With over 330 million monthly active users, Twitter gives you plenty of opportunities to generate leads and sales for your business. If you’re not leveraging Twitter in your marketing campaigns, then you’re leaving money on the table.
With that said, many businesses are spending a lot of time and money on Twitter with little to no revenue to show for it. In a way, I can’t really blame them. Finding people to target, engaging them, and turning them into loyal customers can be a long, tedious process. Where do you even start?
However, you’d be smart not to give up on Twitter. If the numbers are any indication, the micro-blogging platform will be a force to be reckoned with in the years to come. All you have to do is take the time to learn how to play within its rules.
Want to unlock Twitter’s massive potential as a marketing channel and generate the number of leads and sales you’ve been hoping for this year and in 2024? Keep reading!
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But first, why use Twitter for your business?
You’re probably asking: Why not use Facebook instead?
And to that I say:
Look, I love Facebook as much as the next guy. When it comes to reach and targeting capabilities, Facebook is the best.
But in terms of discoverability, the potential for virality, and real engagement? Twitter is where the action is.
Why is that? Twitter conversations happen in real-time, for starters.
No other social media platform produces real-time conversations as quickly and as efficiently as Twitter.
Entering Twitter is like stepping into a busy bar where you can engage with people from diverse backgrounds. Since the majority of Twitter accounts are public, everything is fair game. It is this “free-for-all” atmosphere that makes Twitter a goldmine for quality engagements.
Twitter is also #1 when it comes to discoverability. It makes sense considering that 79% of people on Twitter like to discover what’s new, and 53% of them are more likely to be the first to buy new products?
Twitter is essentially a broadcast medium. Tweets (or retweets) have a sense of immediacy and authenticity, perhaps a “come at me, bro!” approach that you can’t find in other social media platforms. The platform is built for virality because it’s a potential breeding ground for engagements that scale.
BrightEdge CEO and founder Jim Yu says as much:
“The micro-blogging site [Twitter] is excellent for real-time engagement with consumers. On Twitter, marketers can share the latest news in a quick snapshot message, allowing information to be shared instantly while offering fodder for thought-provoking conversations. When it comes to mobile, Twitter’s simple interface is ideal for engagement on the go that can reach hundreds of thousands of followers immediately.”
What are the best marketing strategies for Twitter?
No two ways about it, engagement is key to driving sales and revenue for your brand. But you need a focused approach if you want your engagement efforts to translate to positive business outcomes. It would be best if you had a marketing strategy to pull that off.
Here are tactics to help you implement a Twitter marketing strategy that delivers real results.
Set goals
A good question to ask before you start with your Twitter marketing campaign is this: What do you want to achieve on the social media platform?
In other words, you need to set up your goals. Why? Once you have your goals figured out, you can easily determine which audience/s to target, the type of content you need to tweet and share, and how you want to engage with your followers.
But for your goals to have a real impact on your brand, you need to get SMART. Which is to say your goals need to be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound. If you need help creating SMART goals, check out NapoleonCat’s blog post on the subject.
Here are goals you can set in your Twitter marketing campaign:
- Drive traffic to your blog or website
- Gain new followers (not my favorite goal, and here’s why)
- Increase engagement (now THAT’s a goal; more on this later)
- Acquire app installs
- Drive website clicks and conversions
- Promote brand awareness (Whatever that means)
- Etc.
Define your audience
If you want to drive eventual sales to your business, you have to post tweets your ideal customers will care about.
So, identify your audience. Get to know them—and I mean really know them. What are they looking for? What are they struggling with? Where do they hang out? What motivates them to get up in the morning? And so on.
Know them well enough and you’ll find it gets easier to craft tweets that will resonate with them (not to mention like, retweet, comment on, and all that good stuff) and make them check out your website and buy what you have to offer.
But mind you, creating relevant tweets isn’t as easy as it sounds. Buyer personas can serve as a great reminder as to what makes your ideal customers tick. Moreover, they humanize your audience, making it easier for you to communicate with your audience in ways that address their wants and needs.
Here’s an example of a buyer persona. Over to you, Clark.
Doing extensive market research can help you create strong buyer personas. You can always gather relevant information from your best customers through surveys, interviews, focus groups, and analytics research.
Create a kickass Twitter profile
Relevant tweets won’t amount to much if people visit your profile and discover you’re an egg (the default Twitter photo used to be an egg, but my point still stands). It also doesn’t help if your bio suggests you also have the personality of one.
So don’t be an egg. If you want to be taken seriously on Twitter, your Twitter profile needs to exude some personality. It’s even better if that personality reflects your brand.
How to make a great Twitter profile? A Twitter profile has six elements:
- a Twitter handle,
- a username,
- a profile photo,
- a header image,
- a bio,
- and a pinned tweet.
Appearances matter in marketing, so when choosing an image for your profile picture and banner, choose ones that stand out and represent your brand. And be sure that your use of visual elements (logo, images, fonts, colors, etc.) is consistent with your brand identity. You can take the help of a professional logo designer for this task.
