Growing Business And Traffic, twitter is an undeniably powerful platform to increase your business’s online reach. The average Twitter user follows five businesses, and 80% of all Twitter users have mentioned a brand in a Tweet.
If you have your Inbound Marketing hat on, you should know that Twitter is not just a place to grow customers through word-of-mouth marketing — it’s also a place to meet your customers where they are.
However, succeed as a business on Twitter in 2019, it’s critical you’re able to stand out. But that can mean many different things for the millions of businesses across every industry on Twitter ,Growing Business And Traffic.
So what steps can you take to add to your audience’s experience online, instead of simply being a disruption? How can you promote your product or service in a way that encourages people to purchase? How can you make your brand more human on a platform made for connection?
To help you create a successful strategy and leverage Twitter’s power for your business, we’ve created this helpful guide. Keep reading to learn how you can use Twitter for your business in 2019.
First, you need to build your Twitter marketing strategy. Your strategy is your foundation for success and is worth all the time you spend researching and creating it.
A Twitter marketing strategy is just like any other social media strategy — it is centered around the content you create, publish, and distribute to engage your followers. The content you publish should attract new followers, encourage new leads, boost conversions, and grow brand recognition.
Your business likely already has high-level business objectives, and Twitter is a channel that can help you reach those goals. If your business is looking to generate leads and sales long-term, you’ll need brand awareness on your side to get your flywheel moving.
The following four tactics will help you develop a strong Twitter marketing strategy to build your presence upon.
Implement Twitter Cards
Growing Business And Traffic ,Use On Twitter For Growing Business And Traffic ,growing our usiness g Twitter ,You want every tweet you send to stand out and Twitter cards are a great way to do this.
You can set up your website to make sure that when people share your posts, the image shows up in the tweets they send. Like this:
There are 7 other types of Twitter cards besides the large image card used above.
You can learn how to set them up here.
Once you set up Twitter cards on your website, go to http://smo.knowem.com/, enter your web address and click on the Twitter tab. (this will tell you if your Twitter cards are set up correctly)
Build Your Twitter Followers
Growing Business And Traffic ,If your Twitter followers are engaged and well targeted, increasing their number can benefit your business.
Social Quant is a tool that quickly increases your relevant Twitter followers by using data and analytics to find suitable users and conversations ,Growing Business And Traffic.
You can select keywords to target. As your follower numbers increase, you’ll also get more engagement and clicks through to your website ,Growing Business And Traffic.
You can learn more about how to build your Twitter followers at How to Be Successful on Twitter (7-Day Plan I Wish I Had).
Identify Influencers and Engage with Them
Growing Business And Traffic ,when you engage with influencers — you’re creating the opportunity to gain more followers, more engagement and more traffic to your website.
If somebody is an influencer in your field, they already have the audience you want!
So building great relationships can pay dividends.
Using SocialBro, you can make the process of finding these influencers easy.
You sign up for the service (there are free and paid options) and connect your Twitter account.
Next, click on Target and then Discover New Twitter Users.
Input a keyword related to your industry and hit search.
You will see an interface like this (this example uses the keywords ‘content marketing’):
Twitter users are arranged in order of their follower numbers. You can use the controls on the left of the screen to narrow your search down.
You might only want to see influential users, or those with a certain number of followers.
You can then identify influencers and follow them directly from the SocialBro interface by hovering your mouse over their profile info.
You can also add them to your Twitter lists (more on this next!) or send them a tweet or a direct message directly from SocialBro.
This will save you a lot of time since you don’t have to switch from the SocialBro interface to Twitter to search for each new person you find.
It makes easy work of identifying the important people on Twitter you might have missed.
Learn more about how to use SocialBro in your Twitter strategy at How to Create the Perfect Twitter Marketing Strategy.
Use Twitter Lists to Manage Your Contacts
Growing Business And Traffic ,As you follow higher numbers of people, your timeline might feel overwhelming.
If there are people you really want to keep track of, and whose tweets you don’t want to miss, add them to a Twitter list and follow that alongside (or instead of) your main timeline ,Growing Business And Traffic.
Tools like Hootsuite and TweetDeck allow you to set up columns to follow tweets from your lists easily.
You can make these lists public (so the people on the list know they are on it) or private (so they don’t know). Or you can subscribe to public lists that other users have created ,Growing Business And Traffic.
Here are a few easy tips to find lists created by other people:
- When looking at an influencer’s Twitter profile, click through to see if they’ve built any public lists
- Look more closely at the Twitter lists you’ve been added to over the years
- Go to Google and search by typing in this thread – site:twitter.com inurl:lists <insert search term>
Use Twitter Ads to Target Your Email List
Your email list is made up of people who have chosen to hear more from you, so they are great people to target with your ads ,
They have already shown you that they’re interested!
