Twitter can be complex. Similarly, the techniques and methodologies that brands use to implement their Twitter marketing strategy add yet another layer of difficulty.
While some marketing project managers prefer to follow Twitter best practices and cross their fingers, others know that putting a strategy down on (virtual) paper ensures growth and success on the platform long-term.
For those who prefer to know what they’re doing on Twitter and why their efforts (and budget) matter, having a strong Twitter marketing strategy is a no-brainer.
In this guide, we’ve answered your most frequently asked questions about Twitter marketing, provided a curated list of essential tips, and listed the exact tools you need to achieve your next benchmarks.
What is a Twitter marketing strategy?
A Twitter marketing strategy is an action plan that aligns with your company’s concrete goals for this particular platform. A good Twitter marketing strategy involves creating and publishing content that will attract new followers and improve your brand recognition.
Why is Twitter good for marketing?
Twitter is not as creative as other platforms like Facebook and Instagram. However, it does have an advertising audience of 353 million and is the first in line for customer service as far as social media apps go.
Not only is Twitter a must-have social media tool, but it’s also effective for engaging individuals, sharing time-sensitive content, and staying up to date with what’s going on in the world as it relates to your business.
How to create a Twitter marketing strategy
Despite its fast-paced nature, Twitter still requires a bit of strategic planning and discipline to get the most out of it. Not to mention the fact that it’s important to be prepared for all the unexpected conversations that happen on Twitter. Having a strategy in place will help you respond to any situation that may arise while also building a strong marketing and sales funnel for your brand.
Here’s everything you need to know to successfully implement a Twitter marketing strategy.
1. Evaluate your current strategy
You should check your existing social media accounts both on and off Twitter to make sure they're in good standing. This will help identify any issues that need addressing now before you launch the next phase.
2. Define clear goals
Having clear goals is the first step to achieving success on any social media platform. You should create goals that are specific, measurable, and time-bound. These should align with your company's greater objectives and be realistic about the resources you have to dedicate to the project.
You’ll also need to get specific about which metrics you’ll use to measure progress and how often you’ll check in with goals. Remember that there are a ton of different metrics available but not all of them will be applicable to your particular goals.
3. Check out the competition
By carefully analyzing the accounts of your competitors, you can learn about their weaknesses and develop a stronger strategy. Look for common themes, tweet frequency, and their most popular tweets to better understand what your audiences are looking for. You can also use this information to improve on what they’re already putting out there in your own content.
Pro tip: You can also get digital marketing inspiration from original strategy examples found elsewhere that you can make your own on Twitter.
4. Create a Twitter guide
Your company’s customized Twitter guide should include a code of conduct and a clear set of style guidelines anyone can replicate.
First, follow a clear responsibilities policy to ensure that everyone is on board with how you’ll deal with the variety of scenarios you may find yourself in on Twitter, which can be a well-known hangout for pot stirrers and ‘trolls’.
Even something as simple as accidentally having multiple team members answer the same questions can create a lot of confusion and lead to unproductive discussions. Following actionable guidelines will prevent these common roadblocks from happening in the first place.
Next, remember that a good social media style guide is also helpful to keep your team's communications on track. This will prevent branding mistakes and minimize miscommunication.
Keep in mind that your brand personality should be consistent across all platforms. It should also communicate your company's values and goals.
5. Create your Twitter profile
Having a professional Twitter profile can help strengthen your brand and inform your audience. You also want to make sure that your handle is consistent across all platforms. Here are the steps you’ll need to take in order to get started:
- Create a handle. Your username is the first thing that people will see when they look at your profile. It should include your company's name and other recognizable details.
- Add a profile photo. Make sure your imagery keeps to the correct dimensions and is high-resolution.
- Add a header image. Your profile should also feature a clean and prominent header image. It can help provide insight into your company culture or reflect on current campaigns.
- Write your bio. A well-written and snappy bio is also important to stand out from the crowd. You can also use a tagline or a creative image to highlight your brand personality.
- Include a link. Send click-throughs to your homepage or a dedicated landing page for Twitter audiences.
- Choose a location. One of the most important elements of your profile is your location. This is very important for small businesses as they want their customers to be able to find them offline.
- Add a birthday. Use the date your company was founded or an important launch date.
6. Start a Twitter content calendar
A social media content calendar is a great way to align your content across all your channels and identify potential conflicts. It can also help you plan ahead and capitalize on any opportunities that arise.
Another benefit of planning out your calendar is that it will help you determine if you're sharing a balanced mix of content. Although you can schedule some tweets to go out ahead of time, the social aspect of social media will still require you to respond to DMs, mentions, and retweets promptly.
7. Schedule some tweets ahead of time
Get ahead of the competition by scheduling your tweets to go out on optimal days and times. Doing so will allow you to maximize the engagement and visibility of every post. Unfortunately, you can't always schedule 100% of your tweets or else the platform may flag you as spam. However, it's possible to save time by pre-scheduling content that's already planned in advance.
8. Create a monitoring plan
Once your marketing strategy is in place, it's time to regularly evaluate your progress and set goals against those that you set. Use the same project management platform to evaluate your Twitter data and run reports to keep everything in one accessible place.
9. Use social listening
Twitter isn't just about speaking. It's also about listening. Through social listening, you can learn about the opinions of other people about your products and services. It can help you develop a more authentic and loyal customer base.
10. Consider paid ads
Paid ads aren’t right for everyone, but they can help your new Twitter marketing strategy gain more traction faster. Twitter Ads are a great way to target specific audiences. They allow you to measure the effectiveness of your campaign and find the right messages for your brand.
