While Facebook has lead the way to social media marketing, another equally effective way to market your brand by creating actual mini conversations is Twitter. Constrained by 140 characters – you must think hard, phrase well and converse with your tweeps (or Twitter fan following).
So what should your twitter marketing strategy look like?
1. Don’t spam with tweets!
Twitter is not about having an opinion on everything. You must tweet about what is relevant to your brand. You must maintain your tweets within 5 per day (including Retweets). Even if you’re live tweeting for a while – make sure you inform your tweeps that you will be Live Tweeting. You don’t want their Twitter stream to be full of only your tweets suddenly – and antogonise them.
2. #Hashtag Overload
Avoid using more than 3 hashtags # in a tweet. Be specific about categorising your tweet. What are you talking about?
Wrong: It’s a #sunny day in #London! Join us for a #photowalk at #OxfordCircus!
Right: It’s a #sunny day in #London! Join us for a #photowalk at Oxford Circus!
Why is the second option right? Because it is categorising for 3 specific reasons:
1. Sunny – people would like to talk about sun in UK – since its a weather.
2. London – demographic specification – where are you talking about?
3. Photowalk – the specific event people might look out for
The combination will place your tweet in front of your target audience.
3. Wanna have some Vine?
Vine is a popular app for tweeps. If your brand can get creative enough – then Vines can do great viral wonders for your brand. It is being predicted that video is the future of social media and so spend some time in creating innovative Vine videos. Considering they are only 6 seconds loop videos – they don’t take long to create – but need tons of creativity to make something really special.
4. Thank @tweeps
If someone Retweets your tweet or @mentions you in their tweet or even favourites your tweet – then you must thank them for mentioning you or RTing your tweet. It’s courtesy and one that everyone likes. It’s always nice to be polite. By tweeting about you or RTing your tweet – they are doing you a favour – and as a brand – you must always appreciate and be thankful for it.
5. Identify influencers and engage
Use Twitter to identify and engage with influencers who command your genre of brand. If there is a fashionista on Twitter who likes your brand – engage with her and ask her to tweet about you. maybe send her some products for review and get her to spread the word about your brand while keeping yourself in her good books.
6. Integrate platforms
Add Twitter on Facebook. Integrating all networks on one platform is a good idea as it would give visibility of your efforts at one place. You can display your tweets on your Facebook Page in a separate Facebook app. While, Facebook allows you to display your tweet in the wall – if you tweet multiple times it would spam your Facebook fans and your wall. So, it’s advisable to display your tweets in a individual space (an app) dedicated for twitter – where your fans can interact with you and tweet as well.
Twitter marketing strategies will vary for your brand depending on whether its a product, service or a personality. Here is also an interesting article by New York Times on twitter marketing. Hope you’ve warmed up to twitter marketing and are all set to start tweeting!
About The Author
Ritika Verma is a social media manager with @appsmav. She loves to write about social media marketing strategies. You can join her on the official facebook page as well.