SEO

We Studied 100 SaaS Twitter Profiles to Uncover Top Trends: Here’s What We Found

Published

1 year ago

April 19, 2023

Max

We Studied 100 SaaS Twitter Profiles to Uncover Top Trends: Here's What We Found

Every company on Twitter has the same features at its disposal to create a standout profile.

Here are those features:

But how many SaaS companies make use of them all? And are they using them well?

To find out, we studied the Twitter profiles of 100 SaaS companies.

Let’s start at the top.

Sidenote.

Thanks to my colleague, Rebecca Liew, for doing most of the research for this post. She’s the one who shares all the useful SEO tips, threads, and product updates on our Twitter account, so make sure to follow us if you’re not doing so already.

37% of SaaS companies feature their mission statement or tagline in their banner, making it the most popular option.

How SaaS companies use their Twitter banner

Here’s a super clean example from Zapier:

Mission statement Twitter banner from Zapier

The next most popular option (25%) is a branded illustration, like this one from Asana:

Product illustrations are also a relatively popular choice, with 14% of SaaS companies opting for them.

Here’s an example from InVision:

Product illustration banner from InVision

This demonstrates how its collaboration features work without falling into the trap of showing cluttered screenshots of the literal UI.

Unfortunately, while these kinds of banners work well on desktop, they’re rarely great on mobile.

For example, much of InVision’s banner is obfuscated by the notch and UI elements on my iPhone:

Banner elements often get obfuscated on mobile—be careful!

Even without the obfuscation, the product text is super tiny and hard to read. This issue is magnified for SaaS companies that use their literal product UI.

Case in point, Linear:

Don't use tiny text in your Twitter banners—they look bad on mobile

These are things we’re always conscious of when designing banners for our profile, as you can tell from the mockup below:

Design mockup for one of our banners, where we took the mobile UI (and notch) into account

As for the remaining 24% of SaaS companies, we saw everything from, um, nothing…

… to generic stock photography (seriously, Airtable, what is this all about?)

… to folks with Swiss roll hair rollers (is this how you capture the millennial market? *takes notes*):

Bland, boring, and zany examples aside, one interesting trend I noticed is that many companies don’t just set a banner and forget it. They swap it to coincide with new feature releases, events, new industry awards, new content, open job positions, etc.

Here are a couple of examples:

Conference announcement banner from Webflow

Given the number of profile views SaaS companies like Drift and Webflow likely get, this makes a lot of sense.

In fact, this is something we do too.

Here’s our banner promoting our list of Ahrefs hacks:

Key takeaways + our advice

62% of companies feature a mission statement, tagline, or branded illustration – These are all good choices for a “default” Twitter banner. They help reinforce your brand identity and tell potential followers what you’re all about.
14% of companies feature their products – It makes sense to swap out your “default” banner for this to coincide with product announcements. Just remember to design them with mobile UIs and notches in mind.
24% of companies feature something else – It’s probably best to avoid zany and vague banners unless you’re a household brand or are trying to tie your Twitter presence to an advertising campaign. However, it makes sense to showcase time-sensitive things like upcoming events, awards you’ve won, job positions, etc.

100% of SaaS companies feature their logo (or some variation) here.

Big surprise, right? So why am I even bothering to mention it?

The answer is that I want to draw your attention to a mistake some brands make, which is being hell-bent on using their full text-heavy logo.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with including your full logo when it has a short “horizontal length.”

Take Wix, for example:

This works just fine. It’s easy to read and recognize on desktop and mobile—even in the small feed icons:

But this works less well for brands with logos with a wider “horizontal length.”

Case in point, Talenox:

This is virtually impossible to read on mobile and doesn’t grab your attention in the feed:

I can’t help but feel the icon alone would be much better at grabbing your attention.

Here’s a mockup:

Interestingly, this is a lesson learned from personal experience. We used to have our profile photo set to our “full width” logo, but we soon realized our mistake and changed it to the custom branded icon you see today:

Key takeaways + our advice

100% of SaaS companies set their profile photo as their logo – You probably should too. Just make sure to use an icon from your logo or a shorter version if it’s text-heavy.

