I’ve been using Twitter actively since 2007. Over the years, I have used the app differently, but it has always been a place for me to learn, share information, and engage directly with my community. As a Gen Xer who works with several millennials and Gen Zers, I have been criticized because of my love for the app. It’s all in good fun, though.
I am not a big fan of recycling someone else’s thought leadership, but below are a few Twitter marketing best practices I have learned over the years. These are more conceptual and directional, not what you would find in a blog post written by a content marketer for other content marketers. When marketing on Twitter, brands should consider the following best practices.
Twitter is a platform centered around conversation and community. While buying media will help scale a campaign, any brand activation should consider some form of community engagement on the app to get users talking. Twitter is the only online community where users converse back and forth about the topics they care about. As a result, there is a goldmine of conversational data that brands can use to map campaigns to the buyer’s journey.
A community is like a relationship. And in any relationship, both parties must contribute in different ways–listening, conversing, sharing, and more. The goal is to make the other party feel special and valued so that they want to keep coming back for more interactions.
This is how you need to engage with your community on Twitter. By providing a brand experience on Twitter that’s open, transparent, and engaging, you are inviting your community to participate in that experience and tell others about it. It’s a concept called reciprocal altruism. Reciprocal altruism is a concept where you “give without expectation of receiving anything in return.”
This goes without saying, and most brands have already operationalized their social care teams on Twitter and other platforms. But this is a good reminder that you should integrate social care into your Twitter marketing strategy, as users will ask questions or have concerns.
Your social care team should be prepared to handle any customer service issues arising from your digital marketing campaigns. By integrating social care, you can ensure that users have a positive experience with your brand on the platform. Additionally, monitoring and responding to tweets about your brand can help you gather feedback and understand how people perceive your campaigns.
Many people indeed use Twitter to find and consume news-related content. Even Gen Z and younger millennials use the app to find breaking news. With this in mind, it’s important to craft specific components of your digital marketing plan to make it easy for audiences to share the content. Also, there have been several new Twitter features and capabilities that account for longer-form content.
Also, from a paid media perspective and assuming you have the proper targeting, Twitter ads perform exceptionally well in driving traffic to a website, with low cost-per-clicks (CPC) and high click-through rates (CTR).
You’re missing out if you work in B2B marketing and you’re not using Twitter to engage with audiences. The technology and B2B conversation on Twitter is huge and growing year after year. In addition, several IT decision-makers use a platform to discuss different technologies and business issues.
When marketing on Twitter, brands must realize that Twitter isn’t just a place where you can pop in and out for campaigns. It’s an investment in time, community, and creating engaging content that provides value to your audience.
Twitter is a powerful platform for marketing and engaging with customers, but it’s also a time investment. By following these Twitter marketing best practices, you will see value in using Twitter to engage with your audiences and build a strong community.
When creating your Twitter marketing strategy, consider how you can use the platform to create an open and transparent brand experience that engages your community. And don’t forget to integrate social care into your digital marketing strategy.
Responding to tweets about your brand can help you understand how people perceive your campaigns and improve customer satisfaction. Finally, remember that B2B and tech influencers still use Twitter–so don’t forget to engage with them as part of your influencer marketing strategy!
Here are a few Twitter marketing case studies that show you a few different ways how large and small brands are using the platform effectively.