Welp. Facebook dropped the bomb we all knew was coming, but were hoping would come much later. Facebook announced that they’d be heavily penalizing business pages that get little to no engagement and focusing on conversations between people – not people and pages – but people and people. This is not an issue for pages that have been focusing on engagement from the get-go, but those that were using the platform to broadcast need to switch their strategy or move elsewhere. Twitter may be a good place to look. Yes, I know everyone thought that Twitter was dead, but we’ve been loving Twitter, especially over the past year. If you take the time to schedule with a strategy AND engage, you can build strong relationships and see a return on investment from your efforts. Today, we’ll give you our favorite Twitter Tips for success so you too can fall in love with the network.
Twitter Tips For Success
But, before we get to these tips, let’s discuss why you should reconsider investing time on the network you thought was dying a slow death.
- Twitter has 330 million active users
- Twitter allows you to directly talk to your target audience
- Twitter has been ignored for the past few years, this means the early bird can get the worm
- People are still talking about your brand on Twitter
Are you ready to give Twitter another try? Here are your Twitter tips for success.
USE IMAGES
While Twitter is the land of 280 characters, don’t rely on text alone. Images take up tons of real estate and that means that if you add an eye-catching image that is “easy to read” you can increase your chances of having people stop, look, read and engage. Don’t rely on just photos, experiment with videos and GIFs to get the most out of that valuable piece of land.
RESEARCH YOUR HASHTAGS
Just like Google has keywords, Twitter has hashtags. Research your hashtags before tweeting to make sure they are relevant to how you want to be found. Make sure that you don’t go crazy on hashtags though, you want to make sure that your tweet is easy to read and understand.
USE QUOTES
Quote industry leaders and make sure to @tag them on your tweets. You will receive attention not only from those who admire the person you are quoting but – if you are smart about the way you craft the quote tweet – you may even start a conversation with that influencer.
USE EMOJIS & SPECIAL CHARACTERS
Emojis add much-needed context to text. Use emojis to get the subtleties of what you are trying to say through your tweet. They’re also eye-catching, so tweets with emojis have more chances of being seen and being engaged with.
USE NUMBERS
People on Twitter love stats and numbers. When you add numbers to tweets in an informational way, you increase your chances of getting more retweets and likes.
USE A CALL-TO-ACTION
Don’t be shy to ask for those things you want. Add a call-to-action to your tweets to get your followers to do what you want them to.
KEEP YOUR TWEETS SHORT
Yes, we know that Twitter increased their character limit, but Twitter is all about being short & sweet. Shorter tweets are easier to read and digest, making them more shareable. We suggest that you keep your tweets between 71 and 100 characters to get the most engagement (but if you don’t the Socialdraft dashboard does support the new longer character length).
USE BITLY
We love Bitly. That’s one of the reasons Socialdraft users can connect their business bitly to our dashboard. Shortening links with Bitly lets you make the most of your character and gets you tons of cool analytics. We highly recommend it as a URL shortener.
THINK ABOUT A TWEET’S HALF-LIFE
While your tweets will get engagement throughout time, it is the first few hours where you have the most chances of getting it seen. When you have a super important tweet coming out, make sure you’re signed in and engaging with people to draw more attention and make the most of your tweet’s half-life.
MENTION PEOPLE
The best way to get someone’s attention on the street or at a party is to call out their name, right? It’s the same on Twitter. When you are working on your social media calendar, think of those people you want to target. Check out their websites and blogs and see if they have any content that would be relevant to your audience. Schedule hares of this content AND when you do, make sure to @mention them. You’re doing them a favor by spreading their word and they will at least like your tweet…at best begin to engage you.
PLACE LINKS BETWEEN YOUR TWEET
Placed links at the first quarter of your tweet. For some reason, this increases the CTR.
POST AT THE RIGHT TIME
Some sites will tell you “the best time to tweet is xyz”. Don’t listen to them. Check analytics and find out what the best times really are. Then, test out posting at and around this time to see what gives you the best results.
SCHEDULE SMART
The whole idea behind social media scheduling, especially on Twitter is to save time so you can engage. As such, each time you schedule a tweet, ask yourself:
- does this encourage engagement with my target audience?
- does this encourage engagement with an influencer?
An easy way to achieve these is to include people in your tweets – both your audience and those influencers. Create a list of influencers, and when you are creating your Twitter calendar, check their content. Chances are they are in the same industry and are creating content that will interest your audience as well. Schedule these pieces of content following the tips above making sure that they are @tagged on the posts.
Then, in order to meet your goal of saving time so you can engage, schedule in two ways:
Recurring Posts
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Schedule evergreen content as recurring posts. Because Twitter is a constantly moving feed, it is ok to repeat content. You just need to be smart about it. If you use a dashboard such as Socialdraft, you can schedule posts that repeat daily, weekly and monthly and schedule them to stop after a certain number of occurrences. It’s quite handy here.
Schedule via CSV
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Another great tool. If you have evergreen content about your brand or industry, take the time to create multiple csvs that you can schedule each week, month or year. Need some examples?
- Yearly holidays: Create a CSV that contains all your holiday posts. Then each year, just adjust the posting dates. Upload this once a year and save tons of time.
- Reviews & press about your brand or business: Create a CSV of your positive online mentions. Upload these monthly and randomize them with TrueTime so you don’t bore your audience.
If you are now ready to take on Twitter, you will need a Twitter scheduler to help you make things happen. Take Socialdraft for a risk-free trial. You can do tons of things with Socialdraft including:
- Schedule posts to multiple Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, Pinterest boards, LinkedIn pages and Instagram accounts
- Schedule single, recurring, or duplicate posts
- Bulk upload posts via CSV
- Lets you know when your brand is mentioned online & has options for quick sharing
- Lets you engage on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn
- Lets you schedule Instagram reposts from Instagram to all other social networks.
- Pull reports on Twitter and Facebook.
- And much more.
Although there are rumors of a downfall for Twitter, it is still an incredibly powerful social network. Twitter is still in the top for referring web traffic, it is a fantastic place to develop leads, and it is an incredibly powerful customer service tool. If you are a small business owner who has tried to use Twitter to market your brand who has not seen success, this post is for you. We’ll give you suggestions to help you actually get results from your Twitter efforts and break down the things you need to do on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis in order to achieve them.
Twitter Growth Strategies for Business
Daily Tasks
These are the Twitter tasks you should perform daily. Why daily? Because on Twitter slow, smart and steady wins the game.
Follow Targeted Accounts
The best way to get followers on Twitter is to follow people yourself. Every time you follow someone, they get a notification. That gives that account the chance to check out your profile and if they find it engaging enough, follow you back. If you follow the right kind of people, you can get up to 40% of them to follow you back and be exposed to your tweets. To increase these chances even further, engage them as you follow (by commenting or re-tweeting) and schedule a retweet of their posts using Socialdraft.