Most companies (68%) use their bio to reflect what their product or service does.

What SaaS companies write in their Twitter bio

Here’s an example from Mailchimp:

Even if you knew nothing about Mailchimp before coming across its Twitter profile, you’d end up with a pretty good idea about what it’s selling from its bio alone.

But what about everyone else?

Well, 28% of companies use it to state their company mission.

Here’s an example from Asana:

Asana's bio explains its company mission

If you’re none the wiser about what Asana actually is or does after that, join the club. And this isn’t even vague compared to some. Check out Cialfo’s:

Cialfo's bio also explains its mission... but it's super vague

Luckily, the final 4% of companies are being a bit more creative. They seem to either highlight what to expect from following them like BrightLocal or opt for a pure fun approach like Shopify.

BrightLocal's bio explains what to expect by following it

(I like how BrightLocal notes “Tweets by Jenny.” Definitely adds a personal touch!)

Key takeaways + our advice

68% of companies explain what their product or service does – This is always a safe bet that helps potential followers understand what you’re all about.
28% of companies state their mission or tagline – This is probably not the best choice unless you’re already a household name and it’s more important to convey a “message” than what you do.
4% of companies use their bio for something else – I’d avoid the zany “fun” bios unless you’re a household name. They’re vague and unhelpful in most cases. As for telling potential followers what they can expect from you, that makes sense—especially if you only post very specific things on Twitter like product updates.
Personal touches are… a nice touch – Hardly any SaaS brands do this, but I think adding “Tweets by [name]” is a great way to humanize your brand (assuming the tweets are actually by one person, of course).

Most SaaS companies (58.4%) don’t utilize bio links.

Here’s what we mean by bio links, by the way:

They’re the ones that are actually in the bio (not the dedicated “website” link).

Basically, any URL or Twitter handle (e.g., @ahrefs) you mention in your bio automatically gets turned into a link.

For example, here’s me setting up my bio…

… and the result:

But of those that do use them, what do they use them for?

Here’s the data:

Breakdown of the types of links SaaS companies share in their bio

Sidenote.

These don’t add up to 100% because some companies include multiple links.

60% of SaaS companies include support links.

These are either links to dedicated support Twitter profiles (e.g., @asksalesforce)…

Salesforce links to its support page in its bio

… website support hubs

Asana links to its support page in its bio

… or both:

19% of brands link to a status page or profile:

Interestingly, most of the brands doing this are project management (Airtable, Monday, Miro, etc.) or community apps (Slack, Circle, etc.). Given how much it can impact your day when these kinds of tools go down, that makes perfect sense.

19% of brands link to their homepage:

Totango links to its homepage in its bio

(Given that the homepage link is almost always duplicated in the profile link, this seems like a waste of space to me. I’m not sure why it’s so common.)

And the final 26% of brands link elsewhere, such as to a newsletter signup page…

… their social profiles and communities

Supabase links to its social profiles and communities in its bio

… or even branded hashtags:

Astro links to a branded hashtag in its bio

Initially, I thought the branded hashtag was a bit of an odd choice for quite a small brand. However, it actually makes sense, as it’s basically a feed of success stories (big and small) from customers who love the software.

Here are a couple of examples:

Key takeaways + our advice

58.4% of companies don’t utilize bio links – This is a waste. Every company has something it could promote here.
60% of companies link to support pages or profiles – Given that frustrated customers often take to Twitter ~~to complain~~ for support, this seems like an effort to move the conversation somewhere less public. That makes sense, especially as customers are probably going to get faster responses elsewhere anyway.
19% of companies link to a status page – This seems like a great way to reduce the number of support requests during outages.
19% of companies link to their homepage – This seems like a waste of space, as most profiles have a homepage link in the website link section.
26% of companies link elsewhere – Newsletter signup pages, communities, and jobs pages are all popular options that make sense. I’d stay clear of branded hashtags unless you’re promoting them elsewhere. Otherwise, I doubt they’ll get much engagement.

Believe it or not, 7% of companies don’t have a profile link.

