Loading

Twitter Workshop navigating the cesspool

Business value of Twitter

PR, networking, customer service, customer testimonials

Showcase (positive) customer testimonials to reinforce your business's values.
Connect with other people/brands through mutually beneficial content.

Goals and objectives

Twitter's informal, in-the-moment format allows people and brands to easily connect with friends, customers, and communities.

Anatomy of a tweet

When a Tweet starts with a @username, the only users who will see it in their timeline (other than the sender and the recipient) are those who follow both the sender and the recipient. Adding a character before the @ (.@username or the ol' manual RT) will make your tweet visible to all of your followers.

Twitter's recently killed manual retweets with this fancy new nested retweet feature, making things much cleaner and easy to follow.

Use MT (i.e., modified retweet) to retweet a truncated version of a tweet or add your own commentary.

Photos, GIFs, polls, videos and quoted tweets no longer count toward your 140-character limit.

The Twitter Glossary

The Twitter glossary includes vocabulary and terminology used to talk about features and aspects of Twitter:

Interacting with users

Following / followers / lists

  • Following: Twitter users who you have decided to follow
  • Follower: Twitter use who has followed you to receive your tweets
  • Lists: Group of other Twitter users by topic or interest (e.g. a list of auto or strip clubs), so that you can monitor their tweets without checking the home stream

Monitor competitors

  • You can create a private list on Twitter to monitor competitors that will tell you how competitors are handling their Twitter strategy.
  • Create a search that monitors a competitor's @username to see how people are interacting with them.
  • Check out your competition's follower list to see if there are any trends.

How to attract new followers

  • Follow people in the community
  • Post good content
  • Local influencers - bloggers, community groups, newspaper, politicians, other businesses
  • Run a follow to receive a discount promotion

Maintaining a good following-to-follower ratio

Your TFF Ratio (Twitter Follower-Friend Ratio) is the ratio of your followers to friends (or people who you follow). The higher the ratio, the more Twitter heat you pack. A ratio of less than 1.0 indicates that you are seeking knowledge (and Twitter Friends), but not getting much Twitter Love in return.

Tracking influencers

Turn on notifications or use a tool to track influencers!

Engagement: mentions, RTs, likes, DMs

Who's talking about you and with you? Respond, you dumbass.

  • Be careful about retweeting praise.
  • RT stories about you.

Hashtags!

hashtag: noun hash·tag \ˈhash-ˌtag\

A hashtag is any word or phrase immediately preceded by the # symbol. When you click on a hashtag, you'll see other Tweets containing the same keyword or topic.

Purpose 1: Join a trending topic.

Purpose 2: Get found in search.

Purpose 3: Add context to your tweet.

Purpose 4: Show humor or emotion.

Hashtag research

twitter.com/search; hashtagify.me; hashatit.com; hashtags.org; keyhole.co; ritetag.com; tagboard.com; tagdef.com; twubs.com; geochirp.com

Popular hashtags

  • Auto: #automotive, #car, #cars, #auto, #motorcycle, #autorepair, #autoshop, #oilchange, #carcare, #classiccars, #ride, #drive, #horsepower, #driver, #sportscar, #exoticcar, #speed, #fastcar #travel #traveling #TagsForLikes #traveler #TFLers #vacation #visiting #instatravel #instago #instagood #trip #holiday #photooftheday #fun #travelling
  • Also tag car brands and/or models, if applicable: #audi #bmw #lamborghini #bentley #rollsroyce #ferrari #porsche #mustang #astonmartin #camaro #chevy #lexus #nissan #honda #chrysler
  • Food and drink: #amazing, #bar, #breakfast, #cake, #chineserestaurant, #chocoholic, #chocolate, #cleaneating, #cocktail, #cocktails, #delish, #deserttable, #dessert , #dessertporn, #desserts, #dinner, #drink, #drinking, #drinks, #drinkup, #food, #foodgasm, #foodie, #foodoftheday, #foodporn, #fortheloveoffood, #healthy, #hungry, #icecream, #liquor, #localfood, #lunch, #mojitos, #munchies, #nom, #nomnomnom, #noregrets, #pizza, #pub, #restaurants, #sharefood, #slurp, #snack, #sweet, #tapas, #thirsty, #treatyoself, #vegan, #vegetarian, #wine, #yum, #yummy, #yumyum

