Twitter is one of the best social media networks to promote your business, so you want to be a Twitter Power User. Its great for customer engagement and for content marketing, being one of the best methods to get people to click through onto your website and read the content. There are a lot of intricacies to Twitter that you may not spot at first. Knowing them and understanding how they can be used to your advantage can give a big boost to your social media marketing efforts.
Twitter has around 320 million active users. This is only about a fifth of Facebook’s active audience. However, users on Twitter are a lot more willing to follow and connect with Brands. Only 16% of users on Facebook or Pinterest follow brands, while on twitter the figure is closer to 46%. This is due to the different nature of Twitter, and how people and brands use the social network. Most brands successfully using twitter do the following things:
- Share interesting, informative, and entertaining content with their followers.
- They run competitions and give away prizes.
- They interact with their followers and with other brands.
- They have a well organised and streamlined customer service system to deal quickly with their followers enquiries.
All of these activities will encourage users to follow and engage with them, and motivate their existing followers to stay. It’s worth noting that 64% of Twitter users are more likely to buy from a company they follow, and 36% of marketers have found new customers on the network.
Advertising on Twitter offers a great return for content marketers. While the average cost is around 6 times more compared to Facebook advertising, it’s much more effective. On Twitter the click through rates for adverts are 8-24 times higher than for Facebook adverts.
Twitter is also popular with mobile users, and was originally conceived as a mobile-first platform. 64% of twitter users accessing the network via their mobile phone. This is great for board commuters, mobile users are 181% more likely to be on twitter during a commute.
To get your content shared there are a few simple tricks that you can use to boost retweets and clicks. Posting a tweet with a link will give it an 86% greater chance of gaining a retweet. Add an image to the tweet and you can double the engagement, 18% more clicks, 89% more likes, and 150% more retweets. Simply asking for a retweet will boost sharing by 23 times, and asting for “RT” will boost it by 12 times. Action words like “download” are similarly effective increasing click through by 13%. Posts about twitter can see a 23% increase in click through.
If you know when to tweet you can increase engagement, in the US the best time to get a retweet is between 10 and 11PM EST. In the UK and elsewhere it’s different. Tweeting at the weekend will also lead to more engagement, as more users are online. During the Monday to Friday there is another peak of activity on Thursdays. See our social media cheat sheet to find the best times to share your content.
Tweets between 130-140 characters get the most retweets, the twitter maximum is 140 characters. Remember to include hashtags as they can double the engagement, depending on your choice of tag.
This infographic was put together by Follows.com