Of those that do, 95.7% link to their homepage.

This makes sense. It’s the obvious place to link to and probably the best one to direct followers to learn more about your product or brand.

Most of the remaining 4.3% link to a Linktree (or another similar alternative):

This approach seems more common with individual “influencers,” but I think it can also work well for SaaS companies.

Yotpo is a good example. Its Linktree links to:

Jobs page – Makes sense. If you like a brand enough to follow it on Twitter, there’s a chance you might be interested in working for it.
Blog post – Specifically, one that explains the benefits of “zero-party data,” which is what its product helps business owners collect.
Landing page – This is for its “brand accelerator program” (an initiative to help black-owned small businesses grow).
Press release – This talks about how it made Forbes’ list of the top 100 private cloud companies.
Homepage – Ah… we got there eventually!

Sidenote.

The page also links to a campaign to “nominate an amazing woman in ecommerce,” but it’s a 404.

Key takeaways + our advice

95.7% of companies (if they have a profile link) link to their homepage – I’d recommend this for pretty much every SaaS company too. It’s a solid choice and helps potential followers learn more about what you do.
4.3% link elsewhere – Mostly to a Linktree (or similar). This is a fine choice if you want to promote multiple things to followers, like job openings and awards.

Only 55% of SaaS companies use the pinned tweet feature.

Most of those that do (60%) feature a product-related tweet.

Here’s an example from Intercom:

Intercom's pinned tweet announces a new product feature

Interestingly, I spotted a lot of brands using videos for this. This makes sense, as there’s really no better way to demonstrate a product feature or explain what your software does. It also allows you to fit more information into your tweet than you’d be able to with 280 characters.

Sidenote.

The tweet character limit for Twitter Blue subscribers is technically 4,000. However, a) not all brands have Twitter Blue and b) 4,000 characters are apparently between 571 and 1,000 words on average—who in their right mind wants to read that much copy in a plain text tweet?

10.9% of brands feature an event, contest, challenge, or poll.

Here’s an example from Litmus:

Litmus' pinned tweet announces an upcoming conference

Obviously, these aren’t just “set it and forget it” pinned tweets. Once the event, challenge, contest, or poll is over, brands swap them out for something else.

What else?

Blog posts and Twitter threads are common, with 5.5% and 3.6% of brands respectively showcasing these in pinned tweets.

Here are a few examples:

Novocall's pinned tweet promotes a blog post

Given that Twitter users almost certainly prefer native content, you’re probably better off turning a blog post you want to promote here into a thread instead. You can always promote the blog post at the end.

This is precisely what we did for our current pinned tweet:

Our pinned tweet is a thread with 18 Ahrefs hacks

These 18 hacks began life as a blog post. But we knew we’d likely get way more engagement by turning them into a Twitter thread.

We then promote our newsletter at the end of the thread:

The remaining 20% of SaaS companies feature other things, like awards they’ve won…

… rebrand announcements

Rapid's pinned tweet announces a rebrand

… and white papers:

MarketDial's pinned tweet promotes... a white paper

I think these all make sense—except for white papers.

Even if you’re targeting enterprise customers, I just can’t see many people browsing Twitter and thinking “Oh, cool—a white paper! I’ll download that right away!”

Key takeaways + our advice

45% of companies don’t have pinned tweets – Don’t be one of them. Pinned tweets are a useful way to highlight import updates, campaigns, and initiatives.
60% of companies have product-related pinned tweets – This is a safe bet, but I think it’s best to use an engaging format like video if possible. This also extends the amount of information you can put in your pinned tweet beyond the 280-character limit.
10.9% of companies feature events, contests, challenges, or polls – This makes sense, as you usually want to draw as much attention to these types of events as possible in a limited period of time.
5.5% of companies feature blog posts – I would avoid this, as I think few Twitter users want to consume content off the platform.
3.6% of companies feature threads – I think there are too many threads on Twitter, but they’re obviously popular so… what do I know? Either way, this is another good way to effectively extend the 280-character tweet limit.
20% of companies feature other things – Awards, announcements—basically whatever they want to draw attention to at the moment. Just don’t try to force users to download white papers; I really don’t think anyone on Twitter wants that.

