140 characters and 307 million monthly active users.
Twitter.
A huge business benefits and even bigger marketing challenges. Are you staying up-to-the-minute with your online audiences? Do you know how to identify your customers’ pain points? Do you know your competitors’ real-time marketing tricks? Do you know how to use them for your business? Even if you answered “no” to any of the above stated questions, don’t worry. We have good news for you. This post will tell you all you need to know to unlock the power of the fastest-moving social media site for your business. Ready? Let’s start!
Twitter Best Practices for Your Business
Regardless the scale of your business, or to be more precise, the level of your business’s social media engagement, knowing how to leverage Twitter for maximum results is nowadays an absolute must. The importance of this communication tool is still growing with online audiences following business Twitter accounts as eagerly as they follow other people on the site. It is important to mention too, that these online audiences include not only your potential customers but also vendors, brand advocates, business partners, industry leaders, professional organizations and…competitors. Here are a few steps to follow in order to make the most of Twitter for your marketing communication.
Listen and Observe
Take a moment to observe how other brands are running their Twitter accounts. How they interact with customers and what type of content they share with them. Make sure you take a particularly close look at your competitors activities. Identify the elements of their Twitter marketing strategy that you like and see useful for your brand. You can find your competitors and monitor relevant conversations using either search.twitter.com (manual search) or, if you require a deeper insight, a social listening tool. Then, when you already know what the rules of your game are, try testing similar tactics to learn what engage your followers the most. Don’t rush when you observe, though, but be responsive and flexible when something is going wrong. Twitter never sleeps and information is being spread in the blink of an eye.
Be Consistent
By its nature, the continuous flow of the Twitter “real-time” updates means that brands that do decide to use it must be willing to commit to its ongoing and consistent support. What stands for this ongoing support? Monitoring the channel, manually or with a selected social listening tool, and maintaining a high level of engagement both with the followers but also with any other user tweeting about your business. A misaligned tweet or a lack of engagement on our site can harm your business in many ways including a serious brand reputation crisis. Opening a business Twitter account and leaving it unattended is like inviting your friends for a party and sneaking through the back doors unnoticed. Can you feel the guests? Treat the others the way you want to be treated, in particular when it comes to your online fast-moving and super reactive customers.
Build Rapport
Social media platforms as Twitter is to get social. It is all about sharing information. Giving and taking. Therefore, your Twitter marketing strategy should include both sharing your content and following other Twitter users. There are plenty of brilliant online tools to help you build a meaningful audience and
Let Your Brand Shine
The broader marketing coverage and the more media channels involved in your communication, the bigger the challenge to keep your brand image consistent. Your Twitter account name and the content you post should have the same feel and look as your website, Facebook page, blog, and other elements of your total online presence. With the Twitter bio limited to only 160 characters, make sure you make the most of your Twitter Cover Photo that is the first thing social media users notice once landing on your page. Then, your brand’s voice! Social media platforms shorten the distance between a consumer and brand. Thus, communication through these channels should be less formal. Strive for an approachable communication style that is authentic, friendly and unique. Wit and humour can help in providing your followers with an entertainment. It also adds a human face to your business that is unreplicable to your competitors and easy to fall in love with to your customers.
Use Hashtags
A hashtag or pound symbol can be used following any word or phrase to identify a common topic or theme. Its main role is to help us find posts we are interested in or reach the topic we would like to involve in. From a business perspective, It is an excellent tool to categorize your social media content, expand your Twitter audience and to engage an audience in a creative online campaign. When you’re going to launch a campaign that is focused on a hashtag, remember that you will need a special promotion. As Natalia mentioned in her awesome post about the power of hashtags: “Think about ambassadors that may help you explain what the hashtag means. Maybe you will also need a landing page where posts will be published. You can launch a social stream with mentions posted during the campaign to show the world what people wanted to share with you”.
Develop Your Strategy
“A bad plan is better than none at all” said Frank Marshall and we agree with him in 100% as far as a sucessful Twitter marketing strategy is concerned. Your brand’s Twitter presence should not be a result of coincidences and/or chaotic activities. You should design a plan with all the goals, time-frames, methods and budget specified. Start with the goals. Ask yourself questions: “What and when I want to achieve?” Be precise, though, your goal should be properly expressed, for example: “I want to grow my Twitter audience to 4,000 fans in 2 months”.
In order to fuel some innovation and creativity into your Twitter conquest plan, you might want to use Disney Creative’s Strategy. Generate your ideas and goals as a dreamer, analyse and plan their execution as a realist and discover the potential barriers and methods to overcome them as a critic.
Keep an Eye on Your Business
Sound observation and listening skills are useful not only at the beginning of your adventure with Twitter but also when you make good friends with it. Keeping an eye on your competitors, staying up to date with all the mentions about your brand, identifying your customers’ pain points and addressing them with an outstanding customer service, innovating your offer, pitching sales, capitalizing on the real-time marketing interactions? Sounds challenging? It does, but when equipped with social media monitoring tool it can be all much easier and even fun! Have a look at our most prominent case studies examples for proofs and inspirations!
Now, do you still have doubts on how to turn 140 characters into online marketing gold? Or maybe you have some other juicy-best-Twitter-practices for marketing communication to share with us? Don’t make us ask you twice! The comments section is yours!
The post How to Leverage Twitter in Marketing Communication appeared first on Social Listening Academy.