How to Choose Accounts to Follow
It’s not as hard as you think. You can search accounts by keyword and location. Once you find them, Twitter will suggest similar accounts. You may also want to start by following those who have engaged your business in the past. Lastly, you’ll want to follow and engage those who follow and engage your followers, they will be the easiest to convert since they are interested in what you have to offer…but don’t know it yet.
Unfollow 100 People Who Don’t Follow Back
Those who don’t follow back, or those who haven’t followed you in ages are not likely to do business with you. Clean up your following by unfollowing them. You will need to use a 3rd party tool like ManageFlitter to help you with this task.
Engage
You will want to engage all those who engaged you. Thank those who retweeted you, reply to those tho commented on your tweets and keep that conversation going.
Check Your Online Reputation
Keep an eye on what is being said about your business or brand on social media. Then, take action.
- Share the good stuff
- Address the negative
- Engage those who created content around your brand
Weekly Twitter Growth Tasks
The majority of the weekly tasks are content sharing tasks. Using tools like Socialdraft, you can do this weekly as opposed to having to do it all the time. This is a serious time saver and the tools I’ll share with you in this section will make finding content to share a breeze.
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Tweet Reviews & Testimonials
Reviews and testimonials are awesome forms of evergreen content. Pop them into a CSV and upload them on a weekly basis. You can use the Socialdraft CSV bulk uploader and randomize this content using TrueTime so your audience doesn’t get bored.
Tweet Popular Content
Popular content is popular for a reason. Keep an eye out for content that is trending in your industry and share it on Twitter.
Wondering how to find this content? Start out by following influencers in your industry. Check out what they tweet and what gets them engagement. Chances are it will work for you too.
Tweet Promotional Content
Sticking to the 80/20 rule is great here. 80% of the content you push out should not be promotional. 20% should deal directly with your goals. Schedule your promotional content to come out amongst all the other content you have coming out.
Keep an Eye on Questions People Ask
People often ask Twitter for advice and opinions. Look for these questions and answer them with your tweets and content. This is a great way for you to make yourself an industry authority.
Monthly Twitter Growth Activities
This is where you can save time and really make an impact. Let’s get to work:
Tweet Quotes
Quotes are a great filler strategy. If you use Socialdraft, you can create an evergreen CSV sheet and upload this content on a monthly basis. Use TrueTime to randomize the content so that your audience does not get bored. If the person you are quoting is living, tag them. It’s flattering and a great way to connect with them.
Add Influencers to Public Lists
The key here is to make it flattering. Create public lists on Twitter that group people together who have influence. Give it an awesome name. When you add someone to this list, they will get a notification which will prompt them to check you out.
Check & Update Your Profile
Do a check to make sure all information on your profile is accurate. Change and update it to keep it fresh.
Connect Email
Connect your email (Gmail or Outlook) accounts monthly. It’s a great way for you to connect with those you are already connected with on a business basis.
Check Your Stats
With Socialdraft you can pull Twitter reports as often as you want. While weekly is a great way to make sure you’re on track, monthly should be the absolute minimum that you pull reports. See how you are doing and check your demographics to make sure your growth is on the right path.
Twitter is still an effective social networking tool for developing leads and communicating with customers and press. People talk about your brand on Twitter (and oftentimes, they complain about your brand on Twitter too), so it is imperative that you monitor your brand on Twitter. Don’t be an ostrich and put your head in the sand. Keep your eyes open and make sure that you’re ready to amplify & engage the good and address the negative. If you do this, you can control and grow your brand on Twitter.
5 Tips On Monitoring Your Brand on Twitter
Before you think about monitoring your brand on Twitter, you need to get familiar with Twitter Analytics. The best thing about Twitter analytics is that you don’t have to be an advertiser to access the dashboard. Just set up a Twitter Ads profile and you’ll be set. Twitter analytics gives you information on:
- Total tweets you’ve pushed out & % change over the previous month
- Total tweet impressions & % change over the previous month
- Total profile visits & % change over the previous month
- Total mentions & % change over the previous month
- Total followers & net change since last month
- Your top tweet
- Your top mention
- Your top follower
- Your top media tweet
As you can see, Twitter analytics are a bit scarce when it comes to analytics on your mentions. On top of that, mentions that aren’t set up properly can easily be missed. For example, our Twitter handle is @Socialdraftapp. Without following the tips below, we’d miss any mentions that aren’t tagged @socialdraftapp. We’d miss anything for “Socialdraft” “Social Draft” or “@socialdraft”. Let’s get down to the details so you too can be on top of any mentions of your brand on Twitter.
1) Use a Reputation Monitoring Tool
You can’t respond if you don’t know people are talking about your brand, and people love talking about brands. The majority of the time these are good mentions, but because of ease of use, Twitter has become a popular customer service platform. Interestingly enough, only 29% of businesses on Twitter took action on consumer complaints. That’s quite a large number. If you can be one of the 71% who monitors and responds, you will have an edge over the competition.
Use a reputation monitoring tool. Hop on at least twice daily (once at the beginning of the workday and once before you leave) to make sure that everything is addressed including shared links, requests for tech support, general customer service requests, questions, etc.
2) Be ready to respond
Take the time to prepare answers to all possible situations. Use these as guidelines so that you can reply quickly and effectively when a new mention comes in. Have a response strategy that includes items like:
* Response times
* How to respond
* Who should respond (is it an issue that needs to be escalated?)
3) Mentions that omit the @
Bet you didn’t know that 30.72% of all mentions actually fail to refer to a brand by its Twitter handle. This is an easy way to completely miss mentions of your brand. Make sure to monitor both your Twitter handle, as well as your regular business name. In this case, you would monitor @socialdraft, @SocialdraftApp, Socialdraft, and Social Draft. This way you don’t miss a thing.
Since not all tweets mentioning the name of the brand are directed to the actual brand, you need to be extra vigilant as to when your brand is added to a conversation. Even if people are not directly speaking to your brand, they are talking about you and this means you need to engage. Make sure to monitor not just direct replies, but tweets that mention the brand in any way. These are chances to connect with your audience and build brand loyalty.
PRO TIP: Monitor principals in your business as well as the name of your brand.
4) Negative mentions don’t always spread
If you wanted some good news, here they are: 60.20% of tweets mentioning brands don’t get retweeted. This means that many of the negative tweets that go out there fade away.
This doesn’t mean you can ignore them. These are an opportunity for a few things:
- To make a customer happy
- To review your practices and see if there is an issue that needs to be addressed
- To show the community that you care
When you do address negative comments or mentions, they can be turned into something positive.
5) Mentions at odd hours
The Internet never sleeps, but you need to. This becomes an issue since 60% of brand mentions happen outside of working hours. While you may not necessarily miss a mention of your brand on Twitter, you will probably be late to engage or respond. If you find that you get tons of off-hour mentions, you may want to think about hiring a VA to fill in on those late times.
Why do we recommend this? Response time is directly related to Twitter response time. A recent study by Twitter shows that people will spend 20% more on an item if a business responds to customer service tweets, and the faster you respond, the more your revenue can increase.