Even if someone doesn't follow your brand or hashtags, a promoted tweet can still show up in their timeline. You can also interact with them in the same way as organic content.
11. Include link tracking
Just like you link track on your sales pages, email newsletters, and other social media, Twitter offers another way to obtain data on customer buying journeys. Track the link in your bio as well as any company website links you tweet out.
The metrics provided by link tracking tools allow you to monitor how people navigate to your website and measure the effectiveness of your campaign management. They're also useful for analyzing your bottom line as you improve your conversions and traffic over time.
12. Use all of Twitter’s features
This one may take some time, but it’s worth noting that the best way to maximize your Twitter marketing strategy is to use every last tool the platform has to offer. For example, did you know Twitter allows users to host live chats? Use a live chat to discuss a topic, ask customers for their opinions, or collaborate with a brand partner on something you're working on.
Twitter marketing tips
There are countless tips on the internet about how to do Twitter well. The truth is most of your success depends on trial and error plus consistency over time. Here are some of our curated Twitter marketing tips that we’ve either used or seen work firsthand. They serve as a good jumping-off point for any foundational strategy. Start with one, then mix the rest in over time.
- Think big-picture. One of the most important factors to consider is how Twitter fits into your overall social media strategy.
- Assign daily supervision. Busy accounts may require a team member’s attention to monitor them every day or even every hour. Have a backup team member for every single account in case one is out-of-office.
- Plan one month out. A 30-day content plan will help you grow your Twitter following fast. It will also help you track your social media campaigns and analyze what resonates with your audience.
- Use lists. Through lists, you can get in touch with the conversations that matter to you most. These feeds are curated by the accounts that are most likely to have influential discussions.
- Develop your voice. Although you can use images and videos to attract followers, a well-written and compelling voice is very important to have on Twitter.
- Tweet authentically. Don't send tweets that sound like they're coming from a robot or a script. Instead, communicate clearly and politely.
- Stand out. Follow a unique and original message whenever you post on social media. Doing so will make your Twitter content more engaging.
- Use polls. Twitter polls allow users to pose questions with multiple choice answers. Gather valuable feedback and opinions about your customer preferences and favorite products.
- Add photos and videos. Visual assets can help you convey a message more effectively. They can also be used to reinforce an important point or highlight a chart or infographic.
- Use hashtags. Hashtags are a great way to boost your visibility and discoverability on Twitter. This feature is essential for new accounts.
- Add branded content. For example, creating a branded hashtag is a great way to organize and promote content about your business. It can also be used to search for user-generated content related to your products.
- Track trends. Follow trending topics to get notified about new posts and hop on relevant themes.
- Think before posting. Although most Twitter users rely on the mobile app, search engine preview snippets of profiles may show recently deleted tweets. So think through each message before you hit publish — otherwise, it may come up on Google days, weeks, or months from now!
- Engage, engage, engage. It's important to create a two-way channel of communication on Twitter to engage your audience. Creating content that encourages your followers to interact with each other is also important.
- Get verified. A verified profile helps prevent people from being confused with fake and duplicate accounts.
Twitter marketing tools to get you started
There are three main marketing tools you’ll need to get started, regardless of your goals or strategy.
- Data measuring and reporting
- Asset storage
- Project management platform
Without the help of data measuring and reporting, brands aren’t able to perform well on Twitter. The feedback from key metrics such as retweets helps marketers better understand their audience, grow their following, and reach as many new timelines as possible.
Asset storage is another essential Twitter marketing tool. Between branded links, third-party links, photos, videos, GIFs, and more, having one central location where all of your Twitter content assets are stored is both convenient and strategic.
Last but not least, the most important Twitter marketing tool you can use is a project management platform. Twitter requires you to create content, respond to public and private messages, track data, and keep up with the latest features. A great project management tool will allow you to do all of that in one accessible place so you can stay on top of all the moving parts while focusing on your chosen strategy.
Why use Wrike to build your Twitter marketing campaign
Like other social media platforms, finding success on Twitter requires a strategy and an intentional approach. That is why using a marketing project management tool is so important.
Wrike's marketing project management software lets you track and communicate with your team across all your campaigns in one place. Not only does it help break down silos and make communication easier, but it also gives you a 360° view of your Twitter and related social media campaigns, allowing you to see all of them in one place.
Wrike's software also helps you track communication with your team across all your campaigns in one place, so you’re always on the same page, even with Twitter’s fast-paced conversations. If last-minute tweets or replies need approval, team members can easily see your feedback and loop approvers into ongoing conversations via @mentions, which can help cut down on review cycles.
For productivity, Wrike's marketing project management software helps you streamline your processes and achieve your goals. Doing so will increase the visibility and efficiency of any strategy you implement. With all of Twitter’s moving parts, having full transparency into your workflows is essential since bottlenecks are that much harder to resolve.
If you run a social media strategy on any other app, you already know that project management for digital marketing is different from other project management disciplines. That is why Wrike developed flexible workflows that make it possible to eliminate the guesswork and get more done in less time.
Twitter has many complex moving parts with real-time feedback, so solid data reporting is mission-critical to getting it right. Wrike's marketing project management software features dynamic reports that allow you to visualize and gather business intelligence quickly.
Ready to take action on your new Twitter marketing strategy? Get started today by organizing your social media plan into assigned tasks and timelines using Wrike’s two-week free trial.
