Planning a Twitter Marketing Strategy
With more than 500+ million users1, Twitter is one of the top three most popular forms of social media worldwide, with the other two being Skype and Facebook. Its specific communication style further makes it a worthwhile marketing tool, and an investment in your Twitter marketing campaign will be a viable investment. The obvious benefits are improved public image, higher customer satisfaction, easier access to your customer audience and content promotion.
The most important point when planning a Twitter marketing strategy is to research your target audience. Start by determining their presence on the platform. Some groups prefer to use other social media and if this is the case, you shouldn’t waste your resources on improving your Twitter presence. The next important piece of information is their content preference: infographic, image, article or video channel. By researching your audience you can further determine the main function of the Twitter profile, whether it’s to promote your brand, quickly communicate with customers, or seek customer feedback. Don’t forget that you can develop a number of Twitter profiles to satisfy all your needs. Furthermore, consider the SEO value of the profile not simply as a content promoting tool, but also as a means of engaging your community.
Every marketing campaign must have clearly measurable goals, such as number of followers, number of active followers, number of re-tweets, etc. Pay particular attention when choosing this, as the ultimate goal should be to increase the company’s sales and not simply to amass followers. Furthermore, if you focus on gathering followers, you might not convert enough of them into customers.
The marketing strategy for the first few months will depend heavily on the choice of goal. Nevertheless, the Twitter profile should be quickly and efficiently implemented with the other company websites and social media pages. Do this meticulously so that you can receive as much benefit from your existing content as possible. Huge Tweet and Follow buttons, as well as automated tweeting of new posts, make the process much easier. Furthermore, you can use tools like tweepi.com to follow the followers of influential people in your niche. With an average re-follow rate of 20%, this is a good strategy to get your profile off the ground much faster2. Furthermore, the first few months should focus on increasing the profile exposure by connecting to influential writers and tweeters and getting them to spread the word.
Any social media marketing campaign should aim to provide interesting content to engage the user and not be used simply as a spamming tool for its own pieces. Therefore, the emphasis should be on creating engaging tweets. After the first month of implementation and promotion, your company should aim to have regular snippets of engaging information. This could be a series of related topics, humoristic comments, or company updates, but they should be regular. For most effect, combine the Twitter account with a YouTube channel and a populated blog.
To become more authoritative, aim to be part of as many Twitter lists are possible. This will mean that a few users have found your content of high value (with the corresponding SEO benefit as well). Naturally, the content should be regular (not a one-off event), engaging and unique. Sharing it across all other social profiles will greatly help. Furthermore, incorporate into the marketing plan a desire to increase public engagement via one-on-one discussions and private messages. This is best achieved with regular questions and calls to action.
Finally, you should schedule periodic evaluations of the campaign to see if you are heading in the right direction. Measure month-to-month progress and results compared to budget spent.
References:
- https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/11856563
- http://www.jeffbullas.com/2011/06/27/how-to-create-a-Twitter-marketing-strategy-that-rocks/
