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Twitter Best Practices For 2020

Twitter to many is the social media platform where news breaks! Over the years, this social media channel has transformed so much that we now tune into Twitter to get updates on any topic we search for. With over 330 million-plus users, Twitter is the best platform for a B2B brand to capitalize upon. From...

Twitter to many is the social media platform where news breaks!

Over the years, this social media channel has transformed so much that we now tune into Twitter to get updates on any topic we search for.

With over 330 million-plus users, Twitter is the best platform for a B2B brand to capitalize upon.

From news to weather updates, celebrity gossip to viral videos, client acquisition to customer service, every function that is possible on Digital media now applies on Twitter as well.

So, how to be one of those brands that stand out on Twitter?

Like many marketers out there, if you are expecting to skyrocket your Twitter engagement, you are in the right place!

Consistent posting and messages that push the viewers to read might have worked a decade ago.

But in 2020, we need to position ourselves as a sharp, targeted, and personalized brand to the target audience.

First things first!

Every reader expects the benefit of what is going to be in there for them when they read an article, a book, or meet a prospect.

If this thought guides any marketing activity, then the user-based approach will be a natural part of any campaign you create.

Before creating this epic post, I read through a few Twitter best practices articles and found a few points to be common among them.

We, marketers, have different use cases on Social media. So, I decided to write a Twitter best practices article for different digital marketing use cases.

This way, the post can help the use case of the reader and also provide actual value to them.

The below are the top Digital Marketing use cases.

  • Twitter Content Creation

Millions of Tweets are getting published on a single day. Create quality content that will be easy to read.

To stand out, you need to make sure your audience gets engaged with your Tweets.

Since the character limit is now 280, you can get quite creative with the choice of words and also with the type of multimedia you attach in your Tweet.

The uniqueness of your Tweet also gives an impression of your brand and makes your audience follow you.

The prime aim of your Tweets should be to help your audience.

Here is an example of SEMRush’s tweet.

  • Promoting your article on Twitter

Promotion is one of the most impressive ways to gain an audience on Twitter. 

Unfortunately, this is where most of the brands fail! 

Many of us think that just posting a Tweet will bring in likes, shares, and retweets. But, any Tweet without promotional elements does not get the expected engagement.

Repackage the content of your article in such a way that you get to provide the value of the article in just a tweet.

This technique will make your readers not just engage with the tweet, but also read your article by clicking the link you have attached.

  • Growing your network/following

As you grow your Twitter following, you will get to find the type of audience who will constitute your tribe.

I believe a Twitter tribe is a list of people from your audience who help to amplify the reach of your Tweets organically.

They are the ones who initially like, comment, or retweet your posts. 

To grow your tribe, you need to start with finding and following the most relevant people.

Be in constant supervision of their Twitter activity and engage with their tweets by having a real conversation.

You can get a list of your target audience (possibly customers) by using the view sharer’s feature of Social Animal.

After logging in, enter your target keyword in the article section.

Once the results are displayed, choose the type of content that best appeals to your audience and click on the view sharers button.

Now you will get a list of profiles who have shared this content on Twitter.


You can now export the list and get in touch with them in Twitter.

  • Customer support

Every brand is on Twitter and any customer who has an issue with the product they purchased, gets to Twitter to raise a complaint. I am sure some of us might have also done this.

Brands need to maintain a social image on Twitter and hence they also respond swiftly with their best support possible.

A good place to start will be by responding to the mentions of your profile.

The following list of Twitter best practices will work great if followed in a strategic manner. As usual, the key is consistency.

  • Find top brands in your niche

Identifying a top-performing brand in your industry provides a broader spectrum view of marketing activities from which you can learn a few tricks and also understand better about your audience.

These top-performing brands are the influencers in your niche. They always tend to have a good number of followers who engage with them on a regular basis on social media platforms.

You can find influencers on Twitter by typing your keyword and heading over to the People section in results.



However, you might not be able to view and alter your results like you can with Social Animal.

