Social Media Marketing: How to Use Twitter Effectively

NOTE: This is another in a series on social media for business marketing.

With over 288 million people using it each month, Twitter is a great platform for short posts that drive traffic to your website, connect you with your customers, generate awareness and drive sales. However, it can be confusing to know how and when to send the right tweet to your audience. Follow our social media marketing best practices for posting on Twitter, and you’ll be tweeting like a champ in no time.

Setting the stage

Like all social media, Twitter is a tool that helps you be social with your customers. In effect, you are entering into a conversation with your customers, and the key to any good conversation is to be a good listener. Don’t use your platform as a bully pulpit from which you talk AT your audience instead of WITH them. Here are some general rules of behavior (aka etiquette) to guide you on your way to becoming a good conversationalist:

• It’s always better to show interest in your partner/audience rather than talk incessantly about yourself.
• Sharing content from other people is OK, just make sure it contributes to the general quality of the conversation.
• Adhere to the 80/20 rule: 80% of your content should be interesting and helpful, while 20% can be promotional.
• Add interest to your end of the conversation by offering a variety of posts from photos to videos to contests to blog posts and more.

Creating content for Twitter

There are a few simple rules to remember when tweeting:

• Posts on Twitter should be kept to 115-120 characters.
• Add an image to your tweet – it’s a great way to catch the eye of your audience.
• A conversation dies if it is not attended to; be sure to tweet frequently enough to uphold your end of the conversation.
• Do not start a tweet with @TwitterHandle. If you do, Twitter will assume you are replying to the @TwitterHandle and will omit your tweet from the rest of your followers’ feeds. If you want your other followers to see your reply simply add a period before the handle, i.e. “.@VONT has lots of great info on their blog!”
• Use #hashtags to connect to other conversations, but do so judiciously. Use 1 or 2 #hashtags max – using more #hashtags #just #confuses #the #situation.

Timing Twitter posts

Because no one uses Twitter all day, every day, there are better times than others to get your tweets in front of your audience. Interestingly, though not surprisingly, timing depends on the type of business doing the tweeting.

If you are a B2B company, then weekdays are the best times to tweet. In fact weekdays provide 14% more engagement than do weekends according to Dan Zarella, social media scientist at HubSpot. For B2C businesses, however, engagement and CTRs are highest on weekends and Wednesdays. Why the difference? The thinking is that businesses work with other businesses during weekdays, where as consumers take time over the weekend to explore what attracts them.

Are there better times of the day during which to tweet? Absolutely. Noon and 6pm are the best times to gain highest CTR, while 5pm is the best time to tweet if you’re hoping your audience will retweet. Again, the thinking behind this is that people are on their lunch breaks at noon and looking for something to do as they head home.

Overall, Twitter reports that users are 181% more likely to be on Twitter during their commute, and 119% more likely to use Twitter during work and school hours.

The takeaway

If you take the time to lay out your posts, create interesting content, and publish during peak engagement times, you’ll be well on your way to starting and maintaining a conversation your audience will want to participate in…and following social media marketing best practices. Good luck to you!

About VONT Performance Digital Marketing

At VONT we believe that change is the only constant in the digital world – and that excites us. When tools and environments are constantly changing, new opportunities to help our clients achieve success are constantly arising. Each new advertising technology, social platform, or design approach allows us to improve on the results we achieve for our clients.

We believe in this idea of continual fine-tuning so much that we named our company VONT, which means to achieve exponential improvement in incremental steps. It is our core belief, and the reason why we are not simply a web design company or simply a digital advertising agency, but rather a long-term, single source partner providing a comprehensive array of web development and digital marketing capabilities.

In short, we’re here so that our clients achieve success in the ever-changing digital world. If you’d like to learn more about VONT and the work we’ve done with our client partners, visit our Work page. Or, if you have a question, contact us. We’ll get right back to you!