Things move fast in the world of Twitter. It’s a high energy, intensive platform which demands you to be active & highly responsive. It’s public, news focused, open to everyone (professionals, individuals, businesses- people of all ages) & a great platform for reaching out to influencers. It’s good for building relationships for positioning yourself as a thought leader and supports most social media goals.

Twitter is so much more that a platform for distributing information. It’s about opening up conversations, sharing & adding value. Every tweet has a short shelf life (far more than any other platform) so you need to carefully time your tweets when your audience is online.

Here is a Basic Twitter Guide with some of my top tips for success on Twitter:

Get the basics right first

• Ensure you have an engaging bio which tells users exactly who you are and what you stand for. Your elevator speech in 160 characters - use them all., include a couple of relevant hashtags, possibly a link, or @mention an associated brand.

• Your Twitter handle needs to be consistent with your other platforms or as near as, and it needs to be memorable.

• Your profile images and header image are graphical representations of your brand. You also have the opportunity to include key messages in the header image, possibly overlaying text on a powerful image

Content

• Curate content- source content from other sources that are aligned to your messages & the interests of your audience adding your thoughts to focus the debate

• Create content- develop your own content for example highlight your latest blog posts, marketing videos, share your opinion & knowledge on relevant hot topics & showcase customer testimonials

• Retweet with your own comment

• Ask questions or run polls

• Competitions work well on Twitter to increase reach & drive post engagement.

When & How often

• Minimum of 3 tweets per day, 6 is better & 10 if running a dedicated campaign.

• Tweet when your target audience is online

Crafting the perfect Tweet

• A short (280 characters max) message of value / interest to your target audience.

• Include 2-3 relevant hashtags- Twitter users can search content via hashtag & this will enable your content to be found by those interested in the topic.

• @mention (tag someone’s Twitter name) the source of the content, someone relevant to the information or someone who you specifically created the Tweet for. This will ensure they see your tweet and through their interaction or engagement it will extend the reach of your post to their followers

• Include an eye-catching image or video- this will enable your post to pop out from the crowd, Pixabay, Pexels & Unsplash are great websites with free to use images to download to support your posts

• Include a link to detailed info you need to refer to. e.g. a blog or news article. Shrink the link to save room using bitly.com. Some scheduling tools automatically shrink links

• If relevant jump on trending topics e.g #Christmas #TheBudget or popular daily hashtags such as #MondayMotivation #FridayFeeling

Join Tweet Chats

• A brilliant way to get involved with conversations & others with shared interests

• Join Weekly Twitter hours and Tweet chats.

• Create your own Tweet chats, possibly a Q&A.

Lists

• Create (public or private) lists to better track particular content. e.g. content from influencers. As Twitter is such a busy platform lists can be a fantastic way to gather curated content in support of Social Media across all your platforms.

• TIP: Users will see the name of the list they are added to so make sure you name them appropriately and positively

Influencers

• Look for people who are passionate about your cause/ industry, who have a relevant and engaged following.

• Comment or like their content. Approach directly / direct message only once you have built a relationship over time.

• Don’t follow straight away. Engage with content first- like, then comment & then follow after a while which shows you find their content valuable. You could add them to a private Twitter list to easily track their content to help with this.

Analytics

• Check in regularly with your analytics.twitter.com which shows you tonnes of useful info on what is and isn't working. Keep testing and refining.

If you would like to find out more or discuss your Twitter strategy we would love to talk.

Contact us!