While Facebook steals the limelight in every social media marketing discussion, Twitter remains the best social platform for real time engagement. 
It also has the ideal state of affairs for brands to propagate word of mouth or advocacy, with 49% users actively talking about brands and businesses.
Twitter’s potential as a marketing channel maybe clear, few people approach the platform with the right strategy. What works on Facebook needn’t apply to Twitter, as the dynamics of both of these platforms are diverse.
This is a list of seven Twitter marketing tips that you can apply to your business.
1. Tweet without links
If you’re tempted to include a link on every tweet, hold back every once a while, because tweets without links get more engagement.
Remember, that not all tweets require links, and by being selective, you add value with the ones that do. For instance, SocialMediaExaminer ran a small experiment and shared the same post twice, once without the link. The sans-link post got more engagement.
Twitter is a great platform to initiate and build relationships, have conversations that matter. Ensure that you make the most of that ability. Initiate discussions and acknowledge everyone’s response.
2. Reverse engineer top tweets
How do you know what is going to work on Twitter? Figure out what has already worked for you. Twitter’s analytics automatically reports your top performing tweets for each month. The rest of your best tweets can be found under Analytics >Tweets >Top tweets.
Once you have your top performing tweets, break them down into individual elements. Find common elements across your most popular tweets and construct a formula for Twitter success. This is one of the smartest ways to enhance your Twitter marketing. Your top tweets can be found in Buffer too.
Alternatively, you could reverse engineer other people’s tweets to identify what’s working for them, and apply the same to yours.
3. Curate content
One of the smartest ways to boost engagement on Twitter, is to involve other people. Running an event? Curate content being shared by your speakers and attendees. Managing a blog? Retweet content being shared by contributors and guests.
On a general note, you need to interact with people on a regular basis to build relationships with them. If you’re following too many people, this exercise can be hard. Fortunately, Twitter has lists, through which you can follow and interact with select people.
Yet another alternative is DrumUp, which curates @mentions and hashtags along with articles related to a keyword, so when you schedule posts from the tool, you can add @mentions and catch the attention of important people.
4. Use the right hashtags
If you want to get noticed by the right people, include hashtags that add context to your tweets. Start by finding your most popular hashtags using Twitter Analytics.
You could use RiteTag or Hashtagify to identify the best hashtags for your tweets.
Hashtagify suggests hashtags closely related to the keywords you enter. The tool also calculates the strength of the hashtags, based on their occurrence and usage, so you are best placed to decide which ones to use.
RiteTag gives you the relevance of hashtags. Once you have chosen which ones to use, you can check them on RiteTag to see if they’re not popular enough or overused.
5. Ask for RTs
As social scientist Dan Zarrella has advocated for years, that you need to ask to receive. Traditionally, marketers and salespeople have always instructed their prospects to behave a certain way, but for some reason, asking is considered uncool on social media.
Asking for retweets may seem inappropriate, but it isn’t. In fact, HubSpot states that asking for RTs improves your chances of getting them. Plus, when you spell the word retweet, the likelihood of receiving them increases by 23X.
You can’t ask for RTs on every post, but occasionally, when you need that extra mileage on a post, you can include an RT request.
6. Conduct polls
One of the easiest social media activities to initiate is the Twitter poll, which appears as part of Twitter’s text editor. You simply need to open the tweet composition window, click on the poll icon, and add your question and choices.
Polls are not only fun for your followers, but they’re also multipurpose from your point of view. You can use them for consumer and market research, feedback and general engagement.
It maybe easy to create polls, but crafting questions that can initiate exciting conversations takes some effort.
You could take inspiration from brands that have pulled it off, or social media influencers who know what they’re doing.
7. Tweeting at optimal times
Your tweeting schedule should be decided based on who your audience is and when they are likely to be active on each social network. To identify where most of your audience resides, visit the Audience tab in your Twitter account and look at country.
You could use a tool like Tweriod to figure out the optimal times to tweet based on your audience. The tool records when your tweets get most engagement and suggests the best time intervals for you to tweet.
Tweet timing is critical because tweets have a short lifespan. If you don’t catch your followers within 8-10 minutes of publishing a tweet, you may never be able to reach them.
Wrap
Twitter is a great social platform to connect with your audience real time, initiate important conversations and turn them into loyal fans. However, creating that level of engagement on the platform requires special attention and the right twitter marketing strategies. This post can serve as a great start.
Disha, great tips here. I’m still shy about asking for retweet but will try it again.
I loved the reminder to not just tweet links out.
I do have a question. How do you find polls after you create them, and when they are done?
