Social media marketing has become essential for businesses to communicate and advertise in the modern world. More than 99% of potential customers have access to various social media platforms, making social media channels an easy way of reaching one’s target market. Brands use omnichannel marketing to ensure maximum coverage on all popular social media channels. Twitter is one of the world’s most popular social media platforms, with 217 million average monthly users, and it can be a really effective marketing tool when deployed correctly.
Using Twitter for brand promotion is valuable for leveling up one’s digital marketing strategy. The platform has specific features tailored to help businesses reach their target market and attain their marketing goals. Many brands are running effective and successful marketing and advertising campaigns on Twitter. Businesses, companies and entrepreneurs are using Twitter to achieve maximum brand awareness and increase sales.
Twitter marketing requires one to have effective marketing strategies in place to guide tweets and interactions on the platform long term. However, developing the most effective Twitter marketing strategies may be challenging for some digital marketers and brands. Signal has a team of digital marketing experts who will give you the necessary tips to develop an effective Twitter marketing strategy that aligns with your brand’s needs and goals. In our detailed guide, we look at how you can use Twitter in your marketing strategy to achieve business goals effectively.
What is Twitter and How to Use It in Marketing
Twitter was founded in 2003 by Jack Dorsey, and recently acquired by Tesla billionaire Elon Musk. With more than 217 million average monthly users as of 2022, the platform generates more than $5.42 billion in revenue. The platform was initially developed to be an SMS-based social chat platform, having a 280-character limit on its posts. Even though the platform has transitioned to be a more robust media platform and has increased its character limit marginally, it has retained a basic character limit. The character limit is part of the brand’s identity.
Twitter is a text-based social media platform. However, users can still share videos and images as add-ons to the text posts. The character limit on the platform ensures that users are brief and precise in their communication. It’s most valuable for social media enthusiasts who have short attention spans and a snappy wit. Since it is a conversational chatter medium, accounts that post frequently, commenting on trending or relevant topics of the day, tend to be the most successful on the platform.
There are different ways of interacting with the content posted on Twitter. Users can comment, love, or share a tweet and even send a direct message to the creator. Tweets can also be shared on other social media platforms and as direct messages to one’s contact list. Twitter is a mobile-based social media platform, giving brands an excellent opportunity to reach customers with short attention spans on the go.
The posts on the platform are called “Tweets .” Tweets can include text, images, links and videos. When one opens a Twitter account, they pick a username called a “handle” with the “@” sign. A retweet is a repost; when you share content from another Twitter user on your timeline. You can retweet a tweet as-is or with your own comment included, thus adding value or context to the conversation. Both the original tweet and your quoted retweet can have comments from other Twitter users.
Twitter account holders can be individuals, businesses, and even government institutions. They can use various hashtags to interact with users who have the same interests as them, and the home feed is based on which accounts you’ve chosen to follow. The platform’s dashboard offers frequent updates on trending topics based on one’s geographical location.
Using Twitter for social media marketing has become very popular with many brands. Growing a following on Twitter is different than on other platforms but simple enough to do. Twitter users are more attracted to creative content, especially when following industry-related content. Twitter introduced Twitter Fleets, a feature that works like Facebook Stories. Twitter introduced the feature to give users an easy and fun way of sharing their “fleeting thoughts .” Content on the Twitter Fleets expires after 24 hours.
Using Periscope
Periscope was an app which allowed live streaming of content from Twitter. The application has been operating until March 2021 and was acquired by Twitter in 2015. It allows Twitter account holders to share their video content using their network. Periscope has the same functionality as the Meerkat used for Instagram Live and Facebook Live; therefore, the video content expires after 24 hours.
Even though the app was instrumental when using Twitter for marketing, it is no longer available. Twitter introduced Twitter Live to replace Periscope, which allows users to broadcast their video content. Even though Periscope isn’t available, Twitter has added more features which brands can use in promoting their businesses on the platform.