When it comes to stocks, Twitter may not be winning the game, but it is still a very valid social network for small business. Twitter is another great small business tool in the social media arsenal to expand your company’s reach, build your brand, communicate with customers, and network with other business owners. As with other social media venues, the most effective way to establish a community of fans is to know who your target audience is and how to reach them. The more creative and imaginative your social strategy, the more you’ll stand out. That said, small business owners should invest time in creating a properly SEO’d Twitter bio that concisely describes and clarifies who your company is, what it has to offer, and why your business is different from the competition. Today we’ll go through some Small Businesses Twitter Tips so you can see actual dollars come in from this social network.
Small Businesses Twitter Tips
1. SEO your Profile
It is so important for you to optimize your Twitter profile for search. What do I mean by this? If you are a restaurant in New York, clearly state this on your profile. If you are a dog walker in Los Angeles, do the same. The key here is to make it easy for your potential customers to discover you.
2. Create Engaging Quality Content
The importance of creating quality content cannot be overstated, and social media experts all agree that when it comes to content, the most effective way to build relationships is to provide useful and relevant content as opposed to directly promoting your company. You can link to your own blog posts, other people’s blogs, articles, and news reports. Just don’t make it boring, people are bombarded with content, so you need to make your content shine.
3. Use Hashtags Correctly
Hashtags put together the conversations of different people in Twitter into one stream. When you search a hashtag, for example, #NewYork you can see the conversations created around this hashtag and topic.
Before we discuss the best use of hashtags on Twitter, you need to understand how these are used in a search. There are different ways to explore hashtags once you search for one:
- Top: This brings up the Tweets with that hashtag that have the most engagement
- Latest: The newest ones come up first
- People: The top Twitter accounts associated with that hashtag
- Photos: This brings up photos that were added to Tweets that used that hashtag
- Videos: Same as above but with videos
- News: News related Tweets using that hashtags
- Broadcasts: Periscope broadcasts using that hashtag
The first thing you need to keep in mind is that if you add an image or video, you give yourself more chances to be found in hashtag searches. So this is yet another reason to add hashtags.
You should also consider using location hashtags on a regular basis (only when they are relevant – of course) so that your account can be associated with location hashtags when a people search is activated.
Finally, use two, max three hashtags at the end of your Tweet. Make sure the hashtags are relevant to your tweet and to your target customers. Don’t overload your tweets with hashtags, it makes them too hard to read, so always keep readability in mind.
4. Entice Potential Customers
Twitter provides some examples of how you might entice your customers over the course of a week. For instance, on Monday you could launch special Twitter-only promotions to your followers, and Tweet an offer code that unlocks a promotion, or tweet a secret word that customers can mention to get a discount when they visit your business.
On Tuesday you could tweet behind-the-scenes videos or photos that your followers can’t get any other way. On Wednesday you could create a regular series of tweets that are informative or surprising. If you’re a chef, tweet recipes or kitchen tips. If you have a fashion boutique, tweet ways to match current trends with vintage items.
On Thursday, highlight positive press stories and news about your company, industry or community that your followers will find interesting. Be sure to mention the @username of the reporter or media outlet when you tweet the story. This provides clear attribution and recognizes the source. And on Friday, highlight the people who help run your company by tweeting photos of them hard at work and having fun.
5. Engage Potential Customers
Engage those who engage you. That means that if someone likes, comments or retweets you, they need to be engaged. If they engaged your content, you already know they are interested either in you or what you have to say, they are a step closer to being converted to paying customers.
Engage Followers of your Competition: Check out your competition, their followers have a higher chance than anyone of becoming your customers. Add them all to a private list and spend 15 minutes per day checking out their content and creating genuine conversations with them. It’s a great way to expose your business to them.
Use a Social Media Monitoring Tool: For example, Google Alerts. Hop on there once daily and make sure to click through and engage those who are talking about your business.
6. Promotional Strategies
Use events as opportunities to engage your audience on Twitter. Whether industry-based, seasonal or cultural, learn how to use events to tap into popular interests or conversations. The above example is for #NationalChocolateChipCookie day. My favorite example here is from First Financial bank who gave cookies to their customers at their local brand. It’s silly, it’s cute and it involved their customers on social media as well as in their location.
7. Launch a Campaign
As an incentive to excite your followers, create a contest or campaign. Start tweeting about when your campaign will launch, and follow up with frequent countdowns and campaign mentions — including hashtags and retweets — to gain visibility. Just make sure the giveaway is worthwhile. Giving away a mug is no way to get people excited, but a year’s worth of your service will get a lot more people to participate.
8. Do Not Auto Direct Messages
AutoDM use leads to a 245% increase in unfollow rate. If you are going to use this feature, use it to offer a freebie or something super juicy and desirable. If not, just skip this feature. It is very rarely used successfully.
9. Don’t “Tweet Longer”
Tweets with less than 100 characters have a 17% higher engagement rate, so stick to the spirit of Twitter and keep things short!
10. Photo Tweets
Tweets with images have a much higher chance to be retweeted. Think about it, a Tweet with an image (be that a photo, GIF or video) is going to take up significantly more real estate than tweets without. This means they have a higher chance of being paid attention to by your audience.
11. Tweet About Trending Topics, When Applicable
Prime Visibility suggests trending topics aren’t only tweeted about a lot, but also are heavily searched for on Twitter. Tweeting about a trending topic can help add your brand to these highly popular conversations. That being said, this should only be done when it makes sense for the brand.
12. Follow Those Who Have Positively Mentioned Your Brand
Take a look at users who have interacted with your brand in the past or have mentioned your brand in the past on Twitter (in a positive way) and follow them back. These users are already aware of who you are and are a lot more likely to follow you back than someone who is unfamiliar with your brand. Then, add them to lists and make sure to engage them on at least a weekly basis to maintain the relationship.
13. Track Your Competition in Stealth
Many brands follow their competitors on Twitter in order to keep track of their Social Media strategy. A lot of these brands don’t know that they can do this in a much easier way, without letting their competition know, by creating a private Twitter list and adding them to it. They won’t know that they’ve been added and you can access your competitors all in one central location.
14. Use Digg, StumbleUpon, and Reddit
Use sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, and reddit to find, and share with your followers, interesting stories from your particular area of business. If you do decide to use reddit for this, make sure to read both parts of our beginner’s guide to reddit.
How to Measure Your Small Business Success on Twitter
Success on Twitter is not about how many people follow you. After all, followers can be bought with a mere $5. Instead, look at these metrics for success:
Amount of quality interactions
There are multiple types of interactions you can measure: retweets, favorites, @mentions, clicks, and lists. The key here is to measure quality interactions. If you are retweeted by an egg account (one that has no image) there is likely to be no ROI from it. Quality interactions come from those who may convert to customers or others who are influential in your industry or geographical area.