Best practices

  • Tweets with hashtags can increase engagement almost 100% (2x) for individuals and 50% (1.5x) for brands. Source: http://bit.ly/2iRi4NE
  • If your brand's jumping into a hashtag, you should make sure that you're contributing value to the conversation instead of just promoting your business.
  • #Using #hashtags #after #each #word #is #ANNOYING!
  • Twitter suggests using one or two hashtags per tweet. We don’t advise including more than four.
  • #McDStories: Companies need to consider the potential effects when using hashtags for marketing purposes

Tweeting best practices

Structuring tweets: length, 80/20 rule, where to place links

In most cases, short and punchy tweets will work best for your business. As web and image links count toward your character count, try to compose tweets that concisely communicate your message to introduce the additional content.

Scheduling updates: best day (s), best time (s)

Multimedia: photos, graphics, video, GIFs, Twitter Cards, polls

How to get RT’d

Using popular hashtags allows you to be part of a larger conversation and reach more people with your tweets. More reach means more chances to get retweeted.

What NOT to do

Don't post updates that are too long.

The ideal length of tweets with images: 20 to 40 characters / without images: 120 to 140 characters

Don't oversell the brand.

A notable death isn't an opportunity to plug your brand. Also David Bowie would never have worn Crocs.

Don't forget (or abuse) hashtags.

Read The Hashtag, a story in two parts

#WhyIStayed was used as a public forum for women to talk openly about their experiences with domestic abuse. While using hashtags is a good way to promote your brand and take advantage of a Popular Cultural Thing, make sure that your eagerness to score some RTs doesn't come off as callous and offensive.
Read what the hashtag is about before posting.

Don't forget to optimize your content.

use hashtags / run a poll / RT for ... <3 for ... or reply for ...

For content to resonate on Twitter, it needs to follow the channel's best practices.

Don't forget to pay attention to automated posting.

If the Twitter account is hooked up to Pinterest it's important to make sure you're scheduling pins at different times of the day to avoid flooding the Twitter stream.

Measurement

Twitter analytics

Twitter’s analytics help you understand how the content you share on Twitter grows your business.

Tweet activity dashboard

The Tweet activity dashboard shows you a detailed analysis of your Twitter activity. For each Tweet you send, you’ll be able to track: number of impressions, number of engagements and engagement rate (impressions divided by engagements).

Audience insights dashboard

This dashboard will help you get to know your Twitter followers. You’ll be able to see: follower growth; followers’ interests; and followers’ demographics, such as language, gender and location.

Takeaways

  • Learn which content resonates with your audience.
  • Understand how users interact with your tweets over time.
  • Get to know your followers.
  • Judge whether your follower base is growing.
  • Determine whether your Twitter ads are working.

Math, math, math ...

Third-party tools

  • Favorites: Buffer, Cyfe, ManageFlitter, Sendible, TweetChat
  • Others: Followerwonk, Google Analytics, GroupTweet, HootSuite, Klout, LaterBro, Riffle, SocialOomph, TweetDeck, TweetStats, Tweriod, Twuffer

Twitter promotion

Offers

Use auto-response offers to reward people for following your account.

Or promote offers and content using Twitter ads.

Contests

Alex did not win these shoes.

Advertising

michellelrs / loyalrewards

Report Abuse

If you feel that this video content violates the Adobe Terms of Use, you may report this content by filling out this quick form.

To report a Copyright Violation, please follow Section 17 in the Terms of Use.