Every day, brands are vigorously discussed ubiquitously online; some listen but many don’t pay attention, what is being talked about them. A brand’s presence on twitter can make a real difference in your entire marketing equation. Many digital marketers and brands still miss important opportunities by treating Twitter as entirely and exclusively a broadcast platform to influence customers with little or no community-building efforts.
Twitter, as a great social media platform, is a tough nut to crack and most of the people keep struggling on improving their brand’s presence on twitter.
If used effectively, Twitter can bring brands closer to their audience. It can help you generate a hell lot of traffic to your site, help find new customers for your business or brand.
You can quickly increase your brand awareness, along with getting a high conversion rate and a lot more, when you use Twitter effectively.
Twitter is also a very effective platform to build your brand online.
Improve Your Brand’s Presence on Twitter
Considering that, here are a few insights that I have gained over the years and that will help you improve your brand’s presence on Twitter:
1. Keep Your Brand’s Twitter Account Always Active
By this I mean, you need to put up a little more than the cursory 2-3 tweets that you post on a daily basis. Make your calendar to post at least 8-9 tweets in a day. Keep answering your customers’ and followers’ queries. Keep your conversations going on with followers and influencers.
Ideally, you should put up a tweet once every 2 hours.
This works perfectly fine and keeps your brand active the whole day, and your followers love to see and interact with your brand.
2. Do Not Fix Timings to Your Tweets
Be a real person, not a machine. As a person, you don’t go and tweet at sharp 9 am every day, correct? The same goes for your brand.
Don’t make it look like its being managed by a social media person. Keep it flexible and interesting enough for your followers.
However, if you conduct an activity on your Twitter at a set time, then obviously you must adhere to that one for sure.
For example, if you have a contest at 11 A.M. daily, then it should start then, don’t delay it even by a minute, in that case, or you will lose the trust of your followers on your brand.
3. Be in Sync with Your Followers
See what time of day most of your followers are active, this is significant because tweets have a very short shelf life and if you are tweeting at a time when your followers are not active, then there’s no point really posting your tweets.
Because your message no matter how important it was, just got buried in their Tweet List.
This will also help you to increase interactions and getting some brand mentions and ReTweet’s that you as a brand desire so much.
4. Keep Your Twitter Different than Your Facebook
Twitter and Facebook both are entirely different things and their functions are also different, so don’t put up the same content that you put up on Facebook at the same time on Twitter.
Juggle your content and give your audience different content on your Facebook and Twitter to keep them interested in your brand, otherwise, why will people follow your brand on both your Facebook and Twitter?
But the things which are of utmost importance, like an important announcement or news flash, should be posted on both Facebook and Twitter at the same time otherwise don’t put the same content everywhere.
5. Converse and Engage Your Followers
- First of all, what you talk about and how you talk matters a lot on Twitter. However, there is no defined principal for that but, stepping out of the norm but staying within context helps. For instance, if your brand manufactures skincare products, don’t always talk about your products and their benefits on the skin, you could play with the word ‘skin’, or ‘body’ or associated terms, and you can talk about the natural herbs used for skin toning or skin softening. You can also talk about the home remedies for skin care, it won’t decrease your sale but increase your brands’ image and trust in your followers.
- Secondly, keep replying to your follower’s queries and try to be humane while staying relevant. Talk about day to day real-life events and plug your product in the tweet. For example, you sell men’s clothes, so you can tailor your tweets around that, like “Which fashion style would you like to bring back?”
- Thirdly, talk to your followers, as they are human too, and they know there’s a person behind the @handle. And it really helps a lot building your brand’s trust among your followers.
- Be funny and be interesting for your followers. You can use funny pics, video links that tie in with your industry if not brand will work. But don’t use them all the time.
- Don’t always preach, ask questions to your followers as well. And you will see how many different and great things people come up with.
6. Use #hashtags to Stimulate Engagement
Using #hashtags is another great way to be in the streamline. You can use dedicated #hashtags like #fashion, #shoes, etc. related to your industry in your tweets and tag it with a few influencers.
And then you will see that people actually take part in the conversation and a lot of retweets on your tweet. This way you can reach out to a great number of people out there on Twitter.
7. Reciprocate
Show gratitude when someone compliments you, similarly respond with a welcome note, and when someone thanks to you.
Thank people when they retweet your tweet as they are making you reach out to other people where you yourself cannot reach.
8. Know Your Industry
Take some time to research the industry you’re in, as it will help you in understanding what your followers will be interested in.
Remember, your followers already know about the stuff you have written on your website like a mission statement or about your brand, its philosophy, etc.
But by researching your industry you will get better insights into the expectations your followers and other audiences have with you.
9. Don’t Hesitate to Follow
In the world of Twitter, it’s a good idea to follow influential people related to your industry, this way you will keep yourself updated on what they are tweeting about, and accordingly, you can tailor your strategy for your twitter.
10. Contest & Prizes
When running a contest on Twitter, always make sure you ask people to follow you in order to be eligible to win a prize. This way you will get a lot of followers for your brand.
Recommendations for Brands
One consideration for brands using Twitter is whether there’s a need for multiple accounts or you should keep one single account.
By having several accounts you risk the chance of having a smaller number of followers per account and will take you a long time to grow as a brand.
However, it’ll help you deliver specific and clear messages to a target audience.
Another consideration is the usage between a marketing and customer service team – both ultimately need to use an account so at times it’s more suitable to have separate accounts; one for broadcast and another for engagement.
Ultimately as the custodian of your brand, you need to decide this and choose the correct option for your business.
