1. Engage with Other Users
Content:
If you want other users to engage
with your content, a good way to start is to always interact with theirs first.
Like, respond to, and retweet your users content when you can, and following
them can also help.
You can reply, retweet, favorite, or click on a tweet.
When you respond to other users
or engage with their content, they’ll be more likely to pay attention to what
you’re posting, too. This is especially true considering most brands don’t take
or have the time to interact with a lot of followers, so it can mean more when
you do.
This can also help to build social proof over time, which is
valuable across all social media marketing platforms.
Not only will this increase
engagement, it will help you start to build a relationship between you or your
brand and the users you’re interacting with, expanding the benefits more
concretely—and off Twitter.
2. Retweet Other Users’ Tweets:
You want to do this early and
often. I’m singling out retweeting as engagement because this is what most
users value the most; not only are you liking their content enough to validate
it, but you value it enough to share it.
Reciprocity is an important part of why people choose
to follow and engage with you, psychologically speaking.
Retweeting can be some of the
most powerful engagement you get on a post, since it will carry your content to
that users’ audience. By retweeting your users’ content first, you could have
much better luck when trying to get them retweet and share your own content.
3. Keep Your Tweets Brief:
We are all forced to keep our
tweets relatively brief automatically, with Twitter limiting our posts to 140
characters. This can be challenging enough as it is, but limiting our posts
just a little more can actually increase engagement.
According to multiple different
sites and data, the sweet spot for the number of characters for shareable tweets
is between 80 and 110 characters, including
hashtags and user tags, especially if you’re looking to increase retweets.
When your tweets are between
80-110 characters, they’re more likely to offer value in whatever form you’re
aiming for (whether that’s to entertain, inform, or share an opinion), while
still being brief enough that users can easily retweet them. When at this
length, users will have enough room to briefly add in their own thoughts or
hashtags, while still referring back to you. If you were to use all 140, on the
other hand, users would have to edit your tweet and cut it down so they could
add their text, and for many, this is just too much work.
You want users to share your
content; make it easy for them to do so.
4. Share a Variety of Links:
If you want to get clicks to
your site, the best way to do so is to put links in your Tweets.
While you want to share links to
your most valuable content, sending traffic to your site, you also want to
share content from others, too. With social media, you never want to make it
all about you and your brand; Twitter is no exception.
If you find great content off
Twitter, share it there and tag the brand/user who created it if possible;
they’ll appreciate it, and some of your users might, too.
Sharing links that you find
valuable—and that aren’t your own—can encourage users to pay more attention to
what you’re posting. Even better, it can build relationships between you and
your users and other industry leaders whose content you’re sharing, and they
might later share your content in return.
This can help increase
engagement and send more traffic and new visitors to your site as an added
bonus.
5. Respond When Someone Tweets
to You:
This can be particularly
challenging for large brands or brands that have a large amount of engagement
(even if it’s just when major content goes live), but doing your best to
respond in some way when a user tweets to you can go a long way.
Sending an actual response Tweet
can be the most powerful and effective, especially if they’ve tweeted you or
tagged you in a post that could generate a conversation (such as thanking you,
asking you a question, or sharing a thought they had about your product or
post). When criticism or upset customers are involved, make sure
to respond to them as soon as possible— this
should always take the priority.
Responding when someone tweets
you not only increases the chance that they’ll respond in some way to your
reply, but also that they’ll engage with your posts in the future.
6. Know Your Peak Hours:
Just like with Facebook, there will be certain
times of the day or days of the week when more of your users will be active on
the site or more likely to engage with your content. By being able to find
those peak hours and posting during them, you’ll get more views and you’ll be more
likely to increase engagement and clicks on your post.
Some studies have shown that
posting between 12:00-3:00 on Mondays through Fridays is
among the best time, while others have found slightly different peak hours;
adweek found that 5pm had the highest retweets, while posting between 12 and 6 pm provided the highest CTR.
Most studies were consistent in
the findings that posting during day hours yielded the most engagement and
highest CTRs.
A lot of brands use scheduling
tools like Rignite, Hootsuite, and Buffer to
distribute content to social media; using these tools makes it easier to
schedule content to be posted during your peak hours, especially if your
audience’s prime usage hours aren’t during your work hours.
