With over 200 million active users, there\’s little doubt that you need to be using Twitter as an organisation today.
Initially thought to be one of the most simplest and straightforward social networks to use on the surface, when it\’s first started to be utilised, it\’s often realised that it\’s actually more complex to do so than first anticipated.
And although there\’s a considerable amount of information to take into account, the following five points should help you ensure you begin to see as much success as you can with your Twitter activity.
1. Make new tweets
The staple part of any Twitter activity, you need to be making regular tweets that have fresh information in. These tweets shouldn\’t all be promotional-based and you need to think about your audience and what it is they\’re going to be interested in reading.
If you need inspiration, look at what your competitors are tweeting or even what leaders in other industries are doing. You shouldn\’t copy things like-for-like, but you should be able to get a good idea of what works and what doesn\’t (something that monitoring your activity regularly will also assist with).
2. Retweet audience-relevant tweets
As much as your audience will expect to see new tweets from you, they\’ll also be looking for you to share information from other brands with them.
Retweets are a great way to do this and generally speaking, as long as you\’re not solely retweeting other updates and those updates that you do retweet aren\’t from direct competitors, you should only see positive results.
3. Interact and engage
Today, people use Twitter as a way to reach out and speak to a brand. They want to see them making updates and providing information, but they also want to see responses to the updates they make.
Therefore, be sure to keep an eye on your \’Mentions\’ and \’Interactions\’ at all times, responding as promptly and as efficiently as you possibly can.
4. Have up-to-date branding
Twitter gives you the ability to upload three different styles of graphic – a logo, a cover photo and a background image.
On a basic level, all images need to be uploaded to ensure customers have no doubts that the Twitter feed they\’re engaging with is that of your brand. However, it\’s important you don\’t forget to update your branding regularly – your logo is unlikely to change, but there\’s no reason why your cover photo and background image can\’t be updated every couple of weeks or months to reflect, for instance, a new season or product range.
5. Remain active
Arguably the most important point to keep in mind is that you need to remain as active as you possibly can at all times. Making the occasional tweet is good, but consumers expect brands to be publishing daily updates and engaging with them almost in real time – if you find you\’re responding to tweets two weeks after they\’ve been sent or you\’re only managing two or three tweets per week, you need to work out what you can do to improve this.
Twitter is undoubtedly a fantastic resource to utilise, but it\’s one that\’s more complex than most first appreciate. With regular engagement one of the most important aspects to consider, the above five points should all help you on your journey to Twitter success.
Image: spencereholtaway (Flickr)