Among all the social media platforms, Twitter has proven to be immensely popular for businesses. With 75% of B2B businesses using Twitter to market their services, the social media platform occupies the third spot in terms of being a marketing tool with Facebook and LinkedIn leading the pack.
So, if you’re in the process of creating a social media marketing strategy for your brand, make sure to devise a Twitter marketing strategy as well. The focus should not just be on Facebook. Your business could do with Twitter’s 321 million active monthly users. Yes, you heard right. The number of twitter users has grown exponentially in the last four years. It’s good for brand exposure.
Now that being said, while devising a Twitter marketing strategy for your brand, you have to keep a few things in mind. Most notably, you need to ensure it contains a few key elements because without them, your strategy is bound to be ineffective.
Let’s look at the 6 must-have elements for your marketing strategy-
1. A Well-Defined Target Audience
You can’t possibly have a Twitter strategy without a target audience. In fact, it forms the foundation of any marketing plan you intend to create.
Can’t figure out who your ideal target audience should be? It’s pretty simple. It comprises of people who would be interested in buying your product or service. So, say for example, your company sells software for accounts. Then your target audience would be accounting firms, educational institutions and solo accountants.
If you’re still not sure of the scope of your audience, you can make use of a couple of tools to figure it out.
Twellow is like the Yellow Pages of Twitter, which you can use to find out Twitter followers who follow the niche your brand specializes in. You can also use Tweepi.com to scout for matching followers.
2. Concrete Goals and Objectives
If audience forms a core part of your Twitter marketing strategy, so do goals and objectives. Without clearly defined goals, your strategy will be ineffective to say the least. So before you spring into action, determine what exactly you wish to achieve via your Twitter handle.
Here are sample goals that can help you get a clear direction –
• Improve customer service
• Increase the traffic to your website’s blog page
• Increase product sales of your brand
• Promote your brand and its products
• Increase the number of Twitter followers you have
• Get leads that convert via increased customer engagement
You could have one single goal or a combination of them. That’s up to you. Just ensure they are time-oriented. Giving yourself a deadline can help you accomplish your targets better.
3. Tools to Monitor and Measure Your Plan
Formulating a Twitter marketing strategy is half the battle won. You have to constantly monitor and measure the plan you’ve created to know if it’s working or needs a change, which means you need a couple of tools at your disposal.
The right tools can help you know whether your tweets were received positively or negatively and what the level of engagement was.
As for tools you can use, Google Analytics will prove particularly handy. You can use Google Analytics to see how many users landed up on your site as a result of the tweets you shared on your handle. Another tool you can use is Tweet Counter. This tool will help you keep tabs on the followers you have, the people/businesses you follow and individual tweets.
4. Live Video Tweets
Video sells considerably well these days. Studies show 82% of Twitter users use the platform to watch videos. That’s a big number if you come to think of it, and is precisely the reason why live video tweets should be a part of your Twitter marketing strategy.
Putting up live video broadcasts is one of the most engaging and personal ways to increase brand awareness on a large scale. Especially now that twitter has added the facility to go live straight from the app.
What’s more, Cisco predicts that videos will drive 75% of the global mobile data traffic. So it’s your time to make hay while the sun shines and ensure that your brand gets the right kind of exposure on Twitter.
5. Tweets that Support a Cause
Customers these days are smart and have high expectations from the brands they follow on social media. They expect them to take a moral stand on critical issues such as the environment and other social and global issues.
Putting up positive, encouraging and sensitive tweets on burning issues will not only improve your brand’s image as a more humane and sensitive one but will also help increase the number of your brand’s followers on Twitter.
You can also use your Twitter account to join support groups and focus on empowering the neglected sections of society. Just ensure you maintain sensitivity and use the right Hashtags so you don’t offend anyone and also get more traction.
6. Room for Active Participation on Tweets
Twitter is a great place to engage your audience in meaningful conversations. It is a platform for discussion and debate and hence, your marketing strategy should include room for active participation on tweets. You should let your brand voice shine as well on a public platform like Twitter.
Again quite a few tools can help you monitor conversations on your Twitter handle. Some of the good ones include Tweetdeck, which keeps track of hashtags; and Talkerwalker Alerts, which help you monitor conversations around topics that are related to your brand.