Ultimately, your peak posting
times may different from the suggestions here; testing how your content
performs at different times will be the best way to determine what times work
best for you and your audience.
7. Use Twitter Ads :
When you’re looking to best
engagement quickly, Twitter Ads can be a good way to do so,
especially if you don’t have a lot of followers or followers that frequently
engage with your content. Twitter Ads do cost money (and can
be more expensive than Facebook Ads), but they can still help increase
engagement when you need it. Promoted tweets work best for this purpose.
As seen here, promoted tweets can garner a massive amount of
engagement.
Though Twitter Ads can be on the
more expensive side, some users have found that Twitter’s click-through rates are actually superior.
Particularly when you want to drive traffic offsite, this makes Twitter Ads a
good, albeit not free, solution.
You can create Twitter Ads by
locating the tab on the same dropdown menu where you can find Twitter
Analytics, which offers reporting for engagement and conversion tracking.
8. Use Twitter Conversational
Ads:
Conversational Ads are currently
in beta so not everyone has them just yet, but some people do, and I think
they’re going to be a powerful tool to drive engagement.
Conversational Ads are designed purely to
increase engagement and brand influence. They follow the idea of promoted
tweets, but come with the addition of CTAs that encourage users to tweet with
hashtags the brand can customize and choose.
When a user clicks on the CTA,
the tweet composer opens with a “pre-populated brand message”that users can
then customize and share, after which they’ll automatically be thanked.
Part of the reason these can be
so powerful is because you’re not just getting engagement on your post, but
your paid post will ideally spawn and inspire multiple organic posts that are
tied to your brand.
Though it’s still in beta
testing, keep an eye out for these; when they roll out, they’re going to be a
great tool to have.
9. Always Provide Value:
Social media, for many, has
become an environment where many users are inclined to share every thought that
pops into their heads. While non-brand users can get away with letting the
world know that they can’t decide if they want a coke or a lemonade, brands
definitely cannot.
Brands can offer value in
different ways; posts can seek to provide value by entertaining, informing,
inspiring, or persuading users.
Providing value, in whatever
form you choose, is among the most important factors to success with content
marketing. Value will keep users coming back and staying interested, and—best
of all—engaging with and clicking on the tweets you’re posting.
10. Always Use Hashtags:
Hashtags are an essential part
of Twitter usage; just like with Instagram, you pretty much
expect a Tweet to come with at least one hashtag attached to it. Not only do
hashtags offer the benefit of helping a relevant audience find you when they
search the hashtag you’re using, but they can also increase engagement.
Tweets with hashtags are 33% more likely to get retweeted than
those without them. This makes sense, considering the additional eyes you may
get, as well as hashtags fit into the culture of Twitter usage.
However, less can also be more:
tweets with only one hashtag are 69% more likely to get retweeted than those
with two hashtags.
Whether you’re using a specific, branded hashtag or one that’s just
relevant to your audience or industry, you should aim to always have one on
each tweet. Tapping into trending topics via a popular hashtag is also a great
way to increase both engagement and impressions.
11. Share Images:
Images are an important part of social
media; this is particularly true when we’re limited to 140 characters.
If you’re not posting images on
at least some of your tweets, you should be; some case studies have shown that
tweets with images get 313% more engagement.
Images can help your content stand out, get more clicks, and get
more engagement.
Images are more dynamic, whether you’re
sharing an infographic, a graph to display data, or a photograph. You can share
up to 4 images in a single tweet, but even using just 1 image is all it takes
to drive extra engagement.
Plus, when in doubt, you can
always add text to your images if you need to get a few extra characters
in; no 20% rule applies here.
12. Post Videos:
While images can get more
attention than text, videos continue the trend and can outperform images.
Twitter Video, released about a year ago, allows you to either record a new
video from your smart phone or upload an existing video if you have an iPhone.
The time limit is 30 seconds, but since you’ll lose most viewers after 30
seconds, that’s ok.
Just like images, videos are a popular and growing form of media
on Twitter.
82% of Twitter users watch video content
on the social media platform. It’s also good to note that studies have shown
that native video on Twitter tends to drive significantly more engagement than
those from third party players (resulting in 2.5x more replies, 2.8x more
retweets, and 1.9x more favorites).
Video can be a great way to
break new stories, offer a behind-the-scenes look, evoke emotion, and give
extra life to your posts on Twitter. Videos are dynamic, and it only makes
sense they can drastically increase engagement and CTRs.
