tailored to what the client has purchased. Let’s say you purchased a cinnamon apple Rooibos tea, Adagio will follow up with an email about a cinnamon tea you might like. A few weeks later, they’ll share an apple tea, or they might just say that they’ve randomly put a free sample into your cart for you to have next time you check out. All of this is communicated through email, and it is a pretty wondrous thing to open your email and see you have a free sample of tea waiting for you.A takeaway from this for you is that you should still be using email in your marketing campaigns. It doesn’t have to be done just like Adagio by making it user specific, but this shows just how vital email is in 2015. Think about it – what is one of the first things you do in the morning? You check your email. The same thing happens all over the world as people stretch their feet to the ground and groggily pick up their phone as they head to the kitchen for a cup of coffee or tea. Outside of morning email checks, we all find ourselves checking our email for work purposes or waiting for orders to arrive, making it important for businesses to use email.
They Favorite, Re-tweet, or Respond. Adagio Teas also understands one of the most vital aspects of social media – engagement. They’ve worked hard to get decent engagement on their sites, and now that they have it, they make sure to maintain it. They do this by responding to their clients on Facebook and Twitter, as well as by re-tweeting images, or by marking “favorite” on a tweet. This helps promote further engagement because people simply love knowing that someone is going to respond to their comments and tweets.In order to have a great, successful social media presence, you need to make sure you are regularly engaging. Yes, getting engagement can be difficult up front, but there are several things you can do to promote it. Once you get it, you need to make sure you work just as hard to keep it by responding to comments, re-tweeting, and just engaging overall with your clients.
Grab a Mug of Tea and Get Social!
These top points are great things to add to your own social media campaign, helping you get the most out of it. It can be daunting to be a small business and using social media when all you see are tons of very successful large businesses. However, if this small business can have an incredible social media campaign, so can you!
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 engagements. Leave them out of tweets driving direct responses. Don’t squat on a hashtag by just using it. Offer some value when you use it. Anyone can create their own hashtag: just make sure it’s easy to understand, and you’ll get good results. If it’s not widely used, think about trying to build momentum around it. We’ve created the #WLW14 hashtag and incorporated it into other avenues: email, marketing, etc. Build a community around your hashtag.” And Dan at Hubspot added: “Social media is awesome because advertisers can do really smart advertising!” Using sponsored updates on LinkedIN, LinkedIN expert Scott says: “Sponsored updates are a great way to extend your reach and get the best content in front of a target audience. We recommend starting with an organic company post, that has the highest engagement, and use sponsored updates to extend the reach of that post. Use industry location, job function, company size to target these sponsored updates. This allows you to get in front of your audience in an organic way. The power behind this targeting is the accuracy of the data: you can target your exact audience. Finally, sponsored updates allow you to get into desktop, tablet and mobile audiences.” On Facebook app success, Jed says: “Facebook has four pillars for Facebook ad strategies. 1) Ad formats – 20% of all user time in ads are spent on Facebook, in the newsfeed. Create newsfeed ads. 2) Targeting – You’re targeting people, not cookies. You can target them in a safe way. Our targeting includes demographic (age, interests, etc.); custom audiences (from email lists, app users, etc.); just-launched website custom audiences (target people on Facebook who were on your website); look-like audience creation (find other people on Facebook with similar characteristics). 3) Conversion tracking – drop a conversion pixel on your website to track everything. 4) Measurement – use your page insights and manager. An example: Little Passports grew their customer base 300% and cut back on costs by 60% using Facebook advertising. They saw a huge uplift in sales and is their life in sales. Some of the biggest takeaways were about images, which are vital in your tweets, Facebook shares, and LinkedIN posts:
Russ says: “Use images in tweets. You’ll get double the engagement. Get deeper: create images around hashtag vortexes, and make it aligned with what is popular with your audience. You can even pair this with an offer and then track it with Twitter’s tracking capabilities. Chegg is a great example. Using this resulted in 13,000 post engagement purchases, a 23% engagement conversion rate.”
Jed says: “Use bigger and better images. Use pictures that relate to your posts and companies. Use newsfeed advertising.”
Scott says: “Remember, audiences are professional on LinkedIN. Keep this mindset in mind. GE uses creativity in their images that still stay professional.”
And Dan says: “Followers on platforms are different people. Always be experimenting. Marketing without data is like driving with your eyes closed.”
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.