Here is how you can find Top Influencers on Twitter using Social Animal.

  • Sign up or Log in to Social Animal and head over to the Influencers section.
  •  Type your industry keyword (ex: entertainment) and hit enter. Now you’ll be getting the results.

  • Here, you can switch between different modes of Influencer search. You can choose to search for influencers based on their Twitter bio or content shared.

    There is also a ‘Top Authors’ mode which fetches you influential authors writing for publications on your keyword.

    Additional filters include sorting results by name, location, URL, language, tweet count, follower count, and the following count.

  • Research competition

Analyzing and monitoring your competitors on Twitter gives you a lot of learnings like

  • What type of social media content works for them
  • What hashtags they use
  • How often do they post content
  • How many engagements do they get for a tweet

You can analyze your competition’s tweets in a couple of ways:

  1. Set notifications for your favorite competitor profiles and check out their tweets as soon as they post.
  2. Create a list for all your competitors and keep checking the tweets once in a while.

  • Find your audience’s interest

Publishing content on a regular basis alone does not ensure engagement.

Finding the interest of the audience is the first thing to do to gain a good audience on Twitter.

Log in to your Twitter account and type your target keyword in the search bar. After the results are loaded, analyze the tweets in the TOP section.

Look out for the tweets that have a good number of engagement (i.e likes, retweets, and comments).

Make a list of these Tweets, follow their profiles, and try creating similar content to impress your audience.

For example: Let us take a keyword – content marketing

Here are the top Twitter results for the keyword.

  • Be unique

Twitter has over 130 million active users on a daily basis.

With so much information getting overloaded on Twitter, staying unique is the only way to stand out among the crowd.

So start making Twitter posts backup with good research.

You can observe that all top brands that have good engagement in Twitter their own way or template for posting Tweets.

Here are a few examples:

  1. Samsung Mobiles

  2. Starbucks Coffee

  3. Nike

  4. Louis Vuitton

  5. Coca-Cola

  • Multimedia – interact with gifts

Multimedia has inevitably taken over the social media world.

Images, videos, and GIFs are becoming so common that people now prefer reading content with more imagery.

Every social media user understands that multimedia has significantly gained more importance than ordinary texts.

Including videos in your Twitter campaigns can bring in a significant number of views as well as good engagement.

Whilst creating video content for your marketing campaigns, make sure you optimize them for Twitter as well.

The usage of GIFs in conversations ordering today charge replies are interesting.

  • Provide value

Being unique with your Tweets would not bring engagement unless your content provides value.

You might think that this pointer sounds very usual. Providing value consistently is like working out.

You can start off well but how long you can continue doing this, determines the results.

Choose a theme or topic for each day. Post interesting content accordingly and you will surely start gaining engagement.

  • Curate content

Content curation is a very common technique used in social media marketing.

But how smart are we at creating the best content that can gain engagement with the audience?

Here is how you can find and share the best articles in your niche.

Login to Social Animal and enter your search keyword(say content marketing).

You will be finding the most engaging content that has gained good social media shares in the articles section.


From here, you can curate your articles to buffer or hootsuite by choosing the Share Article option.

Make sure you curate the article that is of interest to your audience.

You can also curate the trending posts by setting alerts for your target keywords/domains in the Social Animal dashboard.

  • Use hashtags

Hashtags simply categorize the Tweets and make it easy for other Twitter users to find the most relevant content for the phrase they are searching for.

We all know that it is essential to use hashtags in every Tweet. But how to make sure we use the right hashtags?

There are a couple of ways to find it!

  • Use third-party tools like Hashtagsforlikes.com or all-hashtag.com to find the best hashtags in your industry.
  • Find what hashtags your competitors use in their Tweets(excluding their branded tags).

Now you will have a set of hashtags that can come in handy to your campaigns. 

Do not add unnecessary hashtags that are irrelevant to your Tweets or brand. 

For example: At times, few people add generic hashtags like #tbt, #photooftheday, etc to get more likes.

At times, these Twitter likes maybe only from a few bots that have been programmed to do so.

