Tag Archives: twitter marketing

If your engagement on Twitter seems down, it’s time to wake up those followers and get them interested and re-tweeting again. Here are three great ways to interact with your Twitter audience so they will go from followers to customers before you can say “hash tag.”

  • Ask a question.  People love to express themselves on social media. So asking them a question that allows them to express their opinion will get them talking to you. Tweet a question and have them attach a hash tag to their answer. Who knows, you may be able to get a trending topic going.
  • Tweet a series. If you tweet that over the next few days you will be tweeting a series of “how-to’s” or sharing an exclusive peek at new products, people will keep checking back to see the next exciting tweet. People always say, leave them wanting more; tweeting a series will do just that.
  • Answer a common question. If yours is like most businesses, you probably get a lot of the same questions to your customer service representatives. Why not do a Twitter FAQ? Tweet out the answers to some of your more common questions and the people who follow you will not only appreciate it, they’re likely to get excited about their newfound knowledge and share the wealth with others by re-tweeting.

Try these three great Twitter engagement techniques and you’ll not only engage your existing followers but attract new ones.

In How to Create Posts Specifically for Facebook and Twitter Part 1, we discussed how often you should post on both Facebook and Twitter as well as how to engage each network’s individual audience. It’s important to understand that although you can post about the same topics and use the same content for both Facebook and Twitter, you must word it a different way for each in order for it to be effective. Here are more ways you can customize your posts for Facebook and Twitter.

How long should a post be?

Facebook: Keep your post about 2-3 lines long. Although there isn’t a character limit on Facebook posts, people don’t want to read a paragraph-long status update. For this reason, you should limit your posts to be about 2-3 lines long and include a link or photo to catch your audience’s eye. That will help it stand out in their Newsfeed.

Twitter: Twitter has a length limit of 140 characters or less. However it is recommended that you keep your tweets at 120-130 characters (including a shortened URL) in order to make it easy for people to retweet. If you use all 140 characters, people who want to retweet your message won’t be able to without altering your message in some way, which is discouraging.

What kind of content should you share?

Facebook: On Facebook, it’s important to post a lot of photos or links with your content to catch peoples’ eyes. If you’re posting a link or a photo, ask a question to encourage participation or make a comment about the photo or link. The more people that comment on your posts the more exposure your company will receive in the future. Share information like your latest videos, news, blog posts, promotions, etc. People love deals, so giving your fans an exclusive deal will help ensure they’ll keep paying attention to your brand on Facebook. It’s also fun to engage your fans with contests that are exclusively for them.

Twitter: It’s important to keep Twitter posts short and to-the-point. There should be a shortened URL and the content with it should entice your audience to click it and retweet it. The shorter and more interesting the tweet, the more likely people are to click on your link and share it with their followers, gaining you more exposure. You can post the same kind of content that you would on Facebook; company announcements, promotions, news, blogs, videos, etc., just post them in short snippets.

Following these tips will help you to better customize your content for Facebook and Twitter. Remember when choosing content to post, put yourself in your audience’s shoes. What would they be interested in hearing about? Posting truly engaging content rather than sales-y messages will help make your followers into advocates for your brand.

According to the Twitter blog, starting in late March,Twitter will be introducing a new advertising offering for small businesses that will help them grow their businesses through the use of Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts.

Twitter partnered with American Express in order to make it simple for small businesses to advertise on Twitter. American Express card members based in the U.S. will also be able to try the new advertising platform before anyone else and American Express will even give $100 in free advertising to the first 10,000 businesses to sign up.

According to the blog, “successful small business owners intuitively know how to build meaningful relationships with their customers. They were the first to use Twitter to talk with consumers in real time and their creativity demonstrated Twitter’s potential as a marketing platform.”

As a small business owner, will you take advantage of the new Twitter marketing offerings next month?