The same goes for your user name. You have 15 characters to work, but it’s always best to keep it short. If you’re representing yourself as a brand, make sure to choose one that’s easy to remember and that sounds like it’s coming from a human. Also, avoid including numbers and unrecognizable acronyms, lest people think you’re a bot.
Is your chosen handle already taken? Adding a prefix will fix that. For example, you can use “HQNapoleonCat or “TryNapoleonCat.” You can also add “com” at the end just like what @NapoleonCom did. 🙂
Contrary to popular belief, people still read bios. So make your Twitter bio interesting! Bios are limited to 160 characters, so make sure that yours tells a whole lot about you and what you do for your customers. Make it creative and original. Infuse some personality. Adding an emoji doesn’t hurt, and don’t forget to link to other accounts you may have.
Speaking of Twitter bios, Klondike delivers the goods.
Engage, engage, engage
So, you’ve set out specific goals, defined your target audience, and created a kickass Twitter profile? Awesome.
Time to get to the fun part: engaging your audience.
Now when I say ‘engagement,’ I mean engagement that comes in the form of two-way conversations. The goal here is to spark real conversations with your audience.
As many studies will tell you, successful social media campaigns are founded on two-way conversations.
So, what do you have to do to increase your engagement on Twitter?
Let me count the ways.
Deliver value
Let’s face it. Customers aren’t going to entertain the notion of doing business with your brand if you’re not delivering content that will improve their lives in some way.
“If you don’t have pieces of content that are actually delivering real benefit, then you’re not doing content marketing. You’re just advertising,” says Breakthrough host Paul Barron. “People see through those advertising ploys. Get as much out there as you can before you start asking what it is that you want from your audience. Do the good deed first.”
Be consistent
It’s one thing to deliver value, but it’s quite another thing to do it consistently. The thing is, a single tweet, no matter how clever or helpful, might not be enough to convince anyone to check out your brand and do business with you. In this current age of distractions, you need to deliver value repeatedly to eventually convince your potential customers to part with their money in exchange for your products and services.
So tweet consistently, and be sure to choose the times where your followers are most likely to see and engage with your tweets. But a word of warning: while consistency is key, you don’t want to overwhelm your followers by publishing 15 tweets in one day. Brands often disagree on how often a business should post on Twitter, but if you ask me, 3 to 5 days is optimal. Just make sure to spread them out throughout the day. If you’re having a difficult time scheduling your tweets, a content calendar will help (more on this later!).
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Make them feel something
The biggest sin in any marketing campaign is to be boring. Want to catch and hold the attention of your audience and make them remember you? Tap into their emotions. As many studies will tell you, an audience that feels something is an audience that buys.
So make them feel something with your tweets, whether it’s motivation, inspiration, or even just a good laugh—anything as long as it ties to the core values of your business.
Tapping into people’s emotions doesn’t mean your tweets have to be heavy and intense (if that isn’t your brand’s style). Why not try humor? I love Wendy’s Twitter account because it cracks me up (probably why I can’t help stuffing my face with the infamous Baconator every chance I get).
Talk to your audience
The reason people use Twitter is to be social. So go out there and have conversations with your followers (and non-followers)! Like their replies to your tweet, answer their questions, retweet their content if it’s relevant, jump into trending conversations, and more.
By doing all of the above, you’re letting people know that you’re not only out there to put money in your pocket but also to help out of the pure kindness of your heart.
Besides, having conversations with your audience is a good way to make your brand top of mind. Not to mention that your tweets become more visible to potential customers when your audience responds in kind. According to Twitter, their algorithm picks Top Tweets “based on accounts you interact with most, tweets you engage with, and much more.”
That “much more” part could mean anything. But my guess is your tweets are more likely to show up on people’s feeds if you engage in real and authentic conversations with like-minded people.
Pro-tip #1:
Put “follow me on Twitter” buttons on any piece of content you may have (blog posts, email, videos, etc.) to gain more followers and engagement opportunities. You can also put “Click to Tweet” buttons on any marketing collateral, so it will be easy for your followers and readers to spread the word about your brand.
Pro-tip #2:
Using hashtags is a great way to earn more views and engagement from your content. If you want to spark a conversation about a topic that you want to become a recurring theme in your brand narrative, a hashtag that everyone can keep going back to can generate excitement and make you memorable to users invested in the topic. But don’t overdo it. Too many hashtags can make you look spammy and can turn off many of your fans and followers. 1-2 hashtags should hit the sweet spot for each tweet.
Use Twitter ads
As a social media ad platform, Twitter is not as effective as Facebook —no one is—but Twitter has unique ad targeting features that can offer quick ways to generate revenue for your business.
While organic tweets is a great way to leverage Twitter for your business, running paid ads might be worth the investment if you want to give your Twitter presence a much-needed boost.