Branded hashtags get picked up by users at times and they can bring in relevant traffic to your company.

Use a URL shortener

Like we mentioned earlier in the article there is a limit of 280 characters that is allowed per tweet. To ensure that your links don’t take up too much space we recommend using a URL shortener like Rebrandly. By using a tool like this you will also be able to brand your links as well as receiving detailed analytics on how your links perform. You will be able to see how many people click on your links, where your audience is engaging with your links, such as country, time, dates and browser for example.

  • Engage with your audience

Engagement is the only key factor that differentiates a true brand that values their customers from a promoted Twitter marketing activity.

Here are a few tips to engage with your audience:

Follow back: The profiles that follow you may be one of the target audiences so follow back the profile if they are relevant.

Used Twitter handles: Use the Twitter handles (@username) of people you’re mentioning in your Tweet. This way you will notify them that you are open for conversation.

Respond to mentions: Check out the mentions tab on a daily basis and respond to the people who have tagged or mentioned you in their Tweets.

Tweet about industry updates: Tweet about industry events, conferences, or any update regarding your industry. This way you are the one taking the news to the rest of the brands.

Participate in Twitter chats: there are a variety of chats happening on Twitter based on different industries. Find the ones that suit you the best and become a part of their community

  • Use Twitter analytics

Measuring and reporting the ROI of your Twitter marketing is now easy with Twitter Analytics.

Twitter analytics data helps you in strategizing your Twitter content marketing by providing insights to your account, your followers, and your total Twitter activity.

The best part is Twitter analytics provides you with a lot of information that can help you better understand your target audience.

The below is the list of data analytics provides you with:

Tweet impressions: It gives you a list of all your tweets on the number of impressions and can also see individual Tweet’s performance.

Twitter engagements: This data is similar to tweet impressions. Twitter analytics also shows you the engagement and the number of interactions a Tweet has received.

Top tweets: As the name suggests this data gives you the list of the top performed tweets you have posted in the past month.

Follower growth data: This data from Twitter analytics is really awesome. In your followers dashboard, you can see how your following has increased over the last 30 days. You might also consider running a special campaign to gain engagement from the new followers your profile has got. 

  • Twitter Live

Twitter live is one of the best features that can engage the millennial audience.

Day by day it is getting harder to reach the right audiences. What more should a brand need to reach the audience who are available on mobile!

Video is the most popular form of online content and it is predicted that the number of viewers on Twitter will keep growing at a steady rate.

Live video not just engages you with your audience but also validates your content campaigns as authentic.

The best part is, many viewers will share what they’re watching on other platforms as well.

Here are a few tips to create a good live stream session.

  1. Create a show or podcast which can be uploaded on video platforms as well.
  2. Make interviews with a prepared set of questions by inviting your audience to your show.
  3. Go live in a webinar also.
  4. Keep uploading your company updates on Twitter live as well.

  • Twitter Chats

Twitter chats are the organized conversations that happen on a scheduled time over a chosen topic streamlined or followed by a specific branded hashtag.

They are like the digital meetup that happens in the world of Twitter.

Business leaders and mostly CEOs of companies host these chats and they conduct the conversation with like-minded people.

All you need to host a Twitter chat are a specific hashtag named for the chat, specific time of the time, good topics for every week, interesting questions, a moderator and a good community to converse with.

The best advantage of a Twitter chat is the amount of engagement you draw into your profile in a specific time frame. 

Conclusion:

The Twitter best practices for your campaigns cannot be laid out generically. 

Experimentation and research are a very essential part of finding what works best for your brand on Twitter.

Start with understanding the likes of your audience. Stay updated with the trends in your niche and take advantage of every updated feature Twitter has.

Find what works well in your industry by having a Twitter research tool.

If you believe we have missed out on any Twitter marketing tactics, please do mention it in the comments.

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Krishna works as an Inbound Marketer at Social Animal. Being a marketing enthusiast, he loves reading and sharing the best articles on Growth, SEO and Sales.

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