Final thoughts

How you set up your company’s Twitter profile depends on the impression you want to make and the things you want to promote. Just make sure to utilize all the features Twitter gives you to create a standout profile.

If you’re short on time, here’s our best advice to get your profile up and running fast:

Got questions? Ping me on… you know where.

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Related Topics:Heres Profiles SaaS seo Studied top Trends Twitter Uncover

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SEO

Client-Side Vs. Server-Side Rendering

Published

4 mins ago

September 19, 2024

Max

Faster webpage loading times play a big part in user experience and SEO, with page load speed a key determining factor for Google’s algorithm.

A front-end web developer must decide the best way to render a website so it delivers a fast experience and dynamic content.

Two popular rendering methods include client-side rendering (CSR) and server-side rendering (SSR).

All websites have different requirements, so understanding the difference between client-side and server-side rendering can help you render your website to match your business goals.

Google & JavaScript

Google has extensive documentation on how it handles JavaScript, and Googlers offer insights and answer JavaScript questions regularly through various formats – both official and unofficial.

For example, in a Search Off The Record podcast, it was discussed that Google renders all pages for Search, including JavaScript-heavy ones.

This sparked a substantial conversation on LinkedIn, and another couple of takeaways from both the podcast and proceeding discussions are that:

Google doesn’t track how expensive it is to render specific pages.
Google renders all pages to see content – regardless if it uses JavaScript or not.

The conversation as a whole has helped to dispel many myths and misconceptions about how Google might have approached JavaScript and allocated resources.

Martin Splitt’s full comment on LinkedIn covering this was:

“We don’t keep track of “how expensive was this page for us?” or something. We know that a substantial part of the web uses JavaScript to add, remove, change content on web pages. We just have to render, to see it all. It doesn’t really matter if a page does or does not use JavaScript, because we can only be reasonably sure to see all content once it’s rendered.”

Martin also confirmed a queue and potential delay between crawling and indexing, but not just because something is JavaScript or not, and it’s not an “opaque” issue that the presence of JavaScript is the root cause of URLs not being indexed.

General JavaScript Best Practices

Before we get into the client-side versus server-side debate, it’s important that we also follow general best practices for either of these approaches to work:

Don’t block JavaScript resources through Robots.txt or server rules.
Avoid render blocking.
Avoid injecting JavaScript in the DOM.

What Is Client-Side Rendering, And How Does It Work?

Client-side rendering is a relatively new approach to rendering websites.

It became popular when JavaScript libraries started integrating it, with Angular and React.js being some of the best examples of libraries used in this type of rendering.

It works by rendering a website’s JavaScript in your browser rather than on the server.

The server responds with a bare-bones HTML document containing the JS files instead of getting all the content from the HTML document.

While the initial upload time is a bit slow, the subsequent page loads will be rapid as they aren’t reliant on a different HTML page per route.

From managing logic to retrieving data from an API, client-rendered sites do everything “independently.” The page is available after the code is executed because every page the user visits and its corresponding URL are created dynamically.

The CSR process is as follows:

The user enters the URL they wish to visit in the address bar.
A data request is sent to the server at the specified URL.
On the client’s first request for the site, the server delivers the static files (CSS and HTML) to the client’s browser.
The client browser will download the HTML content first, followed by JavaScript. These HTML files connect the JavaScript, starting the loading process by displaying loading symbols the developer defines to the user. At this stage, the website is still not visible to the user.
After the JavaScript is downloaded, content is dynamically generated on the client’s browser.
The web content becomes visible as the client navigates and interacts with the website.

What Is Server-Side Rendering, And How Does It Work?

Server-side rendering is the more common technique for displaying information on a screen.

The web browser submits a request for information from the server, fetching user-specific data to populate and sending a fully rendered HTML page to the client.

Every time the user visits a new page on the site, the server will repeat the entire process.

