666.
If for some people this figure may evoke apprehensions or concerns, for businesses – it opens up broad perspectives for social media marketing on Twitter.
Why?
Because that’s the current number (in millions) of monthly active users on Twitter (now X), one of the most popular social networks.
Twitter is also the third social platform by popularity (after LinkedIn and Facebook) preferred by 71% of B2B marketers and 65% of B2C marketers to distribute content.
If you also plan to use Twitter for business, it’s worth learning its essentials and advanced strategies. That’s why we’ve prepared this Twitter marketing guide with tried-and-tested tactics and examples.
Get in!
Why should you focus on Twitter marketing?
Explore the top five benefits of Twitter marketing below.
1. Boosting brand awareness and global reach
Twitter is a huge digital arena with millions of eyes on it. You can become more visible and recognizable in the crowd of other companies by showcasing your unique values and offers on Twitter.
Moreover, it can help you appear on the radars of foreign audiences and position your brand globally. Here’s a list of the leading countries by the number of Twitter users:
- United States (95M+)
- Japan (67M+)
- India (27M+)
- Brazil and Indonesia (both 24M+)
- United Kingdom (23M+)
2. Targeting Gen Z and millennials
Let’s peek into Twitter demographics by age.
Over 17% of Twitter users are between 18 and 24; 38.5% are aged 25–34, and 20.7% are from 35 to 49 years old.
As you can see, Generation Z and Millennials comprise the largest chunks. You can target them effectively with the best Twitter marketing strategies up your sleeve.
3. Building better relationships with leads and customers
Unbreakable and meaningful relationships take time to build. True.
But when connecting and engaging with your Twitter audiences, you can cultivate meaningful experiences and develop an invisible emotional bond between your brand and your prospects and customers.
Twitter is a strategic communication tool for many companies to nurture qualified leads and turn your existing customers into lifelong fans.
4. Driving web traffic
Using Twitter for business, you can pour organic traffic into your website or blog (find out how exactly in a few paragraphs).
Alternatively, the platform offers paid ads to generate web traffic from Tweets targeted to particular user segments. For instance, website carousels (promoted via ads) on Twitter increase the click-through rate and site conversions by 25%.
5. Increasing the social media marketing ROI
One option is to invest in reaching your Twitter audience organically. Another is to tap into Twitter advertising and boost your social media ROI with paid campaigns.
With Twitter as a part of your business growth strategy, you can reap big rewards. Twitter can drive a 40% higher ROI than any other social platform. The bigger the investment – the more you can harvest. Moreover, you can also embed Twitter feed on website to boost the reach of your profile and increase the engagement on your website.
Mastering Twitter marketing basics
There are four essential pillars you can’t simply neglect because they lay the foundation of any Twitter marketing strategy:
- Profile optimization
- Competitor analysis
- Goal setting
- Tracking metrics and measuring performance
Let’s dive deeper into each.
Pillar #1. Polish → Polish your Twitter business profile
Look at your business account on Twitter.
Is it spotless? Or does it require brushing up?
You might need to optimize your Twitter profile to emphasize your brand’s identity and improve visibility on the platform. Make sure you have the following elements in place:
- Name and handle
- Profile pic and banner
- Bio
- Location
- Professional category
- Website link
- Verified badge
Review the profile of Reuters (@reuters), having everything refined.
Request verification and get verified on Twitter if you haven’t done so. A verification mark is a valuable asset you can gain to boost brand authenticity and credibility in the eyes of your audience. Not to mention that only verified accounts can appear in the “For You” recommendations since April 15, 2023.
Pro tip: Use Keyhole to do your industry search, identify the top users with the highest impact in your field, and compare how they optimized their Twitter business accounts to learn from them.
Pillar #2. Analyze → Analyze your competitors
Your direct competitors may steal your Twitter audience’s attention and leave you with crumbs. What exactly do you need to beat your competition on Twitter?
You can easily unveil their marketing secrets with the help of Twitter competitor analytics. Keyhole can help you perform in-depth competitive research of your rivals on the platform and determine how to attract more leads.
Let’s suppose one of your major competitors is Adidas. You could use Keyhole’s competitor analysis tool to discover what content resonated best with Adidas’ audience on Twitter and when (check the screenshot).
