10 Advanced Twitter Tips To Help Your Twitter Account Grow Fast
While Twitter was once exclusively a thought-sharing platform, the channel has evolved, becoming a source of limitless audience reach for the savvy marketer.
With 166 million daily active users, it’s no wonder that marketers flock to the social platform.
It may have once been enough for companies to share funny tweets or content on the platform to be successful on Twitter. However, marketers today need to stay relevant with the rapidly changing features that are a hallmark of the platform. Your Twitter marketing strategy should be in constant flux in relation to the adjustments of the platform.
Sound overwhelming?
It doesn’t have to be.
Below, this article breaks down the 10 advanced Twitter tricks and tips that can help you cut through the clutter on this unique platform.
1. Refresh Your Twitter Profile
Remember the saying, “there’s no second chance at a first impression?”
That adage applies to your social profiles, too.
If it’s been a while since you’ve actively worked to update and optimize your Twitter profile, now is the time. Check out these four advanced Twitter tips for making sure your profile is up-to-date and positioned to attract would-be consumers.
Twitter Bio
With only 160 characters at your disposal, make sure your Twitter bio is not only giving page visitors a clear understanding of your brand but also harnessing the power of your chosen keywords.
Header Image
Your header image shouldn’t be stagnant. Instead, continually update the image to represent new offerings or seasonal themes.
Try out these different header image options:
- upcoming event
- new products
- best-selling products
- client testimonial
- capabilities
Regardless of which route you decide to take, optimize your images and take advantage of this chance to use your branded keywords by including them in the image file names to boost the likelihood that your page appears in an image search.
Profile Image
Your logo should dominate your profile image.
However, if your logo includes a lot of text or complex imagery that won’t translate well on mobile, consider crafting a secondary logo.
Website Direction
Move beyond the typical home-page link by strategically approaching where to send clients. In my Twitter bio, I direct visitors to ‘Consulting’ so they have a direct path to take.
After you’ve completed these four advanced Twitter updates, remember to keep it up. You should update your Twitter profile to reflect changing facets in your industry, as well as those in your own business.
2. Share Different Content Types
Twitter is different from its social media contemporaries. That whitepaper you shared on LinkedIn might have seen a lot of engagement, but it may not perform well on Twitter.
According to Twitter, interactive content tends to perform best on the platform. The company suggests using:
Visuals With an Emphasis on Video
To bolster results, Twitter advocates for using arresting images, GIFs, and videos.
The data is there to back it up: With over two billion video views per day, ensure you’re taking advantage of the highly-desirable content form. Twitter suggests using your company logo and subtitles to eliminate the need for headphones and sharing videos between 6-15 seconds.
In fact, posts with visuals generate 35 percent more retweets than those that are solely text-based, and videos generate 28 percent more retweets than text.
Moral of the story? The more visually compelling your tweets, the more likely they are to generate social engagement.
Check out this visual narrative from Threadless that tells a complete story through an interactive video.
Questions and Polls
In addition to visual content, Twitter suggests using the platform’s conversational format to engage your audience. While this strategy may not perform well on Facebook or Instagram, engaging with your audience through polls can be a good way to spark conversation and engagement.
Take a look at this post from Fashion for Good that encourages audience interaction.
Memes
With only 240 characters at your disposal to tell a story, harnessing the pre-existing narrative power of memes is a great way to share a message while simultaneously cashing in on the benefit of the potential of a viral tweet.
Regardless of your audience, your Twitter content strategy should be complex. As a general tip, you should adhere to the rule of thirds: one-third of tweets promote your business, one-third share personal stories, and one-third are informative insights from experts or influencers.
The same goes for content diversity. Be sure you’re offering your followers a varied palette of content.
3. Share Case Studies or Testimonial Teasers
When building your advanced Twitter strategy, attract potential leads by sharing snippets of your success stories. To ensure your audience can access the story in its entirety, create landing pages users can click that provide more information.
To make these case studies engaging and consumable, follow these best practices.
Use Visuals
We’ve already discussed the value of visuals on Twitter. This also applies when crafting testimonials. Check out this tweet from Covergirl that incorporates a branded image with a real-life review.
Compelling Quotes
Choose quotes from your clients that speak to how you solved their pain points. More often than not, other potential customers are experiencing the same challenges.
4. Start Funny Rivalries With Your Competitors
When strategizing your advanced Twitter approach, don’t undervalue the worth of good, old-fashioned humor.
This isn’t just anecdotal: 75 percent of consumers say they appreciate humor from brands.
Amusing back-and-forths between competitors have had viral responses on Twitter.
Wendy’s has long been the king of in-good-fun competitor ribbing.
This tweet works for Wendy’s since it is, at its core, light-hearted. It performed well because it engaged with a follower’s comment while still stoking that inherent rivalry among fast-food giants.
If you have a positive relationship with any of your competitors, engage them in a silly debate or poke good fun at an aspect of their brand.