Here’s how the SSR process goes step-by-step:

The user enters the URL they wish to visit in the address bar.
The server serves a ready-to-be-rendered HTML response to the browser.
The browser renders the page (now viewable) and downloads JavaScript.
The browser executes React, thus making the page interactable.

What Are The Differences Between Client-Side And Server-Side Rendering?

The main difference between these two rendering approaches is in the algorithms of their operation. CSR shows an empty page before loading, while SSR displays a fully-rendered HTML page on the first load.

This gives server-side rendering a speed advantage over client-side rendering, as the browser doesn’t need to process large JavaScript files. Content is often visible within a couple of milliseconds.

Search engines can crawl the site for better SEO, making it easy to index your webpages. This readability in the form of text is precisely the way SSR sites appear in the browser.

However, client-side rendering is a cheaper option for website owners.

It relieves the load on your servers, passing the responsibility of rendering to the client (the bot or user trying to view your page). It also offers rich site interactions by providing fast website interaction after the initial load.

Fewer HTTP requests are made to the server with CSR, unlike in SSR, where each page is rendered from scratch, resulting in a slower transition between pages.

SSR can also buckle under a high server load if the server receives many simultaneous requests from different users.

The drawback of CSR is the longer initial loading time. This can impact SEO; crawlers might not wait for the content to load and exit the site.

This two-phased approach raises the possibility of seeing empty content on your page by missing JavaScript content after first crawling and indexing the HTML of a page. Remember that, in most cases, CSR requires an external library.

When To Use Server-Side Rendering

If you want to improve your Google visibility and rank high in the search engine results pages (SERPs), server-side rendering is the number one choice.

E-learning websites, online marketplaces, and applications with a straightforward user interface with fewer pages, features, and dynamic data all benefit from this type of rendering.

When To Use Client-Side Rendering

Client-side rendering is usually paired with dynamic web apps like social networks or online messengers. This is because these apps’ information constantly changes and must deal with large and dynamic data to perform fast updates to meet user demand.

The focus here is on a rich site with many users, prioritizing the user experience over SEO.

Which Is Better: Server-Side Or Client-Side Rendering?

When determining which approach is best, you need to not only take into consideration your SEO needs but also how the website works for users and delivers value.

Think about your project and how your chosen rendering will impact your position in the SERPs and your website’s user experience.

Generally, CSR is better for dynamic websites, while SSR is best suited for static websites.

Content Refresh Frequency

Websites that feature highly dynamic information, such as gambling or FOREX websites, update their content every second, meaning you’d likely choose CSR over SSR in this scenario – or choose to use CSR for specific landing pages and not all pages, depending on your user acquisition strategy.

SSR is more effective if your site’s content doesn’t require much user interaction. It positively influences accessibility, page load times, SEO, and social media support.

On the other hand, CSR is excellent for providing cost-effective rendering for web applications, and it’s easier to build and maintain; it’s better for First Input Delay (FID).

Another CSR consideration is that meta tags (description, title), canonical URLs, and Hreflang tags should be rendered server-side or presented in the initial HTML response for the crawlers to identify them as soon as possible, and not only appear in the rendered HTML.

Platform Considerations

CSR technology tends to be more expensive to maintain because the hourly rate for developers skilled in React.js or Node.js is generally higher than that for PHP or WordPress developers.

Additionally, there are fewer ready-made plugins or out-of-the-box solutions available for CSR frameworks compared to the larger plugin ecosystem that WordPress users have access too.

For those considering a headless WordPress setup, such as using Frontity, it’s important to note that you’ll need to hire both React.js developers and PHP developers.

This is because headless WordPress relies on React.js for the front end while still requiring PHP for the back end.

It’s important to remember that not all WordPress plugins are compatible with headless setups, which could limit functionality or require additional custom development.

Website Functionality & Purpose

Sometimes, you don’t have to choose between the two as hybrid solutions are available. Both SSR and CSR can be implemented within a single website or webpage.

For example, in an online marketplace, pages with product descriptions can be rendered on the server, as they are static and need to be easily indexed by search engines.

Staying with ecommerce, if you have high levels of personalization for users on a number of pages, you won’t be able to SSR render the content for bots, so you will need to define some form of default content for Googlebot which crawls cookieless and stateless.