Amount of clicks
No matter what type of content you are tweeting (your own or that of influencers) the number of clicks you generate is an important measurement tool. If people aren’t clicking your links, then you’re doing something wrong. You’re either not writing engaging or captivating Tweets, not Tweeting them at the right time, or not using hashtags well. If no one is clicking the Tweet links to your own blog content, then you might want to work on your titles for posts. Conversely, if people are clicking your links, they’re listening to you and taking action.
Start off with checking Google Analytics for your own website, and then use a service such as Bitly to track clicks on links to other’s websites (Socialdraft is compatible with Bitly so you can get all your click analytics there.
Tracking your #hashtag(s): Make it a point to track your hashtags and what people are discussing when they use them. Their tone will give you hints as to whether you are doing your Twitter marketing right.
Check Demographics: If you are a small business that deals on a local level, then checking to make sure the majority of your followers are in your area is key. You will always want to check to see the sex, age, and other relevant demographic stats to make sure that your audience is one that could convert into a customer.
How to Manage Twitter for your Small Business
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Using a tool like Socialdraft will not only save you time, but it will help you make sure you see an ROI from Twitter. With Socialdraft you can:
- Schedule posts to Twitter, Facebook pages, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn
- Schedule recurring posts that repeat over time
- Schedule posts in bulk with CSV
- Download content as PDF
- Give access to other people without giving them passwords
- Schedule Instagram reposts to all other connected networks
- Pull reports to see how you are performing on Social Media
- And much more
Socialdraft offers a risk-free trial, so take our social media calendar dashboard for a trial today.
You’ve been hearing some discouraging chatter about Twitter. ‘Twitter is stagnant’, ‘Twitter is dead’ . It’s true that Twitter has had a hard time monetizing its active users for the past two years, but that does not mean the network is dead. Smart community managers and business owners can still see an ROI from Twitter. Especially now, and especially if they change up their strategy. Today, we’ll discuss how your food or beverage business can benefit from Twitter, and finally, we’ll give you Food & Beverage Twitter tips to make your time marketing on Twitter much easier.
Twitter Food & Beverage Tips
Be Human: If your humanity does not shine through on Twitter, you will have a hard time succeeding. Don’t use Twitter as a bully pulpit to only tweet out specials and events. Instead, use it as a way to connect with your local audience. It is ok to automate certain things (for example, scheduling your weekly happy hour specials and duplicating your good reviews), but you need to get in there and engage. People on Twitter are sick of being marketed to, so if you engage in genuine conversation, you can build strong relationships and strengthen your business’ brand. Twitter success means you need to be interactive. You can no longer rely on automation. There’s no more set it and forget it. Your goal is to create real connections.
You’d be surprised as to what 15 minutes a day on Twitter can do for you. How can you do this?
- Search for your location hashtag. Find people speaking about your city or neighborhood. Then, engage them in conversation. Let them get to know your business.
- Create lists about your location. You can include your mayor’s office, non-profits, newspapers. Check the lists for content and engage those that you think your clientele would be interested in.
- Check Twitter daily for mentions of your business and its principals. Make sure that those people who create content around them are being engaged and nurtured.
Twitter Food & Beverage Best Practices
Add a picture to your Tweet:
Tweets with images get way more interaction. Just click the camera button to add a picture from your computer or smart phone. 558×278 px seems to be the best size for visibility – for now. You can also schedule these on our dashboard which, unlike other dashboards and scheduling systems, includes the picture and is not branded for a more genuine feel.
Add a GIF to your Tweet: Notice how we just spoke about the power of images, GIFS are even better, they immediately draw the eye to your tweet and will get you more engagements and clicks (and you can schedule GIFs for Twitter on the Socialdraft dashboard).
Add your location: You want people to know where your business is located – go ahead – enable the location feature, or ad geo-targeted hashtags to your tweet.
@mention Someone: Tweets with @ mentions usually get more engagement. Why? The person tagged will be notified that they are tagged. This will prompt them to take an action like replying, retweeting, and at best clicking through. This will result in a higher engagement rate, a larger reach, and more potential for ROI.
Track links: To measure if people are clicking on your links, use a simple URL shortener like Bitly, or check Google Analytics. Just make sure your links are relevant and useful. And remember that if you use Socialdraft as your scheduling dashboard, you can connect your custom bitly to our dashboard and get all of your analytics.
Keep it short: Keep tweets to under 140 characters. Tools like Tweetlonger won’t really do much for your tweet since people still have to click to see the tweet. You should never waste a click (which could turn into a customer) by doing that.
Adhere to the 80/20 Rule: Make sure that your messages aren’t always promotional. Think of Twitter as a search engine (like Google). If you’re a restaurant near the Empire State Building in NYC, you may want to tweet a special event they are having. When people search for the Empire State Building, your tweet will come up & you’ll have a chance of converting that person into a customer. You also want to share items from suppliers, verticals in your industry and non-profits your audience may be interested in.
Tweet Reviews: Whether you are a restaurant, a food product, or a wholesaler, sharing reviews is a great piece to share on Twitter. Reviews are seen as proof that it’s not just you selling yourself, but that your customers and users care enough to take the time out of their busy schedules to vouch for you. This is the best kind of advertising, so don’t be shy to share user generated reviews.
Twitter Food & Beverage Tips on Reaching Press & Bloggers
Twitter allows you to reach out to people who would otherwise be unreachable. Want to invite a writer from the New York Times – go ahead – if you don’t ask, you have zero chance. At least this way you’ll at least be on their radar (and the radar of those searching for them). Here is how you can begin to reach out to press and bloggers:
1. Tweet: It’s that simple. You can tweet about anything. Just make sure to make it engaging and relevant to the writer you are trying to attract. Check out the hashtags and topics they are discussing.
2. @tweets – Sends tweets directly to someone else’s account. Super simple – just write use their Twitter handle at the start of your tweet. By using somebody’s twitter name, for example @BeverageTrade, at the start of your tweet, you are telling Twitter that your message is intended for that Twitter member only. This makes for great conversation and keeps the tweet a bit more private.
3. @mentions – You can mention somebody in your tweets by putting their twitter handle in your tweet. This makes the tweet much more visible. Use this feature if you want everybody to know what you have to say to one of your followers.
4. Retweet (#RT) – Retweeting is a quick and easy way to share interesting news or messages that someone else tweeted. When you Retweet you are share their tweet with your followers and make it easier for them find interesting and helpful content.
5. Reply: Twitter’s Reply feature allows you to respond to someone’s tweet – be it something interesting, or an interaction they created with you in mind.
6. Direct Message (DM) Direct Messages are the most private way to communicate with your followers. The only caveat is that they need to be following you in order to get the message.
7. Use Hashtags to Expand Your Exposure: According to Twitter the definition of a hashtag is: The # symbol, called a hashtag, is used to mark keywords or topics in a Tweet. It was created by Twitter users as a way to categorize messages. In other words, using Hashtags in your tweets is a great strategy to target a certain audience. Users interested in the keyword specified by the hashtag will see seek out your tweets.
Below we have outlined two different examples of how to use hashtags.
In the above example the hashtag targets a very clear audience. The use of “#wine” will ensure that the tweet will find other Twitter users interested in talking about wine.