However, this strategy is obviously only relevant to some brands. If your brand voice is serious, this approach is probably not for you.
If you decide a rivalry is, well, on-brand for your brand, identify what distinguishes your business from your competition and use the rivalry strategically to stand out from the crowd.
5. Tweet Your Position on Social Justice Issues
Staying neutral is no longer an option for brands.
Many consumers expect businesses to take a stance on social justice issues, like Black Lives Matter, climate change, and gun control.
In fact, 60 percent of the U.S. population expect brands to take a stand on racial justice. By taking a position on these topics, deepened audience connection and relation can occur.
However, taking a stand on social justice issues demands a well-executed plan and approach. Here are three key strategies:
Be Consistent
Followers will notice if you only tweet about issues when others do. To ensure you convey authentic support for social justice issues, be sure to consistently post about the issues.
Be Decisive
Don’t wait. By mulling over your response or waiting several days to post, you reduce that feeling of authenticity.
Be Meticulous
Phrasing is always important, but never more so than when approaching hot-topic issues. Be mindful in your writing and pay particular attention to the tone and voice used in your tweet.
In addition to wanting to see brands publically address social justice issues, consumers also want to know where their spent money goes. If your company donates to charities or political campaigns, include that information as you build your advanced Twitter marketing strategy.
6. Create Polls
We’ve already established that Twitter is all about interaction, and polls can help drive that.
As you craft your advanced Twitter marketing strategy, don’t forget you can use polls in a variety of ways.
Promote your newest products like Denny’s did in this humorous poll.
Establish thought leadership, like Rand Fishkin did. (We also did this to discuss whether or not content is king.)
Guide content strategy, like The Muse did.
Include hashtags, like Evernote did.
These strategies can benefit brands by increasing consumer interaction and brand awareness.
7. Go Live
Going live on Twitter is easy. This advanced Twitter strategy is also successful, as it fulfills the immediate interaction desire of many audience members.
To go live, craft your tweet, then tap “LIVE.” This takes you to the pre-broadcast screen so you can frame your shot. When you’re ready, select “Go Live” and start broadcasting!
Once you’re live, users on Twitter and Periscope can join your video to interact with your brand experience.
Wondering why you should go through the trouble of going live? Here are three clear benefits:
- Viewers often tweet about what they’re watching.
- It can be a new way to engage with hard-to-reach audiences.
- It increases authentic audience engagement.
These factors can have a huge impact on your brand’s reach and engagement on Twitter.
8. Use Twitter Spaces
Twitter Spaces is a feature for public chat rooms that can host up to ten speakers in a conversation, with anyone listening in.
Users lucky enough to have access to Spaces have touted it as feeling akin to an interactive podcast.
So why should you factor Spaces into your advanced Twitter marketing strategy? It can help you:
- gain audience feedback
- showcase new features or products
- establish thought leadership through industry conversations
- communicate with audience members in real time
Spaces offers brands direct interaction with consumers, allowing a more casual, interactive conversation than other modes of communication.
9. Test Different CTAs
Regardless of the action you want your followers to take, you need a strong CTA to let them know exactly what to do.
This phrase is curated through assessing your goals and best determining how to get your audience to meet you at the finish line.
To test your CTA’s efficacy, you can use a heatmap tool like Crazy Egg if you use click-based tracking. For other lead generation CTAs, you can compare the conversion rate by looking at the number of form submissions in your CRM tool.
You can also A/B test your CTAs.
If you’re looking for inspiration to start incorporating killer CTAs into your Twitter content, check out these three examples.
Vogue teases the article by including just enough information to pique interest. The magazine then gives the reader a clear directive: Read.
Food52 uses a negative CTA that works out for the positive. Avoid is a strong action word that sparks an emotional reaction. The reader can’t help but be baited into clicking the article to learn what these six mistakes are.
InSinkErator uses several strategies to get audience members to enter their competition. From the enter CTA in the copy to the “Learn more” CTA on the bottom left, there are multiple strong CTAs inviting the reader to take the desired action.
10. Use Twitter Cards
Twitter Cards are platform-exclusive ads that aim to get people from Twitter to your brand’s website, driving visitors to places where marketing further down the funnel occurs.
There are a few different types of cards, but they all share the same basic design. Check out this single image card used by The New York Times:
The advantage of using Twitter Cards is that, instead of just standard text, advertisers have an entire image to generate click-through.
Conclusion
While Twitter may look like a simplistic platform on the surface, marketers and brands can harness the social site’s unique offerings and make a huge difference in campaigns.
These 10 advanced Twitter marketing tips can completely change the way your Twitter profile contributes to your overall marketing success.
As you apply these tips, keep in mind two things: your brand and your goals. With these factors in mind, pick and choose which of the 10 tips work for you and get started.
You might see a return on your efforts very quickly.
What’s your best tip for success on Twitter?
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