When setting up your ad, use Tailored Audiences and upload your email list.
Twitter will match those email addresses with registered users and target them when you have something to promote.
This is another great way to use Twitter to grow your business.
Use the Right Hashtags
Growing Business And Traffic ,Did you know that tweets containing 1 or 2 hashtags have 21% higher engagement than those with 3 or more?
It can be tempting to squeeze every hashtag you can think of into a tweet to attract attention — but it seems that’s a really bad idea!
This means you have to be careful and narrow down your hashtag choice to 1 or 2 per tweet (if you were using more than this).
If you don’t use any hashtags, maybe this is the time to start. They are great for visibility and getting your tweets in front of more people.
But how do you choose which hashtags are best?
Ritetag is a tool that will help you to identify the right hashtags to use.
Enter a keyword related to your industry and Ritetag will provide you with a long list of relevant hashtags.
Not just that, they include metrics on:
- How many times a hashtag has been used
- How many retweets those tweets got
- How many of the tweets contained links
- How many contained images
- How many views they received in total
This is valuable info for any marketer.
Here’s what happened when we used the keyword ‘marketing’:
With this information, you’ll be able to choose the most relevant hashtags.
Plus, these are the hashtags that have already been proven to encourage engagement and interactions.
This is another effective way to use Twitter to grow your business.
Research Your Competitors’ Audiences
Do you want to find out who your competitors are engaging with on Twitter? Do you want to connect with new people? Those who others in your field are already interacting with?
Using Twitonomy, you can enter any Twitter username and receive a detailed analysis of their profile ,Growing Business And Traffic.
This is what it shows for my profile. You can see there are details on how frequently I post — and some of the people I follow and who follow me back.
If you scroll down further on this page, you can find the really valuable information about my Twitter connections:
Are there people in your industry who others are already connected to? People who you’ve not spotted yet?
Twitonomy could be a great way to find them. Enter your competitors’ usernames and see if any names pop up again and again.
Check there are no hashtags you’re missing out on, either!
Monitor Twitter for Keyword Mentions
Tools like Hootsuite and TweetDeck let users set up search columns so any mention of a particular word or phrase is immediately highlighted.
For example, let’s say you run a restaurant and want to identify people looking for somewhere great to eat in your area.
You may want to search for words like “food recommendations” or “where to eat” and a mention of your town or city.
Next, you can follow up and respond to those tweets (in a non-spammy way, of course!). Start to build relationships and make new contacts.
Whatever your business, think about the kinds of keywords people search for when they’re looking for help. Search for those and respond!
Setup UTM Tracking
UTM tracking might sound — and look — a bit complicated.
But once it’s set up, it offers you a brilliant way to track and analyze any links you share.
UTM tracking is adding on additional info to links you share so you can track where people clicked on them and what happened after they clicked.
To get started with UTM tracking, you need to create unique URLs for each link you post on social media.
For example — let’s say you have a Twitter ad in place, but you’re also sending out organic tweets.
Google Analytics may not be able to work out which clicks to your site came from the Twitter ad and which came from your other tweets.
This makes it impossible to track conversions, bounce rates and sales.
UTM tracking solves this problem by creating individual URLs for every link so you can add info about whether a link is from paid or organic traffic.
To set up these URLs — use the Google URL Builder. Start tracking your links in Google Analytics to really understand where your traffic comes from, and how your different site visitors behave.
Use Your Pinned Tweet
Twitter allows you to pin one tweet at the top of your timeline. When anybody looks at their profile, they see that tweet first.
This means they won’t see your random tweet about what you had for lunch!
Instead, they’ll see the tweet you have chosen to be the most important.
Pinned tweets are a great way to draw attention to your current promotion or most recent content.
You set up a pinned tweet by clicking on the three dots under an update and choosing ‘Pin to your profile page.’
Use Great Headlines
Use On Twitter For Growing Business And Traffic we use o any tweets when we check our Twitter timelines… how do we choose which ones to click on?
Often, it’s the ones with the most compelling headlines that get us to take action.
So, think about clever headlines for your tweets as well as your blog posts…
The Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer will give you a score for each headline. This can help you find the best combination of words to make an impact.
We entered this headline and clicked ‘Submit for Analysis.’ These are the results we got:
53% is actually a pretty good score, but we could always edit the headline even more and try to get it higher.
Use Twitter Analytics to Analyze and Optimize
Twitter Analytics (and other analytics tools) let you see how many views and how much engagement your tweets get.
When you look at your analytics in detail, you can learn what your audience responds to the best (image posts? Videos? Links? Hashtags?) Tweet more of that Use On Twitter For Growing Business And Traffic.
You need to constantly work on building your engagement levels. Studying your analytics will help you do this.