The above is a trending hashtag. Using #humpday here will give the tweet more visibility, but using #winewednesday hones in on your audience. Think of your hashtags before using them & put them to use to gain new followers and target a particular audience. There are new hashtags every day. Keep a look out for them, but here are a few examples of hashtags that the wine community focuses on:
• #wine
• #winewednesday
• #winerelease
• #winechat
• #wineoclock
• #Pinot
• #Chardonnay
• #(Varietal Name)
• #(Region)
8. Use Twitter Lists: Lists will save your life. Seriously. You can use lists to organize friends, industry contacts, and other relevant accounts. This way, when you’re looking to interact with a certain demographic you don’t have to go crazy doing so. How do you add (or remove) people from lists? The “Add or remove from lists” feature in the ‘Person’ drop down menu button beside the FOLLOW button of your the Twitter account you want to categorize, as shown below:
9. Use Advanced Search: Very few people take advantage of the Advanced Search page on Twitter. That’s because it’s not the easiest to find. Click the link and bookmark this feature. You should be using it daily.
Places search option is the best way to find people by location. This can be used to target people for say a wine tasting, find new retailers to connect to, or even bloggers to target for reviews.
[fve]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRk6y6VcHAA[/fve]
10. Use the right Twitter tool. While we don’t recommend complete automation, automation will open up time so that you can engage. Using a tool like Socialdraft will save you time in many ways. Here are a few:
- Schedule Tweets in Advance: You’re in food & beverage. Smell-a-vision has not been invented yet. A great way to get people interested in your food (or beverage) is images. Schedule one image a day featuring your product, be that the wine you are selling, your daily specials, or that amazing olive oil you sell on your online store. Besides Tweets, you can schedule to Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn.
- Delegate: Socialdraft allows multiple people to work your account without you having to share login details. This keeps your social media accounts safe but allows multiple team members to share to social media. It’s a fantastic time-saving tool.
- Measure your success: Socialdraft offers reports so that you can see how well you really are doing on Social Media.
If you’re ready to take us for a spin, go ahead, we offer a risk-free trial.
If you are a restaurateur who has ignored social media (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and …well you get the idea), you should really stop and read this article. You are doing yourself a disservice. By ignoring these social networks, you are telling all the possible customers who frequent these virtual communities that their business does not matter to you. You’re also missing out on many chances to be discovered. You need to begin thinking of each social network as its own mini search engine. They are all a mini Google where you can be found. Today, we’re going to focus on Twitter restaurant marketing tips to help you get more people at your restaurant.
Why You Should Not Ignore Twitter Restaurant Marketing
You Won’t Be Found.
As seen above, Twitter works as a sort of search engine. This is a search for “Lobster NY”. It brings up the accounts that use those keywords in their profile, and any tweets that have utilized those terms.If you are a NY restaurant that offers lobster, you want to be active and represented in this type of search. Locals & tourists often go to Twitter to find restaurants in a new city and to see what people are saying about them. People in your neighborhood could be searching for happy hour specials in the area. If you’re not active on Twitter, then you aren’t giving yourself a chance to be found.
Google indexes Tweets.
To put things simply, Google goes through Twitter to add its Tweets and accounts to its search engine. This practice started in 2015. This means that each (well thought out) tweet is another chance for Google to get to your site. This could help your Google Search Engine rankings. However, Google does not index every tweet. If you have an active account with good authority, your chances of having Tweets indexed increases.
It’s a Great Place to Connect with Bloggers & Press
Bloggers & press love Twitter. If you are looking to connect with them, it’s a great place. You can start off by creating Twitter lists for all the bloggers and reporters you want to connect with them. If you know how to use Twitter lists effectively, they can be powerful tools for connecting with people.
You’d be Ignoring a Popular Customer Service Platform.
Your customers love social media as a customer service engine. Their favorite is probably Twitter. Why? It’s much easier for them to go to Twitter, find your profile and tweet you. Compare this to having to go to your website, waiting for that awful flash animation to stop, trying to find your contact page and filling out their complaint. On Twitter, their complaint is public and this gives them leverage. I know this is not your favorite thing, but if you are active on your Twitter account, you’ll be able to quickly and effectively deal with any issue that arises. You may even be able to prevent that problem from ending up on Yelp. The best thing about Twitter is that they have added tons of great customer support features (and they’re free to use).
Twitter Restaurant Marketing Tips
Other restaurants are using Twitter to connect with their clients, gain new ones and promote themselves. By ignoring Twitter, you’re missing out on having new people at your place, and isn’t that why you opened your business in the first place? It’s time to stop resisting and read up on how Twitter can help you fill up your restaurant with its addicted foodies. Here are some twitter tips for restaurants to get you started:
Visual Tweeting
Smell-a-vision has not been invented yet, so until then, images are a great way to let people know what your restaurant has to offer. On top of that, images take up a lot of real estate on Twitter. That means that if you use a big, beautiful image it will stand out from all other plain text tweets. What type of images should you post? Images that get people curious about you and your food. Images that could even induce a twitter influential to put you on their list of must-go-to restaurants (It happens). Foodies love to learn about what goes on behind the scenes at a restaurant. Post a photo of something interesting happening on a grill. Or of a meringue being whipped. Or of a duck sizzling in a pan. Just be sure that you don’t post anything that is visual as well as being unappetizing. If you’re going to post an image that is out of focus, or a dish that (while tasty) looks ugly, don’t bother. There are tons of photo apps to edit your images, so put them to good use.
Pro-Tip: Schedule GIFs using Socialdraft for maximum visual impact.
Partner Up With Non-Profits & Other Related Local businesses Our team loves the above example. Triple Voodoo Brewery teamed up with Muttville, a senior rescue mission to appeal to local dog lovers. Both brands were able to access a new audience, align their brands with the right message, and get press for their efforts. 
Run Giveaways & Promotions
Sprinkles, the renowned LA cupcake shop gives its Twitter followers a fabulous reason to pay attention to what they are saying: free cupcakes. At times, they occasionally throw out a secret word that will get you a free cupcake if you say it on the day you are told to at their shop. Others they just offer them as specials. This is brilliant; not only do you get to eat a ginger lemon cupcake but you get to say a secret word. It’s fun, viral, and gets people in the door. Hey, you have something you could give your loyal followers, right? And a brain brimming with odd secret words?
Promotion Ideas for Your Restaurant
1. Offer goodies to those who dine with you on your anniversary or another special milestone. You can enhance this with an email newsletter for events such as a grand opening where you collected emails of the people who attended. 
2. Run a simple retweet promotion. Suite 106 Cupcakery shows just how effective this can be. This tweet is merely 10 hours old and has 376 retweets and 93 comments. That’s 376 of their customers functioning as a marketing army for the bakery. That’s smart Twitter use.