Pages like user accounts don’t need to be ranked in the search engine results pages (SERPs), so a CRS approach might be better for UX.

Both CSR and SSR are popular approaches to rendering websites. You and your team need to make this decision at the initial stage of product development.

More resources:

Featured Image: TippaPatt/Shutterstock

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SEO

HubSpot Rolls Out AI-Powered Marketing Tools

Published

20 hours ago

September 18, 2024

Max

HubSpot Rolls Out AI-Powered Marketing Tools

HubSpot announced a push into AI this week at its annual Inbound marketing conference, launching “Breeze.”

Breeze is an artificial intelligence layer integrated across the company’s marketing, sales, and customer service software.

According to HubSpot, the goal is to provide marketers with easier, faster, and more unified solutions as digital channels become oversaturated.

Karen Ng, VP of Product at HubSpot, tells Search Engine Journal in an interview:

“We’re trying to create really powerful tools for marketers to rise above the noise that’s happening now with a lot of this AI-generated content. We might help you generate titles or a blog content…but we do expect kind of a human there to be a co-assist in that.”

Breeze AI Covers Copilot, Workflow Agents, Data Enrichment

The Breeze layer includes three main components.

Breeze Copilot

An AI assistant that provides personalized recommendations and suggestions based on data in HubSpot’s CRM.

Ng explained:

“It’s a chat-based AI companion that assists with tasks everywhere – in HubSpot, the browser, and mobile.”

Breeze Agents

A set of four agents that can automate entire workflows like content generation, social media campaigns, prospecting, and customer support without human input.

Ng added the following context:

“Agents allow you to automate a lot of those workflows. But it’s still, you know, we might generate for you a content backlog. But taking a look at that content backlog, and knowing what you publish is still a really important key of it right now.”

Breeze Intelligence

Combines HubSpot customer data with third-party sources to build richer profiles.

Ng stated:

“It’s really important that we’re bringing together data that can be trusted. We know your AI is really only as good as the data that it’s actually trained on.”

Addressing AI Content Quality

While prioritizing AI-driven productivity, Ng acknowledged the need for human oversight of AI content:

“We really do need eyes on it still…We think of that content generation as still human-assisted.”

Marketing Hub Updates

Beyond Breeze, HubSpot is updating Marketing Hub with tools like:

Content Remix to repurpose videos into clips, audio, blogs, and more.
AI video creation via integration with HeyGen
YouTube and Instagram Reels publishing
Improved marketing analytics and attribution

The announcements signal HubSpot’s AI-driven vision for unifying customer data.

But as Ng tells us, “We definitely think a lot about the data sources…and then also understand your business.”

HubSpot’s updates are rolling out now, with some in public beta.

Featured Image: Poetra.RH/Shutterstock

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SEO

Holistic Marketing Strategies That Drive Revenue [SaaS Case Study]

Published

2 days ago

September 18, 2024

Max

Holistic Marketing Strategies That Drive Revenue [SaaS Case Study]

Brands are seeing success driving quality pipeline and revenue growth. It’s all about building an intentional customer journey, aligning sales + marketing, plus measuring ROI.

Check out this executive panel on-demand, as we show you how we do it.

With Ryann Hogan, senior demand generation manager at CallRail, and our very own Heather Campbell and Jessica Cromwell, we chatted about driving demand, lead gen, revenue, and proper attribution.

This B2B leadership forum provided insights you can use in your strategy tomorrow, like:

The importance of the customer journey, and the keys to matching content to your ideal personas.
How to align marketing and sales efforts to guide leads through an effective journey to conversion.
Methods to measure ROI and determine if your strategies are delivering results.

While the case study is SaaS, these strategies are for any brand.

Watch on-demand and be part of the conversation.

Join Us For Our Next Webinar!

Navigating SERP Complexity: How to Leverage Search Intent for SEO

Join us live as we break down all of these complexities and reveal how to identify valuable opportunities in your space. We’ll show you how to tap into the searcher’s motivation behind each query (and how Google responds to it in kind).

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