13. Ask for Retweets:
If you want something, it never
hurts to ask. Believe it or not, asking for a retweet directly within your post
can increase engagement in the form of retweets. It sounds simple, but it
works.
Some examples for how to ask for
retweets include:
· Just
asking for it. Some brands tack on a “please share” or “please retweet” (or
simply “Please RT”) to the end of their posts. There’s a great list of the 7
best variations of wording here.
· Offering
an incentive. Some brands will offer an incentive, like a prize, discount, or
giveaway if users retweet a certain tweet. Depending on the incentive, this can
be highly effective.
· Asking
for help to spread the word. While this can definitely work if you’re looking
to “spread the word” about your sale, new product, or exciting news, this
particular approach can also work well if you’re helping a cause. Many brands
and small businesses work with at least one nonprofit organization or cause,
and asking users to spread the word about something involving it can get
massive engagement and make you look really good in the
process.
This is a great tactic, but only
when used sparingly. If a rare CTA is proposed, people will be more likely to
take action on it. If you post it all the time, it will feel like spam and
users are much more likely to ignore it.
14. Don’t Tweet Too Much :
Even though it can be difficult
to get eyes on your content, you don’t want to send out too many tweets and
drown in your own content. If you post too many, you’ll not only see your
engagement not increase, you’ll likely see it drop pretty quickly.
Multiple case studies have shown
that tweeting between 1 and 3 times a day was the ideal
frequency for brands and offered the highest engagement levels. Once they
posted 4 or more in a day, however, engagement actually decreases.
This is another great benefit of
scheduling tools, many of which make it easy to see how many Tweets you’ll be
posting that day.
15. Space Out Your Tweets :
When you’re sending those 1-4
tweets a day, don’t send them all at once; space them out evenly, either
through your peak hours or throughout the entire day. This will increase the
number of audience members who might see your posts, helping to increase
engagement because of it.
This is a simple and
straightforward strategy, but it’s a good one, and when done deliberately it often
has good results.
16. Use Clean, Straight Forward
Language:
When it comes to getting
engagement, don’t be ambiguous or overly complicated; sometimes the best method
is to say exactly what your link is if you’re sharing one; there’s no need to
be coy or clever. You only have 140 (or 80-110, if you’re following our earlier
strategy) characters to get a click and engagement, so you want to be as
to-the-point as you can be to get relevant clicks while still accurately
describing your content in a way that’s alluring relevant readers.
This Tweet is straight to the point; instead of playing a
guessing game, they tag the honoree and say exactly what the article will be.
It can be difficult with so few
characters, but make sure that your thought makes sense on the page; add in
punctuation where necessary, make sure there aren’t typos, and use language and
terminology your audience will be likely to recognize.
17. Ask Questions:
This is one of the most classic
engagement-building tactics in the marketing book, but it’s still making this
list because it still consistently works.
People love to give their
opinions and share their experiences, especially if they think the brand who’s
asking might listen.
You can ask everything from what
they think about your new product to what they’re doing for St. Patrick’s day.
The first offers the opportunity to learn what your customers think while
simultaneously promoting your product, and the second is an easy way to build
engagement with users and help promote a relationship with them.
This Tweet stands out, and is a great way to increase engagement
and get clicks on their link.
As a freelance writer and social
media marketer, I’ve asked users if they had to get rid of one social media
platform as a user, which would it be? (For the record, my answer is
Snapchat—love it for marketing, hate it as a user). I could also ask what their
favorite blog is, or how they think a new Facebook change could impact
businesses. These questions aren’t all about me or my product, which can make
it easier to generate conversation and start to build relationships with both
customers and peers in my industry.
Not only can this increase
engagement, asking questions about what your customers want can provide
valuable insight into your audience that could cost a lot of money to get
through market research.
18. Use Power Words :
Using power words and
superlatives in a blog headline can increase clicks on it; the same can be said
for tweets.
Which sounds better: Increase
Your Followers on Twitter, or The Best Ways to Increase Your Followers On
Twitter Fast? Both titles are actionable, but power words and other adjectives
like “best” and “fast” are likely to increase some clicks on your link.
In some ways, crafting your
tweet is similar to creating a post or article headline; you don’t have a lot
of space for either one, and you want to make it as appealing as possible while
proving it offers value of some sort. Certain words work, and certain words do not.
