Why Twitter Must Be In Your Marketing Strategy
Some naysayers have falsely said Twitter is dead. But here’s why a Twitter marketing strategy can still win big for your business.
Twitter used to be the up-and-coming social media star. Then it faced some stalled growth. But it’s been recovering recently.
After more than a decade since it came out, Twitter has more than 300 million users on the platform. Though it’s no Youtube, Instagram, or Facebook, there’s still a ton of value here.
So, as I say now in about every Robben Media article, your customers are on this app—ready to buy from you. It’s your job to get their attention.
If you can get their attention, whether you’re a B2B or B2C operation, your sales will trend upward and your future will be brighter.
I’m not just saying that. Here are some business statistics you have to care about:
- 54% of Twitter users took action after seeing a brand mentioned on Twitter
- 76% of consumers are likely to refer a company after positive customer service
- 60% of customers expect brands to get back to them within 1 hour
- 80% of users mentioned a company in their tweet
It’s for these reasons your business should implement a Twitter marketing strategy. You’d be kind of crazy not to!
Twitter Marketing Strategy
Upload a professional Twitter picture and header
(Beginner’s stuff here, if you already have this covered then skip this one.)
Before people check out your profile, the clear first step is to create a strong first impression or you can kiss leads goodbye.
Your profile picture and header are the responsible parties here to get clicks to your business website.
If your company has a logo, that’s the best fit for the profile picture (the circular image that shows up next to your tweets when people scroll through their Twitter). If not, use an image of your founder or a well-lit picture of outside or inside your building.
When someone likes or hates what you’ve tweeted so they click on your profile, they’ll see your header image ranging across the top.
For the header image, it mostly depends on your company and its services.
A restaurant could show the inside of their place, their best dish, or a special promotion offer.
A dry cleaner could show a happy customer receiving their dry cleaned shirts or the line of shirts already cleaned inside the store.
For most of my customers’ accounts and my own, I use Canva (it’s free!) to create professional pictures with proper dimensions. The Twitter header image should be 1500 x 500 pixels.
Write a strategic bio
Same thing as above: You’ll want to get the most out of your bio before you waste the visits to your profile.
You got them to click on your profile and they’ve glanced at your two images, nice. Most likely they’re going to read your bio next.
What are you going to write here? You can’t waste it. It needs to be concise yet clearly communicate what your business does.
GrubHub is a food business that gets the Twitter bio right:
It’s clear what they do, and how you can order food from them. Plus the convenience factor gets bonus points for having a separate Twitter account dedicated to order assistance.
When drafting your bio up, remember this is social media. Meaning simple and straightforward language is better than the language you would use on your annual report.
Once your pictures and bio are at an A+ grade, it’s time to do some real lead generation tweets.
Add images to tweets
You’ve heard this phrase a million times, “A picture’s worth a thousand words.” This is why visual content dramatically outperforms text.
One study found that tweets with images get 313% more engagement than those without them. That translates to more retweets, more likes, and more click throughs—everything you’d want in your tweets.
There are two separate ways to add images on Twitter.
You can upload your own image to the bottom of the tweet. If you do this, make sure you separately add the link in the text box area. (This requires more work but makes it clear where to click.)
Or you can upload a link and Twitter will usually (but not always) automatically find a featured image on the website to show up in the tweet. The user must click on the image to learn more.
Either way you do it, aim to include images with your tweets as often as you can to maximize views and engagement, especially on your tweets where you ask people to click a link and buy.
Publish video tweets
We just discovered that photos are great in all, but guess what? Images have nothing on videos when it comes to retweets.
This infographic highlights the unmatched advantage of videos. The most striking stat I found is that videos are 6 times more likely to be retweeted than photos.
And retweets are the best, aren’t they? It has the immediate benefit of getting your brand in front of other people, for free.
Plus, other immediate friends and peers are more likely to check out your brand if they’re finding you from a friend’s retweet. This is digital word of mouth at its finest.
Don’t let your company sleep on Twitter videos. Well that is, of course, unless you don’t want more business.
Utilize Twitter Search
You’re missing out if you don’t know about and use Twitter Search. But before I explain what that is, get this:
- 6,000 tweets are published every second
- 350,000 tweets per minute are sent
- 500 million tweets per day get published
- 200 billion tweets per year go live
Think about the data, news, and information you can gain from your market just on Twitter alone. Except the problem is your news feed is messy and it’s hard to find your customers.
That’s where Twitter Search saves the day. You can find what topic you’re specifically looking for in a matter of seconds.