There are many types of Twitter ads to choose from:
Promoted tweets
Promoted tweets are similar to regular tweets in that they can be favorited, commented on, and retweeted by anyone. The difference is that you pay (as an advertiser) to make the tweet appear on the timelines of targeted users who aren’t already following you on Twitter.
Promoted tweets are great for driving more views and engagement to some of your best content. Do you have promotions, contests, giveaways, and polls you want people to know about? A promoted tweet can help spread the word. Also, In any situation where you want people to leave Twitter and get on your site to take a specific action, a promoted tweet is a good way to get the job done.
US retail Target ran a robust Promoted Tweet campaign to successfully re-engage lapsed customers, boosting brand love by 11% and brand loyalty by 58% (according to a Nielsen survey).
Promoted videos
Do you have a great video you want to draw attention to? Share it on Twitter and then make it appear on targeted users’ timelines with a Promoted video campaign!
Considering that tweets with video get 10 times more engagement than tweets with only text components, promoted videos are a cost-efficient way to achieve your engagement goals. In fact, promoted videos save more than 50% on cost-per-engagement.
@DairyQueen should know. After all, they used Promoted Videos to turn dessert into donations for charity. By publishing Promoted Videos (along with images, GIFs, and more) on annual event #MiracleTreatDay, the world-renowned franchise generated 72k Twitter mentions and 4.9M impressions.
Website cards
Website cards are tweets that include an eye-catching image accompanied by a call-to-action. These Twitter ads are best used for enticing your target users to visit your business’s web pages (or a landing page of your choice). Website cards can work wonders during seasonal campaigns where people are on the hunt for promotions.
Patreon used Website Cards (along with Promoted Tweets) to increase awareness and bring new creators to their website. The Website cards came in the form of a 15-second video, helping Patreon generate reach and site traffic at very cost-efficient rates ($3!). The campaign helped the crowdfunding platform generate over 24M video views in 2020!
App cards
App cards are media-rich tweets that help you promote and showcase your mobile app in interesting ways. How interesting? For starters, they also allow you to add metadata to your app page, making it easy for users to install your app when your app page is shared.
By using app cards, mobile ticketing app TodayTix was able to acquire high-value users and even re-engaged past users to buy last-minute show tickets.
“Looking at revenue per install, Twitter comes in 14% to 15% higher than Facebook and the other mobile networks we’re using,” says Sarah Bidnick, VP of marketing at TodayTix.
Promoted trends
People are naturally drawn to trends, and what better way to join in trending conversations than using Twitter’s trending feature? An impactful message in response to trends can do wonders for your awareness and engagement campaigns. You can maximize your message’s impact by owning a trend in 24 hours. Now that’s how you own a conversation!
SiriusXM Canada leveraged Promoted Trends through their #Quarantunes campaign back in April, resulting in their highest single-day campaign with 8.9 trend impressions. That same campaign also yielded 24.2k engagements, cementing SiriusXM’s position as a premier audio entertainment company in Canada.
Putting it all together
As you put your Twitter marketing strategy in motion, you are likely to face many challenges along the way. Twitter can feel very crowded, and you need every help you can get to keep up with the chaos and stay focused on your goals.
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Here are a few tactics that will help.
Create a social media team
Twitter can sometimes feel like a hot mess, and it can be too easy to drop the ball if you don’t have a team to back you up. By creating a social media team that covers all the bases (content creation, moderation, paid advertising, etc.), you can stay on course and complete your objectives more efficiently.
However, you can’t deploy your social media team into battle (so to speak) empty-handed. You need tools that bring your team (or teams) together and allow them to create and publish content that’s relevant, timely, and impactful.
Keep an eye on your competition
Grabbing your audience’s attention is difficult enough without your competitors trying to take it from you (and you can bet your bottom dollar that’s exactly what they’re doing). If you want to stay ahead of the game, you better keep an eye on your competition and determine how you can stay ahead of the game.
Creating a Twitter list of your competitors is a good start. This makes it easy for you to keep track of their tweets and see any patterns that would provide you with insights on how you can differentiate your brand from them.
If you want to get more granular, you can use our analytics tools to watch your competitors’ performance and see where you stand against them: How to Track Competitors on Twitter
Data Dashboards from NapoleonCat lets you generate reports by hand or automatically. Check out an example:
Create a content calendar
A well-defined content strategy on Twitter won’t translate to sales and revenue if you’re not meeting your content objectives on time. To keep your team focused on your content goals and make sure they’re hitting their content objectives and staying ahead of schedule, using a social media content calendar can help.
You can use NapoleonCat’s Publisher as a content calendar. You’ll find a monthly view of all your scheduled posts there.
Publisher lets you and your team schedule tweets with little effort and organize your content schedule via internal labels, titles, and more. Also, NapoleonCat itself lets you manage your whole social media team.
Final Word
It’s time to give Twitter a long hard look and find opportunities that will give your business the edge it needs. As long as you set the right goals and put your audience front and center in your Twitter marketing campaigns, success is just around the corner.