The Power of PRISM
Building an online business is tough. It takes a lot of hard work. Some businesses struggle to even make a profit.
We created a framework called PRISM, which is designed to help businesses build sales online, step by step.
As you can see, each letter in the word PRISM is a step towards profitability.
This is how it works…
P is for People.
This is all about building an audience and raising your profile so people know your business exists.
You might go about this by focusing on sharing quality content so your social media followers grow gradually. Or you might want to use Facebook or Twitter ads to reach more people in a shorter time.
R is for Relationships.
Follower numbers alone don’t mean much. Your audience must be engaged and proactive if you’re ultimately going to be able to sell to them. Build relationships with your followers.
I is for Inbound Traffic.
Followers and fans on social media are great — but you need those people to also visit your website if you are going to make any sales.
S is for Subscribers and Social Retargeting.
Now that people are visiting your website, you don’t want to lose them.
70% of site visitors will never revisit your site, so you want to capture them while you have their attention!
Set up a compelling email subscription freebie and persuade visitors to subscribe to your email list when they have enjoyed your content.
Use Facebook pixels and other tracking apps to set up retargeting ads so you can try to recapture people who have visited your site without subscribing.
M is for Monetization.
This is where you need to set up sales funnels to guide your email subscribers to become paying customers.
Research your competition.
Twitter is a tool you can use to search for competitors and see what types of marketing content and tactics they’re using. Gathering information on what your competitors are doing will help inform your own strategy. Is there anything they’re doing that you should be? What does their customer service look like on the platform? By asking questions about your competitors, you can launch your own highly-developed strategy.
Audit your account.
The importance of auditing is not lost when dealing with strategy. In order for Twitter to be a great marketing tool, you have to be organized. Need to audit your account quickly? Here’s how to do it in under 20 minutes.
Research best practices.
Like auditing, this is a step that needs to be done continuously. Keeping up on best practices as Twitter is updated and goes through changes is key to keeping your impressions and engagements high.
Identify your audience.
Your business personas should be considered in every aspect of marketing, including social media. When crafting your strategy, and even when creating individual pieces of content, you should have a description of your personas in mind. Who are you trying to reach? What are they interested in? Will this get their attention?
Build a profile that stands out.
First and foremost, you need to set yourself up for success by customizing your profile. The last thing you want is someone turning away from your Twitter account — and potentially turning away from your business — because you have a Twitter egg as your profile image ,Growing Business And Traffic.
Be sure to upload compelling images for both your banner and profile picture. While lots of brands have their logo as their profile image, the Banner is where you can get a little creative with your colors and imagery.
If you’re just starting out with Twitter or have a new business, you want to make your Twitter handle is extremely relevant to your company. Using your brand name as your Twitter handle may seem obvious, but there are a lot of Twitter accounts. What happens when your name is taken?
If your brand name is already being used as someone else’s handle, you can add a CTA at the beginning of your company name. For instance, let’s say your company’s name is “HubSpot”, but that handle is taken. Perhaps “@GetHubSpot”, or “@ChooseHubSpot” would be other good options. You could also take inspiration from Slack’s Twitter account, and add “HQ” to the end of your handle.
Another thing that may seem like a small detail is to update your pinned tweet regularly. Your Pinned tweet could be about a sale event coming up, or a new marketing campaign you just launched. Either way, it’s the first thing your audience will engage with because it stays at the top of your feed.
It’s also important you refine your description, website link, and location. All of these things belong on your Twitter profile so your followers know more about your business, and they should be updated and checked regularly.
Add value with your content.
Adding value to your Twitter content is very similar to adding value to other marketing content. You should always keep your buyer personas in mind, because the key to creating successful inbound content is to make your readers feel like you’re speaking directly to them.
Growing Business And Traffic ,when thinking about adding value on social, try asking yourself if your tweets advance an idea, entertain, or educate the audience. Without any of those three things, your content is likely to fall flat. Additionally, remind yourself that the purpose of Twitter is to connect and spark conversations.
For Twitter specifically, you should try to get the most out of your 280 character limit.
Growing Business And Traffic ,multimedia tweets help differentiate your business from others, and tweets with images get 150% more retweets, so start mixing up your content with images and videos. However, it’s vital you ensure you’re mixing it up, too. Nobody wants to see the same “text, CTA, link” tweet with an image preview on their feed 24/7. Try mixing in emojis and GIPHs with your pictures and videos.
There are also ways to add value to your Twitter account that are specific to Twitter. Many brands have their own monthly Twitter chats. Twitter chats are a great way to interact with your audience and ask them questions about your brand or industry. You can start your own Twitter chat by establishing a date, time, and original hashtag for everyone to use.
Optimize your content.
