Twitter is one of the most powerful social media platforms to date. It’s a tool that lets you tweet a message within 140 characters. To put in perspective, the first two sentences of this paragraph were a total 130 characters. The point is, you have to strategically use your characters to get your message across to your target audience.
Anatomy of Your Posting Process
In order to understand the process of tweeting and posting your message, you need to understand the anatomy of it. There are key 6 elements to understand:
- Profile Picture
- Your main profile photo will always be attached to the tweet. Make sure you use a company logo or a professional head shot of yourself (whichever is applicable).
- Reply
- Just like a text message or email, tweets have the ability to be replied to. It’s great feature to develop and nurture relationships.
- Retweet
- One of the biggest engagement metrics, a retweet shares the message across any user that retweets it. Now the message is shared to your followers and theirs.
- Like
- This is the simplest type of engagement. A like is the easiest way to acknowledge a tweet. You can also see all the tweets a user likes through their profile.
- Hashtag
- This is a simple keyword that has multiple purposes that include branding and generating awareness. The hashtag is hyperlinked where similar tweets can be found.
- Mention
- A mention alerts another Twitter user that they’ve been tagged by your account. It’s a great tactic to get the attention of an influencer or make a lucky fan feel special.
Now that you understand the anatomy of a tweet, how do you come up with one? Start off with your objective; what are you trying to achieve? Are you trying to improve your business's brand with Twitter? Are you looking for lead generation opportunities? Maybe you want to converse and connect with your audience. Whatever it might be, always have an objective to tie to.
For your business, there are four main types of messages you can post:
1. Landing Page
By promoting a landing page, you’re offering the audience a chance to download an exclusive offer. In return, you’re gaining lead and a basic form of contact information.
(FYI: You can find this free guide by clicking here)
2. Blog post
This is a great way to drive traffic to your website. If you target the correct the right audience on Twitter, the platform will drive some eyeballs to your website. As a bonus, if they enjoy the content, encourage them to retweet your post. It’s a great tactic to increase awareness!
Another great strategy you can implement is to post blogs that are written by influencers or potential clients you want to work with. You're providing them value by getting helping them generate awareness (putting them in front of your audience.) This establishes a level of trust between the two of you; and who do we do business with? Those we trust!
Make sure you don't forget to let them know they're being promoted. This can be done by simply mentioning (@) them in the tweet or other outbound methods.
3. Media (Photos, Gifs, Video, etc.)
It’s known that media will encourage engagement. There are tons of free stock photos to attach to your tweet, or maybe post a down-to-earth gif that makes the viewer inclined to retweet! Media helps humanize your message. Would you rather trust an automated message or someone who puts their personality in their tweets? (Remember, we do business with those we trust!)
If you want to learn the best Twitter insight while enjoying some awesome graphics (like the one above,) check out Madalyn Sklar's #TwitterSmarter chat!
4. Polls/Questions
There’s no better way to learn about your audience than directly asking the questions you want answered. Twitter allows you to post a poll with up to 4 choices; this is great to generate quick insight. Want more replies? Tweet out a question straightforwardly to your followers!
Note: the tweet asked its followers what county they think is the best, and the voters replied with their answer. Some even replied back to the tweet with their opinions!
As a business, you want to encourage this kind of engagement. From here, you can reply back and converse with your target audience and nurture them to your business's end goal/objective.
You want to make sure there is a purpose to posting your messages. Don’t go on Twitter just to post spam, unrelated material, or act obnoxious. If used correctly, Twitter can be an extremely useful asset!
Am I Done? Is That It?
Nope!
We did just throw a whole bunch of information to you, but we’re almost done. The final aspect you should know to kick-start your Twitter channels is creating the text. This step is one of the hardest parts; even we’re refining and learning new tips and tricks. As such, we’re going to share two tweet formats that work the best for us.
- Tip 1: [End result they want] + [Time period] + [Address any objections]
- For an example: [How to make delicious cake] + [in under 30 minutes] + [with organic ingredients]
- Tip 2: [Take an action] + [Time period] + [End result]
- For an example: [Put this liquid in your tub] +[wait 15 minutes] + [and you’ll never have to clean it again]
If I saw tweets like that come across my feed, personally I would be curious enough to open them. Wouldn't you?
Conclusion
Mastering Twitter takes a lot of time and even more trial and error. There isn’t one specific tactic that will work 100% of the time. Don’t hesitate to test out new tactics or even tools! Worst case, you can delete the Tweet or unsubscribe from the tools. One thing that will always stay consistent is the methods we mentioned above. They’re essentially the bones to the "Twitter-being."
Enjoy our content? Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter. For more reading on how you can make an impact with your online marketing, see the links below:
- 15 Twitter Ideas To Engage With Your Audience
- The Twitter Page Template That Helped Me Gain 17k Followers
- Get The Most Out Of Your Social Media Posts [With Examples!]
- 24 Tips to Help You Maximize Your Twitter Marketing Strategy
