X, formerly known as Twitter, has been a powerhouse of social media since it was launched.
If you’re looking to stand out from the noise and get noticed on Twitter, you’ll need to approach your social media marketing in a way that aligns with the nuances of the platform.
Here’s seven Twitter marketing tips you can use to reap better results from your campaigns.
1. Start and Take Part in Conversations
Marketing on any social media platform requires brands to take interactions with other profiles into account. However, on a platform like Twitter that’s designed specifically for discussion and debate, the conversation around a certain topic is just as important, if not more so, than the actual content you post.
When you’re scheduling tweets for your feed, it’s important to consider each piece of content in terms of how likely it is to start a conversation, and therefore how likely it is to engage both your audience and user segments from outside your usual market.
Aside from sparking conversations on your own initiative, it’s also a good idea to respond to high-visibility tweets where you have something interesting to add to the conversation, for example recommending relevant content, sharing unique insights, or a different opinion that helps move the conversation along.
By thinking about the conversation as the core of your content, rather than images or captions like with other platforms, you can help align your marketing strategy with the format and culture of Twitter/X and establish your brand as a source of helpful, engaging information.
2. Periodically Clean Up Your Profile
Twitter profiles tend to be a little more active compared to profiles on other platforms. In such a fast-moving environment, it can be easy to lose track of the state of your Twitter account and how it appears to your audience.
Be sure to set aside time to periodically clean up your Twitter feed, and ensure you’re not giving your target audience any reason to ignore or unfollow you.
Things you should check for and remove as part of a routine profile-clean include:
- Links to blog posts, videos, or other content that no longer exists.
- Tweets that cite outdated studies or aren’t relevant to the current iteration of your target audience.
- Profiles in your followers or following list that are no longer active.
Carrying out this kind of housekeeping will help to maintain a professional image for your profile, and show your target audience that you’re committed to using Twitter for quality content and interactions.
3. Engage Your Competitors’ Followers
One of the best Twitter marketing tips for brands that are just getting started with Twitter marketing, leveraging your close competitors’ followings to develop your own is one of the easiest ways to develop your Twitter marketing in the early days of your campaign.
If your competitors have developed their own list of followers, it’s likely that they’ve already done the hard work of analyzing the Twitter user base and finding qualified, active leads. From there, your job is simple: follow these followers to pop up in their feed, and motivate them to check out the kind of content that you already know they’re interested in.
4. Keep Content Casual
If you’re coming to Twitter from a background of longer-form content, for example focusing on LinkedIn posts or developing a blog, it can be easy to “over-polish” your Twitter account to the point that your tone of voice starts feeling somewhat cold and robotic.
Obviously, if you’re a B2B brand targeting C-suite stakeholders, you’re not going to post tweets full of slang and meme references. However, it’s still important to embrace the conversational nature of Twitter, and avoid letting your content become overly corporate or stiff.
When you’re reviewing content in your publishing queue, make sure to look past the topic of whether or not it’s serving your business goals, and consider whether or not it sounds like a human wrote it. Injecting humor and personality where appropriate can warrant huge rewards for brands on Twitter, so don’t let yourself become defined by your status as a business owner.
5. Optimize Posting Time
Compared to some other platforms, Twitter is very fast-paced. If you’re not posting when your audience is most active and likely to engage, your tweet can easily be buried in a pile of other content, and potentially lose out to competitors who are being more strategic.
If you’re just getting started on Twitter, we recommend researching as much data as possible regarding when your target audience is most active on the platform, and testing out a few days and times that fall within these ranges.
From there, use a robust analytics tool like our own Highperformr suite to keep track of engagement rates at different days of the week and times of day to figure out when your audience specifically is most “switched-on” and likely to reply, re-tweet, or click-through on your content.
By analyzing how post time affects engagement and optimizing for this variable, you’ll help your profile stand out from the noise and ensure a higher rate of engagement across your audience segments.
6. Think Top-of-Funnel
While brands with a dedicated following can use Twitter to generate some decent jumps in conversion for things like product launches or flash sales, if you pour too much effort into these kinds of campaigns too early on, it may end in disappointment.
For the most efficient use of Twitter, we recommend taking on a more top-of-funnel mindset, and using it primarily as a tool to educate, inform, and start relationships on a positive note.
If you focus more of your resources on using Twitter to communicate with people who aren’t likely to convert at this stage, but have the potential to further down the line, you’ll be able to maximize the value of Twitter as a lead generation tool and spend nurturing resources where they’re better suited.
7. Mix Things Up
Twitter’s come a long way from its “micro-blogging” focus of when it was first launched, and now has a range of content formats and ways to engage.
Mixing up your standard tweets with images, videos, polls, and more can make your feed significantly more interesting, and help you engage with audience segments that show a preference for certain kinds of content.
Leveraging some of the newer, post-acquisition features of Twitter may also reveal new ways to engage with your audience. Some things to check out include:
- X Lists, which allow you to prioritize your most active followers and broadcast your content more effectively to this group.
- X Spaces, which can be used to host and interact with live video discussions through X.
- X Communities, which are exclusive spaces for sharing content with specific members.
By using these and more to create a more dynamic and varied Twitter feed, you’ll nurture a more well-rounded experience for your followers and set your brand apart from more one-dimensional competitors.
Your Path to Stronger Twitter Marketing
The restless buzz of activity on Twitter has huge potential for any brand looking to build exposure and start relationships on the right foot. We hope these Twitter marketing tips help you develop a more well-rounded marketing strategy, and see more of an impact from your social media.
For further support with Twitter analytics, AI content creation, and collaboration tools, sign up to Highperformr for free today!