Now that you’ve added value to your content, you want to make sure people see it. You can optimize your content on Twitter using a few different strategies.
Hashtags are an easy and common way to spread your content, but you want to be careful about how many you use. Too many hashtags and your business may come across as spammy — or like you’re trying to steal attention. To put it simply: don’t overuse hashtags. Stick with one or two relevant hashtags per tweet.
You should also be doing hashtag research if you want to get more eyes on your content. See which hashtags your audience is already using when talking about your brand, and then adopt them yourself.
Lastly, you’ll want to consider how often you tweet. 92% of companies Tweet more than once a day, 42% Tweet one-to-five times a day, and 19% Tweet six-to-10 times a day. However, it’s important to note — your audience likely isn’t on Twitter just to listen to your brand, so try to avoid clogging their feeds with unnecessary content.
Experimenting with the time you send Tweets out is also great for reaching more people. A lot of businesses Tweet in the morning, at lunch break, and early evening, because that’s when their target audience is most likely to be online.
Engage with your audience.
Growing Business And Traffic ,It’s critical you regularly engage with your audience on Twitter by tagging them in posts, responding to their comments, or even hosting fun giveaways to get your audience involved.
To learn more about how to build a community or how to implement community management tactics across the board, read The Ultimate Guide to Community Management.
Monitor your brand.
Social listening can allow you to create the type of content your followers actually want, come up with new ideas based on industry trends, improve your customer experience by interacting directly with customers, and shift your strategy to fit your audience’s needs.
Measure results.
Growing Business And Traffic ,when you have objectives and goals in place, you can easily measure the results of your performance on any social media site. Having goals also helps determine when your strategy isn’t working, and can help you get to the right place.
To measure your results on Twitter, you can head to Twitter analytics, located in the drop-down menu when you click on your profile at the top right corner of your Twitter dashboard. If you’re unsure what analytics can help you accomplish, check out this guide to Twitter analytics.
A general tip for measuring your performance on Twitter is to focus less on vanity metrics. Vanity metrics, like impressions or follower count, are often high numbers that look good on paper but don’t help you meet your business goals.
It’s more important you know how many people clicked on the link you Tweeted, or how many people are interacting and engaging with you out of your total audience number, so you have a firmer understanding for which content is most popular with your audience, and what translates to the highest amount of leads ,Growing Business And Traffic.
Use a Twitter tool.
When using Twitter for business, logging into the platform every time you post can get annoying, and is frankly a waste of time. There are plenty of tools that allow you to schedule your posts ahead of time, so you don’t have to click “Tweet” 30 times per week.
HubSpot’s Social Media tool allows you to publish to social networks in the same place you build campaigns, and schedule content for later. Alternatively, you might consider Sprout Social or Buffer.
Venture into paid.
There are two ways to venture into paid media on Twitter:
- Promoted tweetsr ads
Growing Business And Traffic ,promoted tweets will appear in a user’s feed or search results. Your business pays for the tweet to display to a user who is not already following your account. A promoted tweet looks exactly like a regular tweet and functions in the same way — meaning it can be retweeted, liked, and quoted. Twitter will put your promoted tweets in a daily campaign targeting the type of audience you want to reach, as previously indicated in your settings.
Twitter ads are a good option if you’re looking to promote many types of tweets to achieve one goal or advance a campaign ,Growing Business And Traffic.
Here’s what you need to know about Twitter ads and campaigns
Maybe your business has been on Twitter for a while and you’re feeling frustrated or uninspired. After all, it takes time to build a loyal and interactive Twitter audience, and it’s hard to see content go out with little or no response. But giving up on the platform eliminates a huge source of brand awareness for your business, and makes it harder for customers to find you.
Here are a few reasons you’ll want to stay on Twitter, even if you’re currently feeling unimpressed.
Your competition is on there.
Odds are, your competition is working toward similar, if not the same, goals on Twitter. So even if you feel like you’re shouting into the void sometimes, it’s important to have quality content for potential customers to find ,Growing Business And Traffic.
You can also get information on your competitors’ social strategy by monitoring their Twitter presence. A great way to revamp your own Twitter strategy is to take a look at what’s working — and what isn’t — for your competitors.
It’s a great source for free marketing.
Growing Business And Traffic ,who can say no to free marketing? Twitter is a great place to interact with your customers and start a cycle of word-of-mouth. If your customers are tweeting about you, it goes a long way to respond — especially if they’re having a negative experience.
You can use Twitter to increase sales.
If you’re the type to say no to free marketing, maybe the offer of increased sales will keep you around. Twitter isn’t just a platform that allows you to get your brand out into the world — it’s also a place where customers come to you. 60% of a brand’s followers are more likely to purchase or recommend products after following the brand on Twitter ,Growing Business And Traffic.