Twitter is the largest microblogging network with more than 330 million monthly active users, which makes it a great platform for spreading your message far and wide and increasing your personal brand awareness. Read on to learn how to choose the topics you want to be known for, how often to post, as well as advice on boosting the visibility and engagement rates on your posts. We’ve also included some great quotes from the experts to guide you along the way.
1. Choose the topics you want to be known for
When you’re first starting out it’s important to identify which topics you want to be known for. You can start by simply searching Twitter for those topics and Twitter will show you the top posts and the top people creating content in that area. Have a read of the posts and make a note of hashtags are commonly being used. Once you’ve found the hashtags, you can easily search for them and find out where the conversation is.
In addition Twitter has a handy topics section where you can add which topics you wish to follow, it will then curate the top content and personalize your feed to include the top tweets in those topics. Click the more button on the left hand side under profile and then click topics to open up the preference window. Click “more topics at the bottom to see an expanded list of topics to follow.
“Choose a niche that allows you to showcase your strengths and hone your skills further. Deciding on a particular niche will help you streamline your audience and tailor your content to suit their preferences.” Shane Barker
2. Connect and Engage with influencers
Once you have chosen your topics you need to find the community of influencers who are driving the most attention around those topics and connect with them. In order to be seen as an authority on a topic it is important to identify, connect and engage with experts in that field. Network-building will help you grow your status and pave the way for better opportunities.
Commenting on your network’s posts and actively involving others in the conversation will help you extend your reach & visibility. Peer validation is one of the most powerful stamps of approval you can get.
Collaborate on high value, conversation-worthy content. This will grow your influence, get your content shared in online and offline networks, and unlock networking opportunities for you to connect to your target audience.
Think about whose opinion you value in your industry and which blogs you subscribe to, and this will give you a good idea of who is an influencer in your industry. If you value someone’s opinion, there is a good chance other people will, too.” Neil Patel
If you want to learn how to identify the right influencers for you, check out we wrote a blog here.
3. Post regularly and maintain consistency
According to Peter Bray once a tweet has been live for 18 minutes, it has reached the peak of its engagement. Twitter is a more fast-paced social media platform than the likes of LinkedIn or Facebook, so messages often get buried more quickly which means you need to post more frequently on Twitter than other platforms in order to be seen.
Statistically it has been shown that you should tweet at least 3 times a day. You can of course post more than that, however you should bear in mind that posting too much is likely to harm your average engagement. Not only that it will probably become annoying to your followers to see that many posts from you. So, it’s important to strike a balance that suits your audience and your work schedule. Everyone has to find their rhythm that they can commit to and want to maintain.
Everyone’s audience is different, so it’s best to experiment and measure your own results in order to optimize your strategy. Luckily this is very easy to do by logging in to Twitter Analytics where you can navigate to Tweets, and see a bar graph of dates coupled with the number of tweets that went out on those dates below and the number of impressions they received.
Try experimenting with the number of tweets per day and look for the sweet spot that gives you the maximum engagement.
4. Don’t just tweet words – be visual
Research shows that articles with images get 94% more total views, so make your content stand out with multimedia. Try combining images with text to create visual content that is appealing. Adding text to an image is a great way of saying more without using up your precious character limit. In the below example Neal Schaffer has used a combination of tweet text and text on the image to promote an upcoming interview.
As well as images, videos are a very powerful way of communicating your message. Twitter reported that videos are 6X more likely to be retweeted than tweets with photos. One of the reasons for this is that video is effective within the timeline, videos will autoplay causing the scroller to stop and pay attention more.
In keeping with Twitter favouring of content that is brief and easy to consume, it’s better to keep your videos short. According to Hubspot Twitter’s #VideoOfTheDay averaged just 43 seconds long.
“Video gives you the ability to make a connection with the viewer on a much more personal level. You can tell a much more valuable story and engage the viewer emotionally. Once you’ve made a connection with the viewer, they are probably going to remember your brand, your company and the products/services you offer. Your company stays fresh in their mind.” Jo Ginger
5. Don’t just share your own content
It’s important to strike a balance between the amount of self-promotion you do and the amount of engagement and conversations you participate in. The 4-1-1 Rule was coined by Tippingpoint Labs and Joe Pulizzi of the Content Marketing Institute. The rule states: “For every one self-serving post, you should repost one relevant post and most importantly share four pieces of relevant content written by others.”
