18 Feb #Engagement: 5 Ways to Boost Your Brand on Twitter
Is your brand on Twitter? If not, it might be time to consider jumping on this social bandwagon. While it is true that Facebook has considerably more active monthly users, the way Twitter users utilize the platform make it a powerful marketing hotspot. Twitter users, for example, are 3X more likely to follow brands than Facebook users. Additionally, 42% of Twitter users say they use Twitter to learn about products and services.
1. Encourage Engagement with Calls to Action
Twitter is excellent for brands because it offers the potential to dramatically expand your reach for free. Every time someone retweets your content your reach expands to include their followers as well. And it turns out one of the best ways to get people to retweet you is to tell them to. Tweets that specifically ask users to retweet get 12X the retweets than those that don’t.
Phrases such as “retweet if…” encourage people to engage with your content by giving them a specific reason to. They can be used to get your audience to spread the word about your promotions (i.e. “Retweet if you’re loving…” or “Retweet if you’re hoping to win…”). Another creative way to use these types of tweets is to make them opinion based—tell people to retweet if they prefer X or like the tweet if they prefer Y.
2. Respond When People Interact with You
Twitter users do not passively follow brands. Forty-one percent of Twitter users share opinions on products and services on the site, and interacting with people who are tweeting about your brand—positively or negatively—is absolutely crucial.
Many people take their issues and complaints about brands to Twitter in hopes of getting a response—19% of Twitter users seek direct customer support from brands on the platform. This has the negative impact of those complaints being made publicly, but it also enables brands to showoff their excellent customer service.
3. Social Graphics Get Results
Another way to boost engagement is by creating relevant social graphics to go along with your tweets. Consider this: visual content is 40X more likely to be shared socially. More specifically, tweets with relevant images receive 150% more retweets than tweets without images.
A good social graphic will catch people’s attention and encourage them to stop scrolling and pay attention to your tweet.Relevant images can be infographics, GIFs, videos or just regular photos. And while having a graphic designer available to create graphics for your social content is great, it isn’t necessary. Tools like Canva and FotoJet make it easy for anyone to create eye catching social images.
4. Use the Polling Feature
In 2015, Twitter introduced the ability to create polls within your tweets, opening a whole new way for brands to interact with their followers. This polling option on is an excellent way to encourage engagement and gather useful information from your audience all at once. Here are a few ways brands use Twitter polls to their advantage that you can try out for yourself.
5. Don’t Forget to #Hashtag
According to Buffer, tweets with hashtags get 2X more engagement than tweets without them. Take the time to seek out the most popular hashtags related to your field and use them regularly. It’s also a good idea to pay attention to trending hashtags that you could use to your brand’s advantage.
In addition to using already established hashtags, you should also create hashtags specific to your brand and/or to a campaign you’re running. A creative branded hashtag both increases awareness of your brand or campaign and encourages engagement. Need a little help getting started? Here are a few great tips to keep in mind when creating a branded hashtag.