Using Twitter for Business Marketing
Twitter is a text-based social media platform and is very user-friendly. However, using it as a marketing channel for brands and businesses can be a daunting experience until you get the hang of it. Many brands have failed to use the platform to achieve their marketing goals effectively. The best way to use Twitter for brand promotion is through constant conversation. Your Twitter marketing strategy should allow your business to:
- Gain maximum brand exposure on the platform.
- Align your brand’s ideals with those of industry leaders.
- Nurture the brand’s reach.
- Achieve and increase consumer engagement.
- Acquire quality leads.
- Join and participate in relevant and trendy industry-related discussions and topics.
Effective Twitter marketing strategies have helped small and big brands achieve their social media marketing goals cost-effectively. Your strategy must align with your brand’s values, goals and marketing needs. Your brand needs to identify how Twitter marketing can work for its business and target market.
There are different Twitter marketing strategies that a brand can consider. Each strategy comes with its pros and cons. Hence it’s essential to pick the most suitable strategy for your business. There is no universal strategy that works for every business using Twitter marketing. Finding the most suitable marketing strategy will require experimentation, patience and flexibility.
Tips for Developing an Effective Twitter Marketing Strategy
Every brand needs to have a Twitter marketing strategy to effectively use Twitter for marketing their products and services. Many benefits come with having a marketing strategy, and the main one is being able to monitor and track the marketing channel’s performance at all times. Creating a marketing strategy can be challenging, especially for brands using Twitter marketing for the first time. We have compiled essential tips to use when developing your Twitter marketing strategy.
Publishing Content Consistently
Publishing content is one of the most challenging aspects of social media marketing faced by brands and digital marketers. Twitter is a text-based platform, unlike Instagram, which is a more visual-based platform. How do you ensure the marketing content you post on Twitter is relevant and ideal? Twitter text posts have a 280-limit character count, and brands can use this to their advantage.
Some brands opt to create a Twitter thread, where they have several posts talking about the same topic. Twitter threads are very effective when discussing a topic and involving the target market to contribute to the discussion. Additionally, you can opt to have a single post that stands alone.
Coming up with a posting schedule is very important; you can even have specific catchphrases for your content calendar, like Financial Friday or Motivation Monday. The goal is to be Tweeting all day every day about everything. You should certainly talk about your business and your industry, but you should also tweet about the latest news, sports, entertainment, and trends to stay relevant on the platform and in the minds of your Twitter audience.
Popular Twitter content ideas for business profiles include:
- Recent blog posts
- Interviews and discussions with industry experts
- User-generated content
- How-to tutorials
- Polls or surveys
- New product or service updates
- Employee highlights
- Inspirational quotes
- Thought-provoking advice
Twitter encourages the use of video content to enhance user engagement and interaction. Every tweet you post on Twitter needs to be relevant and resourceful to your target market. They should also reflect the brand’s identity and image at all times.
Using the Correct Hashtags
Hashtags originated with Twitter before spreading to other platforms. They act like code which ensures the conversation targets the most relevant audience and keeps the content trendy. You follow a certain hashtag to see what all is being said about that topic by all kinds of people and brands. All social media platforms have recommendations on the recent and trendy hashtags which users can use on their posts. Digital marketing experts use hashtags as one of the primary Twitter marketing strategies.
Hashtags give users access to keyword-specific content when using the platform. Brands must use popular and relevant keywords for their brand and target market. A hashtag can trend on the platform, but if it’s irrelevant to your brand or target market then it’s not something to jump on. Additionally, hashtags can trend for a few hours or even weeks. Hence researching the best hashtags to use is very important. Twitter marketing companies are reliable sources when looking for the best hashtags to use for your marketing content on the platform.
Understand Your Target Audience with Analytics
Brands that fully understand their target market can develop marketing content that is most relevant to their target market. The Twitter free analytics dashboard provides brands with all the necessary information regarding their Twitter Business account performance. The dashboards also provide data and information on how users engage with your content on the platform.