Pillar #3. Set goals → Set goals and KPIs
Now, it’s time to outline your Twitter marketing objectives and KPIs.
For a start, address the five “Ws”: the “why” (we have discussed the “whys” above), the what (expected Twitter marketing results), the “who” (the responsible marketer), the “when” (campaign’s time and deadline), and the “where” (on Twitter).
Regarding the metrics, the fundamental social media KPIs to monitor on Twitter are:
- Follower growth
- Reach (views, mentions)
- Impressions
- Engagement (likes, shares, bookmarks, replies, retweets)
- Conversions
Pillar #4. Track and Measure → Track and measure your Twitter data continuously
How do you know your Twitter marketing strategies actually work?
By tapping into Twitter analytics, of course, to keep track of your Twitter campaigns, spot the weaknesses and gaps, and make improvements whenever needed.
You should analyze Twitter data as follows:
- Brand mentions
- Post engagements
- Best-performing posts
- Hashtags
- Follower insights (country, language, age, gender, etc.)
- Sentiment (positive/negative)
To make it easier, use Twitter analytics tools like Twitter’s native platform, Keyhole, or others.
With Keyhole, for instance, you get a timeline view of your Twitter performance, take a comprehensive look at the Twitter engagement rate overall, compare the top posts, or glimpse at the follower demographics, among other things.
How to market on Twitter like a pro without ads
Grab the following Twitter tips for businesses and marketers.
1. Share company updates and upcoming products
Twitter audiences are hungry to discover something new.
So, what’s happening at your company?
Don’t shy away from sharing your updates, “backstage” trials and errors, innovative transformations, etc. These all make your brand look more authentic and human.
Besides, such content will help you generate buzz around your brand, product, or service and naturally expand the follower base on Twitter.
Look at how other brands do that.
Wakefit shared the company update on the official power nap time scheduled for employees.
Why not announce your upcoming product or feature?
Samsung collects thousands of views, impressions, and retweets from the company’s shoutouts about new product releases or extra features added to the existing ones.
2. Interact with your audience
Explore several methods to encourage communication and increase user engagement on Twitter.
- Questions
“A question is by far the most effective way to interact with your target audience and drive noticeable results in Twitter marketing (replies, retweets, likes, and views),” says Ryan Hammill, Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Ancient Language Institute (ALI).
Here’s one from ALI.
- Polls
Your audience may get tired of too many questions. How about Twitter polls, then?
Working on the Metaverse solutions, Meta ran a poll asking how people imagine a garden in the Metaverse.
- Replies
On Have a Coke Day, Coca-Cola encouraged Twitter users to comment with an emoji ? to join the celebration and replied to every user, concocting a unique wish each time.
The Tweet hit over 700 replies and 285,000 views.
- Challenges
Challenging tasks evoke motivation to participate and the joy of accomplishment.
Call of Duty Mobile challenged Twitter users to share their achievements in the game. The result? Over 8K replies with user-generated content.
3. Direct users to your digital channels via links
Ryan Hammill also recommends directing your Twitter audience to your eCommerce site, company blog, or any other social channel. He says, “Compared to questions or other interactive content, such Tweets don’t have the same engagement rate but work perfectly well in getting traffic from Twitter. Basically, there are three ways to do that: URL in the profile, links in posts, and pinned Tweets with links.”
Let’s again visit ALI’s profile on Twitter to check those in action.
- Link in the profile
It links to ALI’s official website.
- Link in the Tweet
It directs users to the New Humanists podcast by ALI’s founders Ryan Hammill and Jonathan Roberts.
- Link via the pinned Tweet
It leads to ALI’s new YouTube project – the Latin for Kids series.
4. Leverage visuals
What if we told you that visual content garners a 650% higher engagement than text-only posts?
This is one of the reasons why 56% of brands use visuals in their social media marketing strategies.
And Red Bull is one of them. With the below Tweet, for instance, the brand takes two pigeons with one bean by sharing the photo and challenging users to caption it.
Other types of visual content you can use for Twitter are:
- Images
- Screenshots
- Infographics
- Videos
- Animations
- GIFs, etc.
