A few things have changed over the past few weeks I tweet, like the launch of the Communities feature and, of course, Elon Musk’s deal to buy it for $44 billion, which is currently pending. Despite all this, the social media platform is an important tool used by both organizations and individuals to brand and market themselves to whoever their target audience is.
As such, it is important that you know how to engage with your audience effectively. However, if you are struggling, don’t worry; I’ve rounded up nine practical ways to increase real engagement on Twitter. The list is only based on my personal experience, but try it anyway and see if it works for you.
I created this in 2019 before I started getting more active on Twitter. But somehow, this looks strangely like my Twitter engagements.#fine art photography #concept #message pic.twitter.com/axWDIS9ahi
— Sherry Akrami (@sherry_akrami) July 10, 2021
Curate your supply
You can follow great influencers on social media, but it’s important to first understand how you want to portray your account. Instead of following too many random accounts, add the ones that make sense to you as a brand. If you want to brand yourself as a tech enthusiast, follow accounts like, oh say, TechAcute. This isn’t just about curating your feed; allows Twitter’s algorithm to better recognize you as a brand and suggest other accounts to follow.
Another thing to watch out for is to avoid being a hard seller and commenting about yourself or your products on another account’s post. People are generally turned off by Twitter accounts that blatantly self-promote in other posts that go viral without first engaging in a real conversation. Instead of doing this on someone else’s feed, you should post your promotions on your own page first.
Know your keywords
As I mentioned earlier, you should always consider what your business, brand or personality will be for the account you are creating. If you are in the coffee industry, make sure you familiarize yourself with keywords related to owning that type of business such as “coffee”, “create” or “coffee dates”. From there, plan your tweets and make sure your keywords are included in your post.
Eventually, your posts will create a picture for your viewers of what your account is all about, even if they just stumbled upon it. This will also spark the start of your Twitter engagement with your followers soon.
Less is more
Now that you have your words connected, make sure your tweets are short and sweet. People don’t really have time to read a long tweet or thread unless it’s a full discussion about something important or viral at the moment. Additionally, adding color to your tweet by being too emotional can portray you as biased, especially if you’re talking about preferences. You can take a stand on your Twitter account, but do so by making sure you can back up your claims with credible sources and without exaggerating things.
https://twitter.com/hootsuite/status/1455516081313955852
Avoid overusing hashtags
This may be a contradictory tip against most of the advice and suggestions out there for using Twitter. After all, hashtags are good when you want to promote something for a day. However, it’s not good in the long run, especially when you bombard your post with a hashtag list that’s longer than the actual tweet. Your tweet will also eventually be overshadowed by other more interesting tweets that people find that are in the same hashtags.
In addition, hashtags are like category folders; when you add more than five hashtags to your tweet, Twitter will get confused about where exactly to categorize your tweet. Even worse, it may mark you as spam. Instead of relying heavily on hashtags, focus on your keywords and come up with interesting tweets that speak to you and your brand or business.
Don’t post to go viral
Everyone wants to know how to post a viral tweet to gain traction. While it’s important to know that your content is being appreciated and engaged on Twitter, viral posts also invite bots, spammers and even bullies to your timeline. That’s also not mentioning the unspoken expectation that you should always post tweets that can go viral.
The main thing here is consistency. You should be consistent with the amount of engagement and the number of posts on your Twitter timeline. Draw a consistent amount of attention to your tweet so it doesn’t get lost. If your tweet is going to go viral, you don’t need to answer yourself by saying the obvious about how your tweet blew up while you add your products and services as a hard sell post. People can smell insincerity from a mile away and then stop interacting with you.
today #Instagram Insight brings you the letter B, for behavior.
You’ve heard the saying: Consistency is key. The more often you post, the more likely you are to have a higher engagement rate.
See the full A to Z of Instagram Insights: https://t.co/cCIrHjx1Vc pic.twitter.com/ndQfa1hS5z
— Sprout Social (@SproutSocial) April 13, 2022
Continue the conversation
Once you have a viral tweet, go through your tweets and try to respond to as many comments as possible. This can open up conversations with potential customers or even have questions about you and your services. The point is to continue to reach out to them in an organic way by seeing their comment and honestly replying to them in a way that is relevant to you and your Twitter account.
Of course, engaging with your customers on a tweet that has a steady flow of engagement is more manageable since there are fewer comments to respond to. What’s important is how quickly and honestly you respond to a comment to deepen your relationship with your readers or customers. Once people become more familiar with your handle and learn more about your followers, they will become more loyal to your brand.
Comment on your favorite posts on Twitter
While I said you shouldn’t interact with other Twitter accounts by making harsh comments on their posts, you can definitely interact with them. Whether it’s an account that has a large following or you’re just starting out like yourself, it’s good to build your community by building relationships with like-minded people.
By building relationships, you can endorse and promote each other’s products or services. With this amount of support, businesses become a stronger community. A stronger community will lead to better engagement with other businesses and also their users and followers, giving you more leverage in networking with an even larger community. It will just keep growing as long as you are consistent.
https://twitter.com/NealSchaffer/status/1339945051120611331
Know when is the best time to post
Knowing when your target audience is online is important to tweeting. Usually, it’s either in the morning as people are getting ready for work or in the evening as people are winding down for the day. These downtimes are usually ideal times to post because people are most likely scrolling through social media.
Use these times by posting on your account to market your product and interact with your followers to get better engagement on Twitter. If you have a global audience, think about international time zones. You can always schedule your posts accordingly, but it would be better to have an organic interaction with your consumers. You’ll also need to factor in days off like Sundays when things are usually quiet or Mondays when things get busy.
Just be yourself
The most important thing is to be yourself. As mentioned before, your posts will ultimately reflect what your Twitter handles and its personality. It’s easy to get confused and lose the “identity” of your handle if you’re just running after your account’s analytics performance or engagement.
If you focus too much on the numbers, you can completely lose the interest of your customers. People are actually drawn to Twitter accounts that portray a unique personality. Instead of copying how others tweet, post tweets that really speak for yourself or your brand.
Photo: Photo taken by Marten Bjork.
Sources: PR Newswire / Benjamin Curry (Forbes)
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