Examples of good power words include:
· Improve
· Immediately
· Bonus
· Exclusive
· Protect
· How
to
· Complete
Power words and superlatives can
help draw users’ attention right to you, making it more tempting to click on
the link you’ve shared or watch the video you’ve posted.
19. Talk About Big Names:
When you interact with a major player in your industry,
it can help get some eyes on you. On Twitter, even talking about or tagging an
industry leader or peer can be enough to get extra eyes and engagement on your
post.
Whether you start a conversation
with them directly or just write a post and tag them in it (in a way that makes
sense, like by sharing their content or saying you liked their product), they
may notice and engage. Especially if they respond or retweet your content, you
can continue to get higher levels of engagement if their audience is active.
Again, this can also help build
relationships with big names in your industry, and they could be more inclined
to share some of your content or posts later on, likely helping you to get more
engagement when they do.
20. Use Twitter Cards:
Typically when posting on
Twitter, we’re limited to those 140 characters, and it can be tough to fit
everything we want into it and to make it count. That’s where Twitter Cards
come in.
Twitter Cards offer an
opportunity to add in more content to your tweet, whether that’s a summary
card, photo card, product card, or any of their other options. It will make
your tweet larger, garnering more attention to it, and makes it more dynamic
and rich.
Twitter Cards requires you to
validate your website with Twitter and add Twitter Card meta data to your site,
but it makes your posts more dynamic and can greatly increase CTRs. You can see
a great guide on how to install them to your site here.
21. Use Shortened Links:
Since Twitter only has so many
characters, it only makes sense to use abbreviated, shortened links to the
content you’re posting. You don’t need your whole website address to be listed
as long as users are clicking.
Shortened links offer more room for content, and for retweets.
Some services and software, like
Buffer or different social sharing bars, will automatically shorten the link to
your content when they post it. If you aren’t using any of these tools,
however, Google’s
URL shortener can help you do the trick manually in just a few
seconds.
Using shortened links will give
you more characters, have your Tweets look more clean, and can increase
retweets.
22. Recycle Great Content:
If you posted great content once
and it did well, that doesn’t mean that the shelf life for that content is
over; you can extend it by using it again.
A lot of big brands frequently
recycle their best content, if not most of their content; this
enables them to get more eyes on high-quality tweets, videos, and links that
many users may have missed the first time. I can say from experience that
content that performed well once is likely to perform well again.
The idea of recycling content
and posts was something that I hated and thought would never work when I first
heard about it upon entering the field, as I was sure people would notice and
it would drive them crazy; and then I was proven wrong. So much content is
being pushed out on so many different platforms, people often miss it the first
time, and even if they see it on multiple postings, few notice the replication.
Sometimes you can keep the
entire tweet the same as it was before down to every last punctuation mark,
though it doesn’t hurt to change things around a bit if you’re worried, like
the description for a link you’re sharing.
When you’re recycling content,
try to stagger it at a different part of the day or week, adding the space of a
few weeks later if possible.
Note: While most great content
is recyclable, there are some exceptions; content that relies on timeliness
(breaking news, holiday/event related, and some trending topics)
23. Have a Call to Action that
Isn’t to Share:
Twitter, as we all know, can be
used for objectives increasing downloads of an ebook or mobile app, lead
generation, and driving sales. When used sparingly, creating posts to drive
these objectives can have great results on your engagement, specifically when
you include a call to action to accompany it.
While having a CTA to share your
posts can be effective, it’s not the only CTA that can help drive engagement
and CTRs on Twitter.
We’ve talked about power words;
this is where we’re going to look at using action words. Action words,
unsurprisingly, are placed to inspire and commonly evoke users to do something.
It’s why CTAs are so powerful. Some good action words and phrases that can
increase engagement include:
· Learn
More
· Download
· Follow
Us
· Please
Help (particularly when paired with charity/nonprofit causes)
· Visit
Our Site
· Shop
our Sale
While it doesn’t quite qualify
as an action word, using “free” whenever you get the chance is also a good
idea—everybody likes a freebie.
Not only will using action words
and different CTAs you get more engagement and major CTR increases, you can
send more traffic to your site, generate more leads, drive more app downloads,
and potentially even make more sales.
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