By following this rule you are not just sharing your own content but also providing helpful insights relevant to your audience written by others. This can be industry thought leader content, news and trends.
“While the numbers don’t have to be exact, it’s the philosophy that makes this work. When you share influencer content, they notice. And you share this content without asking for anything in return (so that when you do need something someday, those influencers are more likely to say yes).” Joe Pullizi
6. Tag influencers & employees
Tagging an influencer or an employee in your post will notify them, which encourages engagement. While you don’t need to follow or be followed by the people you tag, it’s important to only tag people who are relevant to the post, otherwise it will be seen as spam. Be strategic in who you mention and try not to over mention the same people all the time. Don’t tag too many people in the post either, a post containing a long list of names looks a bit spammy. No more than 5-10 people is optimal.
“The biggest thing to remember is what your goal is and what you are trying to accomplish. Tagging people that are quoted in an article or the post will likely not be seen as spammy. The tagged people will likely appreciate it. Just tagging people randomly seems to be spammy to me. Consider how your tag will be perceived by the person that is being tagged.” – Christoph Trappe
7. Use hashtags
Hashtags present a great opportunity for influencers to extend the reach of their posts and get their content in front of the right people. By adding hashtags that are frequently searched you will increase the chance of your content appearing in people’s feeds and getting shared. According to Twitter’s own research into hashtags individuals can see 100% increase in engagement by using hashtags.
According to Buffer Tweets with hashtags receive 2x more engagement than those without hashtags. Tweets with one or two hashtags have 21% higher engagement than those with three or more hashtags. And tweets that use more than two hashtags actually show a 17% drop in engagement.
It’s advisable to only use two hashtags in a post, so you need choose which ones you use wisely. Choose trending hashtags only if they fit the content you are creating and the type of conversation you want. Make sure you research the hashtags before you use them, they may not mean what you think they mean.
“Hashtags bring like-minded people together. Users with similar interests are able to interact with one another on social media; when they search hashtags of their interests, they are able to join a bigger conversation, and connect with others on that topic.” Rich Brooks
8. Put your twitter handle in all your bios
Twitter is often seen as the place to go for real time, breaking news and moment to moment conversations. So people may wish to follow you there opposed to other channels, to get access to information more quickly. Even though they may have first heard about you in a blog, or on another social platform like LinkedIn or Clubhouse, Twitter may be their platform of choice, so it’s important to include a link to you handle in all your bios to let people easily find you on Twitter.
9. Go Live!
79% of marketers say live video leads to more authentic audience interactions, and 82% of audiences would rather watch live video than read a social post. Twitter Live is a great way interact with your audience and can be used for anything from a monologue to the camera, or a webinar with guests, or live streaming from an event. It’s a good idea to advertise your upcoming live stream to increase the number of people who actually watch it. Promote your upcoming live stream via you mailing list and social media channels.
Twitter live is only available on a mobile or Tablet device. Here’s some steps on how to start a live video:
- Tap the camera icon from the tweet composer.
- Tap Live at the bottom selector.
- Fill in an optional description that will appear as a Tweet, and a location if desired.
- To invite guests before going live, tap Invite guests to select or search for people to join your broadcast.
- Tap the profile icon of the guests you want to join.
- Tap Save.
- Tap Go live. Your live broadcast, with description and location (if added), will appear in a Tweet in your follower’s timeline and on your profile.
Once you’re live you can start talking to your followers and using the chat for text. People can join the video and comment or send reactions to show their support. Engage with Your Viewers and take full advantage of the fact that this is an interactive medium.
10.Optimize your content based on Analytics
Insights into the performance of your tweets can help you better understand if you were successful in optimizing your strategy to gain visibility with the right people. Make a note of which posts performed the best and try to work out why. Was it because you used a certain hashtag, or because you tagged a certain influencer? Was it because that particular topic struck a chord with people? Once you have an idea as to why, you can experiment with replicating that style of post, and test to see if you get better levels of engagement or not.
Log in to Twitter Analytics, navigate to Tweets, and click on Top Tweets to see what your best performing tweets were in terms of impressions, number of engagements and engagement rate. You can also click “view tweet activity” to see how many link clicks, detail expands, like and retweets the post received.
If you notice any similarities between your top tweets, make a note of them and try repeating that again to see if it improves your results.
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