Twitter Engagement - Why You Should Pay Close Attention

This post has been updated for 2020

One of the hardest things businesses of all sizes struggle with is Twitter engagement. Although it’s not just Twitter, (it’s across Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.) this KPI is great to track how active your audience is and to measure the quality of your content.

Social Media Engagement - Why Do I Care?

The first thing we need to understand is, what exactly is social media engagement? Simply put, it’s “getting your fans to do something in response to your post,” as Social Media Fuze defines it.

In terms of Twitter, this includes a retweet, like, or a reply. Each action counts as one engagement, so a Twitter follower has the potential to generate 3 engagements to your post.

At this point, you might be thinking, “Why do I really care if someone engages with my post?” To answer your question, think of this hypothetical situation.

You’re in the market for a new pair of gym shoes, but you have no idea what to buy. A few days later, you see on Twitter a friend retweeted an article about 5 reasons why the latest Nike running shoes are the product of the year.

Now think about how you landed on this webpage… It was engaged by a Twitter user (your friend) that connected with a pain, need, or interest you had.

Let’s change perspectives and look at social media engagement from a business owner’s side. If I am organically promoting content to (hypothetical) 10,000 social media followers, I’m limited to just them. But if even 10 unique followers of mine retweet to their 1,000 followers each, I just doubled my post’s reach with social media engagement!

Where To Start

The very first thing you should do is to start with analyzing your own engagement. How are you going to see improvements if you don’t know where you’re starting from? Take a look at some of these metrics:

Audience size: How big is your potential reach? How many followers do you have on Twitter?
Activity: This is how often you are tweeting or posting in a given time frame
Engagement: How many people are replying to your message? How frequent are they retweeting? Are they mentioning you? Do they seem to be just ‘liking’ your post?

With a basic formula, we can generate an engagement rate for each individual post. This formula helps compare Twitter accounts of all sizes.

<total engagement rate> = <total engagement> / <number of posts> / <audience> * 10000

Example 1: let’s say in a given week (these are hypothetical numbers) we have 1000 total engagements, 50 total posts, and have an audience size of 100,000.

1000/50/100,000 = .0002

.0002 * 10,000 = 2

The engagement rate is equal to 2

Example 2: Let’s say we have 250 total engagements, 25 posts, and an audience of 20,000 followers

200/25/20,000 = .0005

.0005 * 10,000 = 5

The engagement rate is equal to 5

The key takeaway we want you to leave with is this: it doesn’t matter how many followers you have on Twitter. What matters is the quality of followers and whether they’re engaged with your posts or not.

Looking for additional insight? Check out this article about The Only Twitter Marketing Strategy You’ll Need in 2019!

Why They Might Not Be Engaged

Maybe you don’t have the right target audience that follows you
Your posts might come off as mundane or even spam
Your account is posting too much, so your followers chose to mute any post you put out
There is no multi-media and you’re posting just a link
The tweets are not humanizing and do not develop a level of trust

There can be multiple reasons why your Twitter messages are not getting engaged. No matter what the cause might be, the solution is to improve your posting method. Here are 6 things you can do to improve:

Include multimedia
- According to research, adding photos to your post can increase retweets by 35%! Be sure to tag anyone that might be in the photo. This gives that user a notification and encourages them to share your message with their followers.
Mentioning influencers
- Similar to tagging someone on an image, a mention is a little friendly notification that tells a user they have been mentioned somewhere. If you write up the perfect tweet, they might be inclined to share it with their thousands of followers.
Include relative links
- If you’re going to be posting content (either your own or curated content,) be sure to include a link. There’s nothing more frustrating than to try and figure out how to get to the content you posted.
Hashtags
- If we had to pick one tactic on how to boost engagement, it would have to be the use of hashtags. This neat trick helps increase targeted visibility by hyperlinking the tweet to a keyword. By clicking the link, you can see all related posts given the topic.
Comment, engage, ask questions
- How would you feel if your favorite celebrity left you a comment on social media? Given that perspective, your followers get excited and happy when you actively engage with them. This can be a simple question as in “What’s your favorite marketing tool?” or something down to earth as “How’s your day going?”
Humanize your tweets
- Similar to the point above, humanizing your tweet is easy and can generate great results. Which message would you rather click on? “Click here to get followers” (this comes off as spam,) or “Boost your social media in 5 easy steps!”

The Final Take-Away

Mastering the art of Twitter takes time. You won't see your follower growth or engagement skyrocket overnight, but you can take steps to improve your efforts. Social media marketing isn't a sprint, it's a marathon.

We know that was a lot of information to soak in, but don't worry. Try to implement what you just read in your Twitter marketing strategy, and of course if you have any questions, let us know in the comments below!

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