You can access the analytics dashboard using the following link (https://analytics.twitter.com/) after logging in to your Twitter account. The dashboard will display the following information:
- Twitter user engagement (comments, likes and shares)
- Tweet/post activity (per tweet)
- Twitter impressions
- Twitter followers
The above data will benchmark the marketing content you post on the platform. The main goal of every Twitter marketing content is powering your marketing and advertising campaigns on the platform. It will also give you an idea of the content that attracts maximum user engagement and what interests your audience the most.
Advertising on Twitter
Social media marketing is a more subtle way of using Twitter to promote a brand. Twitter runs advertisement campaigns on its platform for businesses which can pay for the sponsored posts. Using Twitter Ads can help you achieve your social media marketing goals faster by jumping into someone’s timeline who may not know about you yet. When Twitter introduced its Twitter marketing services, it welcomed digital marketers and advertisers to run ads on the platform to large success.
Twitter has various ad content types, which brands can use depending on their marketing needs. The cost of running Twitter Ads is very flexible, and brands can adjust their spending on the platform based on their budget. Below are the popular Twitter and content types brands can use for Twitter Marketing:
Promoted Tweets
The promoted tweets resemble the regular tweets; the only essential difference is they have a logo displaying “promoted” and are injected into feeds where they might not otherwise arise organically. The sign is located on the bottom left side of the tweet. Twitter displays the promoted tweets to users who don’t follow the official business Twitter account of the brand. Users can like, share, and comment on the promoted tweets. The promoted tweets can be in the form of texts, images, videos and links.
Promoted Accounts
The promoted accounts content is most suitable for Twitter business profiles that want to increase their following and brand awareness on the platform. Twitter displays the brand’s business Twitter profile to potential followers. Unlike the promoted tweets, the promoted accounts appear on a specific part of the user’s profile. Promoted accounts ads are displayed on the “whom to follow” part and include a “follow” option.
Promoted Trends
Twitter has prioritized keeping its users updated on trending topics based on location and interests. The promoted trends section is on the right side of the Twitter feed. Trending topics on Twitter are categorized based on the trending hashtags. Promoting one’s brand in the promoted trends is effective, especially for industry-focused content. You can access the promoted trends on the “Explore bar” or the “Trends for You” part.
Promoted Moments
Facebook stories are viral for promoting content. Twitter also has promoted moment sections, a collection of content telling a story on the platform. It’s an effective way of promoting content and discussion that are industry focused. Promoted content is created on the desktop version of Twitter. Brands can use it as regular marketing content promoted to the target audience. Promoted moments are most effective when you maximize audience targeting of the content.
Automated Ads
Automated Twitter Ads will be a better option if you are using Twitter marketing for the first time. Twitter has an Ad Promote Mode, which allows the platform to automatically use content posted by a brand in its marketing campaigns and promotions. The platform picks the content and the target audience. The automated ads will run indefinitely unless you turn them off, and they have a fixed monthly fee, different from the flexible pricing model you get from the manual ads.
Maximizing the cost of Twitter Ads is essential in tracking the ROI of your marketing practices. It will also show how effective the ads are and whether you are achieving maximum user engagement from the ads. You can also hire a Twitter marketing expert or agency to ensure your marketing strategies are the best and streamlined to your marketing needs and goals.
Ready to Dive into Twitter?
Twitter is a powerful social media marketing tool. Depending on your marketing needs and goals, you can use the free or paid advertising model available on the platform. Any brand can achieve maximum bard awareness and lead generation when using Twitter marketing. The platform has features which increase the effectiveness of creating marketing content that is more target specific. Twitter marketing is suitable for any business, regardless of size.
We are confident our guide on Twitter marketing has left you educated enough to dive into Twitter marketing as part of your marketing strategy. You can reach out to any of our experts and get a more detailed guide and assistance on using Twitter marketing for your business.
