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Is your business effectively using Twitter? Facebook may still dominate the social media industry, but Twitter has seen some growth this year. In fact, it has been steadily growing in users and daily active users over the past few quarters. Twitter is also ranked as the 2nd or 3rd most popular social media platform in several countries, which is important if you have an international audience. So, are you ready to step up your Twitter game?
Post Often (But Not Too Much)
Each social media platform has a daily recommended posting amount. For Facebook, it is about one to two posts a day. Twitter, however, it is recommended to post more. The ideal number is often debated, usually somewhere between 3-5 tweets a day. However, there are a few that will recommend tweeting more (7+ per day). Test out how your engagement does with 3-5 posts. Usually after a certain point your engagement drops.
When To Post
The days and times you should focus on posting will vary. Tweets have an incredibly short lifespan, about 18 minutes. This makes timing very important. You want your tweets to go out at times that your audience will be on. Generally, it is best to tweet between noon – 3:00pm, Monday – Friday. With the majority of the US population in either the Central Time Zone or the Eastern Time Zone, it is best to use one of those two. Obviously, not all audiences are the same, so try to find out when your followers are on and adjust your tweeting schedule to them. Tools like Klout will give your recommendation on what times to post based on your audience engagement.
Hashtags
Twitter is based about the use of Hashtags. So it is important to use them when tweeting. They can help connect your tweets with a specific audience. For instance, #Fashion will be seen by those interested in fashion. However, DO NOT go overboard on the hashtags. Usually if you have more than two hashtags your engagement drops. So try to keep the hashtags between 1-2.
Mentions
Mentioning influencers and other businesses related to you or your industry can help improve engagement and retweets. So feel free to add a @twitterhandle onto a few of your tweets. You can also ask questions to influencers and talk to your audience to help improve engagement.
Tweet Chats
For those who are not familiar with Tweet Chats they are conversations held at a specific time and day using a set hashtag to communicate with. For instance, #SmallBizChat is a Tweet Chat for small businesses that meets every Wednesday at 8pm EST. Usually the chat is focused on a set topic for that week. Usually, the moderator asks a question and all the participants answer. It is a great way to gain new followers and connect with influences and other businesses in your industry.
Advertising
Just like Facebook, Twitter has a way to advertise through their platform. There are different types of campaigns that serve different goals, like website clicks or increasing followers. Similar to Facebook, you can set a daily budget or a total budget and it can run until the money runs out or through set days. You can target your audiences via locations, keywords, interests, behaviors, etc. While advertising will not make or break your Twitter success, you may find that it performs as well as or better than Facebook. We have had more success on some of our ads via Twitter than we did via Facebook.
Twitter is one of the big social media platforms out there and it appears to be growing in popularity. Twitter is a great way to communicate, network and stay up-to-date with the latest industry trends. It also is a great platform to engage with your audience. So, now the question is, are you ready to create and/or improve your business’ Twitter account?
By Ashleigh Cue