3. Run a special event & offer free entrance to the first five people to retweet or reply to your tweet
4. Offer a discount or freebie to people who show up with that day’s receipt for a business in your area (make sure to @mention them), this way the business will start promoting your deal & help you grow
Let Your Principals Be Themselves
Chefs often have something to say. They are passionate about food, the food business, and life. Let your chefs be themselves on social media; throw caution to the wind and give your followers a reason to tune in. Think David Chang, Anthony Bourdain. They’ve got this down. They tweet their thoughts about food, life, and even politics to an audience that is practically sitting around waiting for their next throwaway thought. They will tell you things like he how he learned to cook the soft shell turtle in Japan or how delicious spring rolls made with mashed potatoes can really be, and he is certainly not shy about sharing his political beliefs.
Use Hashtags
Twitter works as a search engine. It’s not quite Google, but smart restaurant owners know that people go to Twitter looking to discover things. Hashtags are an easy way to get found.
What is a Hashtag, you ask?
Twitter defines the term as “The # symbol, called a hashtag, is used to mark keywords or topics in a Tweet. It was created organically by Twitter users as a way to categorize messages.”
How can you use Hashtags to help your restaurant be discovered? It’s pretty simple. Here are a few sample hashtags to get you started:
Use Geo-Targeted Hashtags
These let people know where you are at, so that anytime someone searches your city (or even better – neighborhood) your tweets will come up. Hashtags for a restaurant in Hoboken, NJ near Church Square Park could be: #Hoboken, #NJ #ChurchSquarePark
Use Promotional Hashtags
You’ve spent all that time coming up with super cool deals and promotions for your twitter followers. Let them know about it. Commonly searched hashtags include #HappyHour #Specials #Deal #BoozyBrunch
Publish Daily Multiple Times Per day
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The nature of Twitter is fleeting. There are thousands of Tweets being posted every second, so as soon as yours is published, it’s being pushed down the feed. This is one of the reasons why it is so important that you as a restaurant are constantly active on Twitter. I know what you’re thinking. I don’t have time. But there are small things that can save you time. How?
[fve]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoXLCHP7gGw[/fve]
Create evergreen content.
Evergreen content is content that lasts forever (or at least a very long time). Good reviews can be considered evergreen content. That #BoozyBrunch promotion you run every Saturday morning is evergreen. Your Chef’s birthday is evergreen content. The year’s holidays are evergreen content. Create a CSV with all your holiday greetings (these happen every year once a year), then upload them in January and you don’t have to worry about scheduling this type of post. The same thing with reviews, repurpose these monthly on Twitter and save tons of time.
Duplicate Posts
[fve]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SisQLH07SU[/fve]
On Socialdraft, once you have created a post, you can to click duplicate it. You can do this as often as you want within Twitter’s limits. It’s an incredible time saver.
Recurring Posts
On Socialdraft, you can also set a post to happen over and over again. This feature is great for that happy hour special that happens every Thursday night.
You can take us for a risk-free trial. If you don’t feel we’re the right fit for your restaurant, simply cancel before the 14 days are up. It’s that easy.
What Else Does Socialdraft Do?
Socialdraft is an all-in-one Social Media Dashboard. It is the most robust and simple tool for agencies and teams to effectively handle social media. With Socialdraft you can:
Schedule posts to Facebook pages, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn Business Pages, and Pinterest
Boards
Schedule posts individually, as recurring posts, or bulk upload them as CSV
Easily re-schedule with a drag & drop action
Schedule GIFs to Facebook and Twitter
Download content calendars as PDF
Keep an eye on your online reputation and easily share the good news to social
Find content on Instagram and easily schedule reposts not just to Instagram but to all other
social networks
Engage on Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin
Download reports for Facebook and Twitter
and tons more…
We recently wrote an article outlining all the Twitter stats that show that the network is not dead. If you’re not getting an ROI from Twitter, it’s probably because you’re using it wrong. Today, we’ll be outlining some very simple ways you can use Twitter so you can connect with the right people AND get an ROI from the time you spend marketing on Twitter. We’re going to start with the simplest Strategies to Increase Twitter Engagement and then get down to the really juicy stuff.
Strategies to Increase Twitter Engagement
Tag People
It seems so simple, but so many people forget to do this in their tweets. If you are sharing someone else’s content – be it a brand, influencer, or vertical – take a few minutes to find their Twitter @handle. Add it to your Tweet. This can increase your chances of retweets, mentions, and direct messages. This takes a few seconds and is so ridiculously effective.
Include Links (in the middle of your Tweet)
Sure, tweets without links “perform better”, but that’s in terms of reach within the network. If we’re talking ROI, and if your ROI is measured by click thru to your website, then you need to make sure that you include links in your tweets. Make sure that when you add the link to your tweet that you take a few seconds to either choose the best image for the tweet (super easy to do on Socialdraft – you can just scroll through until you find your favorite), or that you add a custom image to attract more people to the tweet. Why do we tell you to add your link in the middle of the tweet? That’s because when you do this you have a 26% higher chance that it will be retweeted as opposed to placing it at the beginning or end of your tweet.
Reuse Evergreen Content
[fve]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoXLCHP7gGw[/fve]
If you’re not creating evergreen content, you should be. Especially if you’re marketing on Twitter. The nature of Twitter is fleeting. The feed pushes down content, so unless someone is clicking on your profile, the chances of them seeing a post from an hour ago are low. If you use a system social media scheduling tool like Socialdraft, you can place all your evergreen content into CSVs. Then, on a monthly basis, go in and update your write ups just a touch as well as your images. This will keep your content feeling new and will save you so much time on content creation so that you have time to do what matters – engage.
Start Periscoping (or broadcasting live)
Every social network is sending tons of organic traffic to those who take the time to create native live video on their network. If you run events, then Periscope is the perfect option for you. Run a Periscope live-stream and when you’re done make sure you embed it onto your website.
Check Trending on a Daily Basis
Twitter trending is awesome. If something is trending on Twitter, it is a good idea to think about how to integrate it not just on Twitter, but on the rest of your social media accounts. Check your trending, see what items may relate to your brand, click over to the tweets for that topic and engage.
Run Twitter Polls
Polls are awesome. They take seconds to create and can have a huge impact on your reach and influence on Twitter. Think of Twitter as a HUGE focus group. If you need feedback for your business, Twitter is a great place to get it.
RELATED ARTICLE “How to Create a Twitter Poll“
The cool stuff about trending is that it is somewhat custom. Twitter trending shows you what’s hot based on your location and the people you follow, but it also includes items that are trending worldwide.
Start Creating Native Video
You can now post up to 140 seconds of native video to Twitter. This gives you way more time to engage and educate your community. A few ideas for you is to implement a weekly founder’s video, run live videos from events or give quick video tips to your followers. t.
Use Twitter Moments
Twitter Moments is a great story telling tool. It allows you to showcase moments from events, chats, and topics. What’s better is that you can embed these into your blog posts to give context and increase your time on page. When you do create a Twitter moment, make sure to push it out with a tweet linking to the Twitter Moment. People will know it is a Twitter moment by the lightning bolt in the tweet.