Loving Ms Ileanes videos, so professional. She’s the queen of video, ahead of her own time:)
Hi Lisa! Thanks for your kind words :). Great question! When you participate in polls you may receive a notification displaying the results. When I create polls, I just keep their links on a Spreadsheet so I can conveniently monitor them and find them after they’re done.
Best,
Disha
Nice post! I am about to start twitter marketing for my business site but could not really find a good way to start but this one does help a lot.
Hey Chris, 🙂
So glad this helps, wish you the best with your website!
– Disha
Hello Disha,
Nice to see you here on Ileane’s blog.
Indeed Twitter is one of the best social media platforms, for marketing our brands and to establish relations with other fellow bloggers.
I have been using twitter since quite long and the point you made out “sharing tweets without links” something I learn here for the first time.
I have been sharing links along with the tweets.I still hesitate to ask for the re-tweets, need to look up on this issue and try to ask people to do it.
Hash tags works amazingly for us, if we know hot put them correctly they would create a win win situation for us.
Thanks for the share.
Shantanu.
Hey Shantanu 🙂
It’s nice to see you here too!
Yeah, tweets with links can visually overwhelm people who visit your Twitter page. By posting without links once in a while, you can add variety to your page with quote covers and other amazing standalone visuals.
Twitter is one of my favorite platforms also, for the same reasons you have stated.
Best,
Disha
Very helpful blog. Reverse engineering top tweets is the best way to judge whether what to tweet and what not to.
Thanks Amaya 🙂 Agreed! That’s my go-to strategy when I’m stuck.
Hi Disha,
Great tips about twitter.
I personally use twitter regularly and often times the engagement is directly related to the time I post.
So timing plays a crucial role. Just make sure your targeted twitter followers and find out when they will be available.
You can use tools like Buffer app to find out the optimal timings to tweet to get the best results.
Also asking for RT’s help a lot. I have been using since years and almost always I get the best results.
Just don’t over use it if you want the best results.
Thanks for the write up
Hi Disha,
Lots of useful information shared here..! Thanks…
Twitter has a different style of marketing, attraction..this article clearly explains that different style.Curate Content grabs user attraction…
Hey Rakesh 🙂
Glad you found it useful. Content curation can be so effective, because there’s just so much information out there!
Hello Disha,
I’m still learning the ins and outs of using Twitter. I’ve learned a lot just by jumping in and learning as I go.
To tell you the truth, I need to take the time to learn more about using hashtags. When it comes to that, I just pretty much use them willy nilly.
I think I am going to spend some time this morning checking out the article on finding your popular hashtags using analytics.
Thanks for sharing these tips, you can bet that I’ll be using them to help me improve my Twitter marketing.
Have a great day 🙂
Susan
Hey Susan :),
That’s alright, we’re all always learning. Hope these tips help you get a lot of exposure on Twitter.
Best,
Disha
Hello
Disha,
Twitter is also one of the best platform for marketing our brands. That’s why now, its user is grow day by day. I also think twitter is best social media platform for real time engagement.
In this post you share very effective tips on twitter marketing. All the points are helpful and easy to know how it is benefits for marketing.
Thanks for sharing with us.
Praveen verma
Hey Praveen 🙂
Yup, I find Twitter excellent for real time engagement as well. Glad you found the tips useful, hope they help you reach your goals.
Best,
Disha
I have come to really love #1 Disha. Link-free tweets do A-OK for me. I pepper them in thru automated updates but mainly through a 20 to 30 minute, manual engagement stretch every day. I hop on Tweetdeck. I send out an inspirational tweet or 2, but then I retweet a bunch of folks, only RTing text-only tweets. No links allowed. Doing so boosts my engagement and also makes my links more clickable. Loving these tips.
Thanks Disha for your valuable tips.I have been using Twitter from last few months but I am not getting it interesting except following some famous people.I do not have a single idea before reading your post that it has a great impact on business.Your tips are really effective to change my perceptions.Online marketing needs to require some serious brainstorming to determine the best outcome. I was simply stumped on how do I start my online presence? Even tried different platforms but I failed. I found your article more interesting and useful as a tool which could help me explore digital experiences help to get the creative juices flowing.
Nice post Ileane, You shared some intresting & amazing Twitter Marketing tips. Which is really appreciable.
Thanks for this post.
This is actually really helpful! I have no idea that I have been doing it wrong all the time! I’ve been flooding links as much as I can thinking that it is the right thing to do. The sad thing is that it is been done. What should I do? should I delete those past tweets? or just leave it there and move on and do the right thing now? Do you have any suggestions? Fantastic article! Thank you so much
Jessica
Super useful article. 🙂 The idea about not including a link is actually something that’s helped me convert a lot of people into followers. It makes me look less promotional and more like I’m actually trying to provide good content. Memes and pictures seem to do the best and resonate the best especially if it’s something the audience connects with.