When it comes to marketing a new business, especially on a shoestring budget, there are few channels that have the potential of social media. Without spending a dime, you have the possibility of getting your message in front of hundreds of thousands of people. If you get it right, you’ll even get other people doing your marketing and spreading your message for you.
All of the various social media platforms have their pros and cons, but if there is one that is easier to use than all of the others, it has to be Twitter. You can set up a Twitter account and literally have your message in front of tens of thousands of users within minutes, and without making a single connection, or spending even one cent.
Now, getting your message in front of tens of thousands of people and getting a response out of all those people are two different things. Getting your message out there is easy, but it takes a little bit of skill and know-how to get the most out of that easy exposure. With that in mind, here are 4 tips guaranteed to help you increase your Twitter engagement.
Use Questions To Increase Engagement
It’s so simple that it’s incredibly overlooked. How do you get people to talk to you? You ask them a question!
Ending a tweet with phrases like “What do you think?” or “Do you agree?” will generate some responses, and hopefully get a few conversations going.
You can also rephrase content titles from statements into questions. For example, instead of tweeting the title of your last article as “20 ways to get leads on Twitter”, you could say something like this: “Want more leads out of Twitter? Check my top tips!” The simple act of making someone answer a question in their mind incites action.
More Hashtags Don’t Mean Better Results
Hashtags will most definitely help you to get your message out in front of a larger audience, but they must be used in moderation. Research suggests that the perfect number of hashtags in a tweet is 2. Here are some interesting statistics on the subject:
- Tweets with hashtags get two times more engagement than those without
- Tweets with one or two hashtags show 21% more engagement than those with more
- Identical tweets show 17% less engagement when more than 2 hashtags are added
If you have a tweet that would legitimately fit under more than a few hashtags, you’re better off retweeting it a few times and changing the hashtags, two at a time, rather than adding more hashtags and only tweeting it once.
Don’t Be Afraid To Retweet Your Tweets
The average lifespan of a tweet on Twitter is estimated to be about 18 minutes. After that it will have fallen down too far on most feeds to have a reasonable chance of being viewed.
Don’t be afraid to post the same tweet more than once. For maximum exposure you should post important messages at two or three different times during the day. Chances are high that the audience who sees each of the tweets will be completely different each time.
Use Pictures And Videos
Studies on Twitter have shown that tweets that contain pictures or videos generally get 18% more clicks, 150% more retweets and 89% more favorites. There isn’t much more that needs to be said here. If you’re not using pictures and video in your tweets, you’re leaving money on the table. Visuals grab attention and create engagement.
How about you? Have you got any tips that helped you to get more out of Twitter?
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