How to Manage your Twitter Accounts
Socialdraft is an all-in-one Social Media Dashboard that helps you manage Twitter. It is the most robust and simple tool for agencies and teams to effectively handle social media. With Socialdraft you can:
Schedule posts to Facebook pages, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn Business Pages (and one LinkedIn account) and Pinterest Boards
Schedule posts individually, as recurring posts, or bulk upload them as CSV
Easily re-schedule with a drag & drop action
Schedule GIFs to Facebook and Twitter
Download content calendars as PDF
Find content on Instagram and easily schedule reposts not just to Instagram but to all other social networks
Engage on Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin
Download Facebook and Twitter reports
and tons more…
If you are curious about Socialdraft, take it for a risk-free trial. You’ll get to try out all the features and decide if Socialdraft is right for you.
Twitter is easily one of the world’s most popular social media networks, but more than that it’s one of the world’s most popular communication channels and certainly one of the most often leverage marketing opportunities available today.
5 Ways to Leverage a Pinned Tweet
Twitter understand this, which is why they have continued to make tweaks and changes to the overall platform – many of them to improve the overall experience that people have on Twitter, but no small amount designed specifically to help individuals boost their ability to market on this platform.
In 2014, Twitter rolled out a number of new changes, and the biggest of them all was the introduction of the “pinned tweet”. This gives users the opportunity to provide prime real estate to specific messages that they want their followers to get, all without having to worry about these people missing out because of the fast-paced nature of Twitter.
If you were hoping to take advantage of everything that pinned tweets have to offer, you’re going to want to first figure out how to get traffic from a pinned tweet – and then you’re going to have to figure out how to make the most of that traffic!
Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty on How to Use a Pinned Tweet.
1) Leverage high engagement messages when you pinned tweets
Though you certainly have the opportunity to pin pretty much anything and everything you want on Twitter, you’re only going to be able to generate a considerable amount of traffic with this approach if you choose to pin twitter messages that have high engagement rates.
If you’ve ever wondered why pinned tweets work in the first place, it’s because of these messages almost always contain interesting, exciting, or viral content – and that’s why they get pinned to begin with.
Yes, you could certainly pin any old tweet that you have up, but why waste that prime real estate when you could use this opportunity to master how to get traffic from a pinned tweet that is much more valuable?
2) Utilize a rock solid call to action with a pinned tweet
People that have really begun to understand why pinned tweets work in the first place (from a marketing perspective, anyway) almost universally agree that they work because of a rock solid call to action that actually leverages the traffic that these pinned tweets create to begin with.
Traffic generation can be an absolute nightmare, but if you are able to take advantage of everything that Twitter has provided you in the form of a pinned tweet capability to get the kind of traffic you’re after, you can’t waste that chance with a wishy-washy or limp call to action. Direct your followers, give them clear instructions and convert on that traffic.
3) Include a trackable link
With a trackable link, you can determine how effective your pinned Tweet is at conversions and visitor engagement on your website or blog.
4) Use images
Since even pinned tweets at the top of your profile can be missed by some people, why not include an image in your pinned tweet to increases the chances that your tweet stands out. Besides, research suggests that tweets with images increase retweets by at least 25 percent.
5) Pinned Tweet types
Here are several types of tweets you could consider to pin:
A) A retweet from an influencer in which you are cited
B) Old content that was popular
C) A link to a successful blog post
D) New product announcement
E) Photo from you or your company
F) One of your most effective tweets
Twitter is an effective social networking tool for developing leads and communicating with customers. And Twitter, along with Facebook and Pinterest, is among the top three social media platforms generating web traffic. But as Omkar Mishra with Digital Insights points out, until recently, Twitter account holders had to rely on third party apps to measure crucial Twitter data and post activity.
Since going public, Twitter has introduced Twitter Analytics for different components on Twitter. And Mishra does a good job of breaking down the Twitter Analytics dashboard, available to everyone who has created ad accounts on Twitter. But now you don’t have to be an advertiser with Twitter to access the dashboard; you can use the Analytics Dashboard by simply setting up a Twitter Ads profile. Twitter Analytics is a great tool allowing brands to see what’s working and generate more out of daily tweets.
Twitter Analytics Dashboard
After logging in to the Twitter Ads or Twitter Analytics platform, the default dashboard has three components. The dashboard’s components allows you to decipher the performance of your account on a tweet level basis. The Impressions metric lets you see the number of times your followers saw your tweet on Twitter.
Twitter also lets you compare your performance over the 28 day period with specific actionable metrics such as Engagement Rate, Favorites, Replies, ReTweets, Link Clicks and Impressions. Now it is much easier to benchmark your content performance. The tweets are segregated into different categories so you can view a Tweet by Tweet performance for your organic Tweets, Replies and Promoted Tweets. Now if a conversation with a Twitter user is generating engagement, you will know on this dashboard.
The Dashboard’s Key Metrics:
Impressions: The number of times users on Twitter view your tweet in their timeline.
Engagement: The total interactions that have occurred on the tweet by the user which includes all the clicks on the Tweet (hashtags, link clicks, avatar, username & tweet expansion) along with the usual engagement metrics like favorites, replies, retweets as well as new follows.
Engagement Rate: The Engagement Rate for Twitter is the ratio of the Engagement actions and Impressions generated over a Tweet. The key difference to note here is Twitter is giving us the engagement rate based on impressions whereas Facebook does a similar metric based on the number of unique people reached.
Download Data
The best addition to the new dashboard is the ability to download data for each tweet. The “Export Data” option at the right-hand corner gives you a lot of meta data attached with each particular tweet to play with. The information can be downloaded to an excel file for further analysis.
The following metrics are available in the downloaded:
Impressions
Engagement
Engagement Rate
ReTweets
Replies
Favorites
User Profile Clicks
URL clicks
Hashtag clicks
Detail expands
permalink clicks
embedded media clicks
App Opens (If you are promoting an App or sharing one)
App install attempts
Follows
email tweet
dial phone
The same metrics are available for organic as well as promoted tweets. The level of detail allows brands to accurately determine which tweet resulted in more engagement, and which tweet resulted in higher new followers/app installs. The user consumption can be broken down into specific actions to analyze the behavior of your Twitter followers and plan your content accordingly.
Know Your Followers
This section was introduced some time ago in the Analytics dashboard and serves as a useful reminder about the growth of your Followers over time. The ‘Followers’ tab also tells you about the top interests of your followers along with the location demographics. So if you are a blog, you can leverage this data to know the interests of your followers and blog accordingly.
#TwitterTip
Through the dashboard, Digital Insights knows most of their followers are interested in Marketing and SEO and as a results they generate their content mostly based on helpful marketing content.
Twitter Card Analytics
Twitter Cards are small snippets which appear on a Twitter timeline embedding rich context to your website content. Digital Insights has integrated Twitter Cards with their blog posts and have seen a considerable increase in their CTR rate on Twitter. If you still have not integrated your website/blog with Twitter Cards, you are encouraged to do so. With the measurement framework already available, you can test it out to see if it works for your brand and how.