Pro tip: Create visually appealing, branded visuals to highlight your brand.
Check out Red Bull’s GIF for Christmas, where Santa Claus is drinking Red Bull. In the end, the slogan runs: Red Bull gives you wiiings.
5. Don’t underestimate hashtagging
A single hashtag can grow your Twitter follower count organically and boost post visibility and engagement with your audience. Posts with one or two hashtags on Twitter get 21% higher engagement than those with three or more hashtags.
A universal rule of thumb is to select niche-driven hashtags by the following principle:
- #SciTwitter – for science
- #FinTwitter – for finances
- #HRTwitter – for human resources (HR)
- #FitnessTwitter – for fitness
- #MedTwitter – for medicine
- And so on.
Warning note: A hashtag can “drown” your business on Twitter.
For example:
Chanel and Burger King faced boycotts with the hashtags #BoycottChanel and #BoycottBurgerKing. Such cases are too obvious to miss, especially when you consistently analyze Twitter hashtags and track your brand-related hashtags.
But then, there are “innocent” hashtags that can ruin your online reputation.
Take #McDStories from McDonald’s. Astonishingly, it turned into a PR disaster for the brand. The Twitter hashtag campaign backlashed with customers’ gruesome stories and negative comments instead of anticipated positive experiences.
6. Be on time with your Tweets
Promote your business on Twitter wisely with seasonal and 24-hour timeliness. Follow the experiences of the companies mentioned below.
- Seasonality
Learn from Starbucks. The company rocks the platform with timely poems dedicated to each season.
For instance, here’s one for spring.
And here’s one for autumn.
- 24-hour timing
What is the most appropriate time to tweet?
The best time to post on Twitter is between 8 am and 10 am on weekdays.
Of course, you can schedule your everyday or holiday posts in advance with Keyhole.
But –
The proper timing for Tweets depends on the business niche, audience type, topic, etc. Sometimes, it’s also worth harnessing the power of reactive marketing and responding to the news or phenomena immediately without waiting for those hours to come.
7. Consider influencer collabs
Partnerships between influential content creators (influencers) and brands have become a new normal on social media.
Actually, 61% of Twitter users follow at least one content creator. And here’s another fact: 63% of people trust influencers’ recommendations more than brands’ marketing messages.
By running a Twitter influencer campaign, you can expose your brand to a specific audience and generate sales in a particular demographic segment.
Here are the types of influencers to pick from:
- Nano-influencers: <10K followers
- Micro-influencers: 10K – 100K followers
- Macro-influencers: 100K – 1M followers
- Mega-influencers: >1M followers
Look at the following examples of influencer marketing campaigns with different content creators on Twitter.
Jackie Lumbasi (51.4K followers), a media professional and macro-influencer from Rwanda, enrolled in a paid partnership with MTN Mobile Money (MoMo).
MySwitzerland collaborated with Roger Federer, a mega-influencer with 12.7M followers. The tweet gathered over 27K likes and 1.6K retweets.
Tweet your way to success
Now, it’s time to outTweet your competitors with the proven Twitter marketing tips we have shared in this guide. The next great step would be to try out Keyhole’s Twitter analytics and make sure you keep track of everything, from historical data to current trends.
Monitor your metrics, understand how your audience feels, and adapt your Tweets accordingly to stay relevant and win a competitive edge.
Author Bio
Brooke Webber is a passionate content writer with a love for storytelling. Brooke has 5 years of experience in crafting compelling narratives that resonate with audiences across industries. Total coffee addict. During her spare time, she immerses herself in literature.
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Frequently Asked Questions
1. Why is Twitter marketing important in business?
The importance of marketing on Twitter lies in increasing brand recognition globally, targeting Millennials and Gen Z, strengthening relationships with potential and existing customers, generating website traffic, and boosting the ROI of social media campaigns.
2. What are the best practices of Twitter marketing?
You can effectively promote your brand on Twitter by incorporating company news and updates, interactive content, links, visuals, hashtags, timely Tweets, and influencer collaborations into your Twitter marketing strategy.
3. How to boost Twitter user engagement?
Questions, polls, replies, and challenges are the best ways to engage Twitter users. In addition, you can improve engagement with properly chosen hashtags.