Eight Top Tips for Twitter

Hello, and welcome back to Thursday Tips! This week I will be looking at eight top tips to enhance your Twitter profiles! I find that Twitter is a really informational platform, and it seems to be a source for the latest news and stories for a lot of its users. A lot of businesses also use Twitter to provide customer service - there are some good stats and demographics on Twitter over on OmniCore if you want to read up more on the platform: (https://www.omnicoreagency.com/twitter-statistics/)

My eight top tips for Twitter are:

• Conduct a Twitter Audit
• Using Hashtags on Twitter
• Using Twitter as a Customer Service Tool
• "Trending" Topics on Twitter
• The Use of Conversational Tweets
• Utilizing Twitter at your Events
• Using Twitter as an Online Networking Platform
• Sharing of Multimedia Online

Tip 1 - Conduct a Twitter Audit

Conducting a Twitter audit of your account will give you a good look at your goals, what kind of audiences you want to reach and a look at people in your network too. A big element of reviewing your account would be looking at your activity - are you posting at the right times so that your audience can engage with your content? What type of content are your audience interacting with the most? Are you Tweeting enough? What hashtags are you using on your posts and which ones are gaining the most reach? All of these questions should be answered by doing this Twitter audit, so you have a clear view of goals and content!

There are many tools online that can do Twitter audits for you, so keep an eye on my #ThursdayTips as I will be talking more about Apps & Tools for Marketing professionals, and one of these tools will be a Twitter Audit one!

Tip 2 - Using Hashtags on Twitter

Using relevant, specific hashtags that reflect your content attracts the right audience, and it can really help to boost engagement, followers & impressions. There are 5 main uses of hashtags in posts - to track competition entries, to provide educational content, for live events, for latest news and for advocacy. You can see some facts on Twitter hashtags above that state that 2 Hashtags per Tweet is optimal, your Tweet is 55% more likely to be re-shared and there is 21% higher engagement on tweets with hashtags.

If you are a business owner and you are trying to utilize Twitter, you may even consider using your own-branded hashtag. This is an easy way of tracking what kind of audience is interacting with your business, feedback on the product or service you are supplying and it is also a great way to gather user generated content!

An example of one Tweet that I utilized hashtags in successfully is this one:

Tip 3 - Using Twitter as a Customer Service Tool

As mentioned earlier, a lot of businesses find Twitter is a great customer service tool. The one great advantage I would find would be that many people may have the same problem, and if it is answered on the companies Twitter channel, others will see the answer to the query. So by answering one query, you could potentially be answering hundreds of other queries. Showing good customer service online will also build your brands reputation and it is easy to track conversations you may have with your customers.

Tip 4 - "Trending" Topics on Twitter

Popular topics can trend if enough people are talking about them, and my next tip is to be aware of these trends, and if any of these trends relate to your brand, try to tap into it. For example in my Tweet that I used in the hashtag tip, I saw that St Patrick's Day was trending, so I tapped into this topic and gained a lot of reach from this. I would recommend only using topics that relate to your company and your audience, and not jumping on trends that do not relate to anything you are posting. Just remember your brand message, your core values and your audience!

Tip 5 - The Use of Conversational Tweets

For Twitter, a good level of engagement could come from audiences that respond to conversational Tweets. Conversational Tweets encourage your audience to interact with you and share their opinions on a certain topic or discussion. Some ways you can encourage conversations within your Tweets are:

• Retweets with Comments
• Retweets
• Mentions
• Replies
• Text with Questions
• Twitter Polls

Tip 6 - Utilizing Twitter at your Events

Twitter is extremely useful for live events such as conferences and talks. As you can see from the info-graphic above, 71% of users suggest that live Tweeting during an event makes it more enjoyable. For conferences in particular, I find that you can use Twitter as a good networking tool, and connect with other attendees without meeting them.

If your business holds events or conferences, I would suggest that you spend some time creating a unique hashtag for your event, and promote this throughout the day, maybe even showcasing it on a screen or running a competition for anyone that uses the hashtag throughout the day. A unique hashtag is a great idea as you can see what kind of audience attended your event, their overall view of the day, what pieces of the event they enjoyed the most and who to target to attend your next event.

Finally, utilizing Twitter for live events is great to build up a bank of user generated content. You can use your attendees comments and posts to target potential audiences that could possibly be interested in your next event, or if you maybe have a few days where you are struggling to create content, having a bank of content such as this may be used.

Tip 7 - Using Twitter as an Online Networking Platform

I find that Twitter is a really good channel for networking, and my next tip would be to know who the audience is. You need to keep in mind that there are a large number of Journalists & Media workers that actively use Twitter, so if you want a story to be picked up, Twitter could be extremely useful. As you can see from the above graph, there are also a big number of sports teams and athletes on Twitter, which may be useful if you are trying to seek out people for collaborations or getting brand ambassadors for your brand in this market.

Tip 8 - Sharing of Multimedia Online

My last tip would be to regularly use multimedia in your content. Some facts on sharing multimedia within Twitter is:

• 82% of Twitter Users watch videos on the platform.
• 90% of Video views on Twitter come from mobile phones.
• Twitter users are 1.9 times more likely to have uploaded a video online than the average US internet user.
• Tweets with images more than double your chances of engagement.
• Breakdown of all Tweets : 47% use photos, 28% use text only, 23% use links and 2% use videos.