Twitter Cards tell you the link clicks over time to your tweets along with the top links of your website/blog which drove the maximum traffic from Twitter. The best thing about the Twitter Cards dashboard is that it also provides you with the list of Twitter users which often tweet your content and you generate the maximum traffic out of them.
#TwitterTip
Find your most influential users and build long-term relationships with them. Focus on the value providers and ask them for their opinions to create a two-way dialogue.
How to Manage & Grow Your Social Media Accounts
Socialdraft is your all-in-one tool for Social Media management. Socialdraft allows you to:
- Schedule posts to multiple Social media accounts
- Monitor your online reputation
- Have multiple people create and post content
- Pull Reports
- Engage
- and much more
If you’re curious about how Socialdraft works, take us for a risk-free trial. Have questions?
Twitter is a formidable tool in the social networking landscape. According to one study, Twitter is among the top three referrers of web traffic, along with Facebook and Pinterest.
Most small business owners who have used Twitter to market their brand are familiar with basic Twitter strategies, such as following those who have positively mentioned your brand, creating Twitter contests or campaigns, and using cultural events as opportunities to engage your Twitter audience. But a deeper, more in-depth review of Twitter has revealed some rare and invaluable tips regarding this social media titan that can give small business owners/marketers a decided edge.
Thanks to the astute reporting of Kevan Lee, we’ve harvested three uncommon statistical gems related to Twitter that can enhance and strengthen your social media marketing strategy.
1) Businesses Have Less Than an Hour to Respond on Twitter
Customers have high expectations for a quick response. According to a study commissioned by Lithium Technologies, 53 percent who expect a brand to respond to their Tweet demand that response comes in less than an hour. The implications of failing to respond quickly on Twitter are serious and the majority of users will escalate their negativity — from closing their wallets to publicly shaming the brand on social media.
In fact, 74 percent of customers who take to social media to shame brands believe it leads to better service. What’s more, even consumers who are initially positive can quickly turn negative if brands fail to respond to their Tweets in a timely manner. Brands that recognize and seize the opportunity to meet consumers’ rising expectations can achieve serious results.
The study also revealed that when brands provide customers with timely responses:
* 34 percent are likely to buy more from that company
* 43 percent are likely to encourage friends and family to buy their products
* 38 percent are more receptive to their advertisements
* 42 percent are willing to praise or recommend the brand through social media
2) Best Time For Retweets?
TrackMaven analyzed over 1.7 million tweets and found that the best time of day to tweet for a retweet is after-hours, between 10:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. ET. Track Maven also found that Sundays are the best day of the week to get retweets and that tweeting with the word “Retweet” or with all caps or exclamation points leads to more retweets.
3) Twitter Has 6 Unique Network Crowds
This Pew Research article notes that conversations on Twitter create networks with identifiable contours as people reply to and mention one another in their tweets. These conversational structures differ, depending on the subject and the people driving the conversation.
“Six structures are regularly observed: divided, unified, fragmented, clustered, and inward and outward hub and spoke structures. These are created as individuals choose whom to reply to or mention in their Twitter messages and the structures tell a story about the nature of the conversation.”
Based on a report that analyzed thousands of Twitter conversations, these are the six distinct communication networks.
Polarized Crowd: Polarized discussions feature two big and dense groups that have little connection between them. The topics being discussed are often highly divisive and heated political subjects. In fact, there is usually little conversation between these groups despite the fact that they are focused on the same topic. Polarized Crowds on Twitter are not arguing. They are ignoring one another while pointing to different web resources and using different hashtags.
Why this matters: It shows that partisan Twitter users rely on different information sources. While liberals link to many mainstream news sources, conservatives link to a different set of websites.
Tight Crowd: These discussions are characterized by highly interconnected people with few isolated participants. Many conferences, professional topics, hobby groups, and other subjects that attract communities take this Tight Crowd form.
Why this matters: These structures show how networked learning communities function and how sharing and mutual support can be facilitated by social media.
Brand Clusters: When well-known products or services or popular subjects like celebrities are discussed in Twitter, there is often commentary from many disconnected participants: These “isolates” participating in a conversation cluster are on the left side of the picture on the left). Well-known brands and other popular subjects can attract large fragmented Twitter populations who tweet about it but not to each other. The larger the population talking about a brand, the less likely it is that participants are connected to one another. Brand-mentioning participants focus on a topic, but tend not to connect to each other.
Why this matters: There are still institutions and topics that command mass interest. Often times, the Twitter chatter about these institutions and their messages is not among people connecting with each other. Rather, they are relaying or passing along the message of the institution or person and there is no extra exchange of ideas.
Community Clusters: Some popular topics may develop multiple smaller groups, which often form around a few hubs each with its own audience, influencers, and sources of information. These Community Clusters conversations look like bazaars with multiple centers of activity. Global news stories often attract coverage from many news outlets, each with its own following. That creates a collection of medium-sized groups—and a fair number of isolates (the left side of the picture above).
Why this matters: Some information sources and subjects ignite multiple conversations, each cultivating its own audience and community. These can illustrate diverse angles on a subject based on its relevance to different audiences, revealing a diversity of opinion and perspective on a social media topic.
Broadcast Network: Twitter commentary around breaking news stories and the output of well-known media outlets and pundits has a distinctive hub and spoke structure in which many people repeat what prominent news and media organizations tweet. The members of the Broadcast Network audience are often connected only to the hub news source, without connecting to one another. In some cases there are smaller subgroups of densely connected people— think of them as subject groupies—who do discuss the news with one another.
Why this matters: There are still powerful agenda setters and conversation starters in the new social media world. Enterprises and personalities with loyal followings can still have a large impact on the conversation.
Support Network: Customer complaints for a major business are often handled by a Twitter service account that attempts to resolve and manage customer issues around their products and services. This produces a hub and spoke structure that is different from the Broadcast Network pattern. In the Support Network structure, the hub account replies to many otherwise disconnected users, creating outward spokes. In contrast, in the Broadcast pattern, the hub gets replied to or retweeted by many disconnected people, creating inward spokes.
Why this matters: As government, businesses, and groups increasingly provide services and support via social media, support network structures become an important benchmark for evaluating the performance of these institutions. Customer support streams of advice and feedback can be measured in terms of efficiency and reach using social media network maps.
As Lee points out, tight crowds and community clusters are suitable groupings for brands interested in increasing engagement levels, and adds that support networks can also be a good type of communication network for brands, especially if you are doing customer support on Twitter. Obviously, the goal here is to determine your place in these Twitter networks, and to find out if you need to change your strategy to mix with a different group.
How to Manage & Grow Your Social Media Accounts
Socialdraft is your all-in-one tool for Social Media management. Socialdraft allows you to:
- Schedule posts to multiple Social media accounts
- Monitor your online reputation
- Have multiple people create and post content
- Pull Reports
- Engage
- and much more
If you’re curious about how Socialdraft works, take us for a risk-free trial. Have questions?
