Twitter, with more than 450 million monthly active users, should be part of your marketing plan. It's the fifth most popular social media network, and it's a treasure trove of customer information. It creates the perfect opportunity to build brand awareness, drive sales, and gain brand followers.
For many brands, Twitter is the number one touch point with consumers and fans. In fact, 82% of B2B marketers make Twitter a part of their content marketing strategy. However, with 500 million tweets made every day, you must be clever and savvy in order to keep your audience's attention.
Here are 6 Steps to Creating a Winning Twitter Marketing Strategy:
1. Analyze the Competition
Twitter might easily be the most successful marketing channel because without paying a dollar on advertising, you can create a focused following for practically any subject. But it can be overwhelming when you’re first starting out, which is why we recommend reviewing your competitors' Twitter accounts first.
By identifying flaws or holes in their social media approach you can uncover areas where you can set yourself apart, and this will help you to come up with your own strategy. You can also view which types of content create the most audience engagement. NOW Affinio’s platform allows you to analyze your competitors or your own audience on Twitter, and understand how that audience breaks out, what they are most interested in, and which content resonates with them the most. Hootsuite also offers a free competitive analysis template that you can use to input everything you learn through your analysis.
2. Find your Brands Voice
Simply put, your brand's voice should match its personality. Is your brand smart, funny, or satirical? Once you define your values and brand identity, you must translate that into your tweets and content design. Brands who succeed at this know how to incorporate who they are into every tweet. Take Wendy’s for example, they use Twitter to talk directly to their customers, and they have a style of humor that has turned their strategy into an art form. One Twitter user asked Wendy's to point her to the nearest McDonald's and they tweeted back with an image of a trash can. Their own Twitter bio even states “We like our tweets the same way we like our fries: hot, crispy, and better than anyone expects from a fast-food restaurant."
3. Create a content calendar
It's crucial to build a content calendar that will make it simple for you to plan your tweets, stay consistent, and ultimately stay top-of-mind for your audience. If you need ideas, you can build your content around what’s trending on Twitter. Twitter also offers a Marketing calendar that outlines key events that your brand can create engagement from and join in the conversation. Make sure to schedule your tweets for optimal post times!
When crafting your tweets you can choose to:
- Self promote by talking about your product/ service and what makes it unique or valuable
- Start a conversation with your community by asking them a question
- Retweet people that are talking about things that are relevant to your brand, or
- @ Mention relevant people or influencers to talk to them directly.
If you’re not sure who is relevant to your audience or brand, NOW Affinio can help with that too, by surfacing who your audience is @ mentioning in their own tweets, as well as populating their top influencers on Twitter.
4. Go Viral
A viral tweet can keep your audience talking for weeks, but crafting one has become an art form. Asking for retweets is one of the simplest methods to make your tweets go viral. You can ask for a retweet in exchange for giving away something to your followers - like the brand “Not Your Mothers” did below by offering a chance to win a free PR box by following them and retweeting their post.
Another way to go viral is to ask your audience a thought-provoking question - like Delta did when they asked their audience what their No. 1 travel destination on their bucket list was. Get creative, and make and share your own memes. Netflix is a pro at making memes out of scenes from their shows, and these get their audience not only excited for the show but replying to their tweets.
One way to check the type of content that could go viral with your audience is by using NOW Affinio to look at your audience’s most liked or most retweeted posts:
5. Use Twitter Polls
Encourage your audience to express their ideas and viewpoints. Use Twitter polls and post thoughtful questions, then Retweet the most intriguing responses or share the results with your followers. Polls are also a great way to get direct product feedback or do some customer research as Costa Coffee did by asking their customers which menu favorite they should put back on the menu.
6. Master the Art of Hashtags
Nearly twice as many people engage with tweets that include hashtags. Using hashtags is a way to get your tweets seen by a broader audience. Sensible has a good guide for finding and using the right ones for your brand. You can also create your own, specifically related to your Twitter campaigns and encourage your audience to use them too.
With their #KohlsSweeps Twitter campaign for Black Friday, Kohl's generated a record-breaking amount of audience engagement - 450K engagements on their Twitter page, and more than 370K Twitter mentions. It created a #KohlsSweeps Twitter Contest that encouraged Twitter users to answer trivia questions about recent pop culture events for the opportunity to win gift cards and other prizes - and in their responses they had to tweet at Kohls using the #KohlsBlackFriday and #Sweepstakes hashtags.
Creating a winning Twitter Marketing strategy doesn’t have to be a daunting task, and tools like NOW Affinio make it easier for anyone to surface the insights they need to get it right the first time.