For example, a pool maintenance company can search for “pool cleaning” or “pool maintenance” and immediately find customers all across the country who could use their service. Or if they’re a smaller local company, they can narrow their search to a specific city with advanced search.
Reply to these people who mention your product or service (don’t sell to them right away) and see if you can help them. Once you’ve communicated for a little then you can suggest using your business.
Click here to get started with Twitter Search right now.
Join Twitter conversations
I wish marketing were as easy as customers flocking to your business to give you their attention and money. You and I know that’s simply not true.
Even companies like Apple and Amazon, with branding, products, and services that practically sell themselves, continue to advertise to stay on people’s minds and to win more business.
So how can your local or mid-size company market itself on Twitter? Another way is to join Twitter conversations by replying to the parties.
It may sound weird to you at first, maybe rude. But I promise you it’s only obtrusive if you disrupt the conversation by selling something. Don’t do that.
Instead, add value to the conversation like you joined a circle at a cocktail party. Reply with an interesting thought, fact, or question. Or take a side in an argument. (You get bonus points if the conversation relates to your business.)
You can join conversations on your timeline, or use Twitter Search, to make small talk to locals. Be interesting or thoughtful enough, and they’ll check out your profile and maybe visit your website to learn more about you.
Talking to potential customers is also a solid move to build brand equity. It requires more work, but what was ever accomplished without hard work?
Give more, ask for less in your tweets
This one is less about what to do and more about what not to do, follow me? Every tweet can’t be promotional or they will lose their effect.
You want the majority of your tweets to give value like entertainment or information. Use these tweets to build a relationship with your customer where they trust, like, and want more from you.
Then you have the green light to sprinkle in a sales tweet every once in awhile. Your special promotion, summer sale, or big giveaway will go a mile wider if it’s surrounded by tweets that give value before and after it.
It’s not give and you shall receive on social media marketing. It’s give, give, give, give, and then ask for business. By asking less, you’ll get more customers over time.
And if it helps, put on the hat of your customer. Would you want to buy from a company that’s always promoting their new product or service? No way!
People don’t like selfish people. And they certainly don’t like selfish companies.
Cut down the hashtags usage
Hashtags (when users use the symbol # following a word or phrase) are great for Instagram. Put 30 of these bad boys at the bottom of your caption or as a comment and it’s proven more people will like and comment on your pictures.
But with only 140 characters on Twitter to make your point, hashtags will both take up important space and distract your audience from your call to action.
You want their one-track mind to focus on your offer, not to move on to the hashtags at the end of your tweet and keep scrolling.
For this reason I’m convinced you will get more clicks to your link on your call-to-action tweets without any hashtags. Sacrificing the potential extra exposure for higher-quality conversions is totally worth it.
The key is to get out of your audience’s way when asking them to take action.
And if you use hashtags for your general tweets, make one or two the limit. It’s not cool or effective to litter your tweet with 7 hashtags. It’ll look like a mess and so will your brand.
You know that’s not an attractive tweet above.
Ask your followers intentional questions
Intentional questions work when you’re chatting up strangers, trying to start a conversation with the attractive person at the table next to you, or wanting audience engagement.
Since this article isn’t about meeting new people or boosting your love life, how can questions help your marketing? This is how.
Say you’re a healthy food delivery service that tweets out, “What’s the #1 thing that stops you from eating healthy dinners?”
After you get a few responses, you reply to yourself with a solution that can only be discovered through the link to your landing page. This leads people from Twitter to your landing page with your monthly food delivery subscription.
Now that they’ve self-diagnosed their pain point, and you presented a solution, they’re more likely to buy than if you just tweeted out, “Our food delivery service is top of the line excellent!” and linked to an order page.
This little game will get your audience interacting with you and on your website where they might buy something if the offer is attractive enough. Creativity in marketing works.
That’s just one example of utilizing questions to get the ball rolling.
Final Words
The phrase “it is what you make of it” describes Twitter to a tee.
If you don’t give it any attention then of course it’s going to be a dud for your business. But if you make a serious effort to both build a presence and generate leads, it’s an entirely different story.
Twitter marketing goes from zero to hero based on your effort. That’s a good thing if you’re willing to put in the work.
And since I believe more is better when it comes to social media, I recommend you get on your Twitter hustle even if you’re on Instagram and Facebook. There’s business to be won after all!
And be sure to come back to the Robben Media blog for a future post on how to get more engagement from your tweets.
Until then, do your best to generate leads for your business with Twitter!
P.S. Want to follow me? It’s @realbrianrobben on Twitter. Or check out our latest guide on Twitter marketing using a real customer case study!