Twitter is one of my favorite social media networks. Besides getting breaking news faster than any network, Twitter is a really great brand builder. Unfortunately many people and brands miss out on the benefits of this social media network because it does have a bit of a learning curve and many factors play into the success of a tweet.
Tweetin’ ain’t easy! But it can be. Follow these 5 simple ways to improve your tweets!
1. Use Relevant Hashtags
The simplest way to improve your tweets and their performance is to use hashtags that are relevant to your business or piece of content in your tweets to help your tweets rank higher in search results. Stick to 1-2 hashtags per tweet. Try sprinkling them seamlessly into your messaging.
2. Try Varying Visual Content: Photos, Videos, .GIFs
Visual content is driving results and tweets with images drive 2x more engagement than those without. You should give Twitter videos a shot too! You can record or upload 30 second clips with your Twitter app or import your own 30 second videos. Twitter has also added a ton of built in .GIFs for your convenience. Click the little “GIF” box under the tweet composition box and reveal .gifs broken down by category, or you can search for the perfect one. A few things to keep in mind:
- Ideal Image size for tweets is 1024 x 512px.
- Photos take up 22 characters.
- Twitter gives you the option to upload up to 4 images at once, which some brands have gotten really creative with! Check out some examples of how to use multiple image format creatively on Twitter (and some other networks) here.
3. Analyze Your Best Time to Tweet
Timing is everything! An essential part to improving tweets and how they perform is getting them out at the right time. The exact best time to tweet will vary by your audience and account. With that said you can start testing some general times that seem to work. A recent study by Buffer breaks down the best times to post worldwide based on over 4.8 million tweets. Results included the following interesting findings:
- Tweets sent between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m. earn the most clicks on average
- The highest number of clicks per tweet occurs between 2:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m., peaking between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m.
- The fewest clicks per tweet happen in the morning (when tweet volume is particularly high), between 9:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m.
Once you’ve played with these general times – try tweeting at all hours to see what your audience reacts to (you can use Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to schedule tweets). I also use a tool called Tweriod, which uses a 1,000 follower sample of your audience and lets you know what time your audience is on and when your tweets will get the most exposure. I then look at all the results, and get the best time to tweet per client. It’s a lot of work but well worth it. The best thing you can do is test and analyze impressions and track click throughs to find your perfect timing.
4. Include Links & Calls to Action
A key to driving traffic from Twitter is to include a link and call to action in your tweets. Links will take up 22 characters. Use a link shortner like Bit.ly or set up a campaign for you more advanced Google Analytics users to check which tweets are driving the most traffic – you’ll know what do to with them when you get to number 5 on this list.
5. Tweet More Than Once
Besides being consistent with posting (and tweeting often) don’t hesitate to tweet the same piece of content or push that landing page more than once. You may want to switch up images or messaging – but since Twitter is an in the moment network it is okay to tweet content more than one time for engagement. Grab your best performing or click inducing tweets and send them out again for extra attention. You can also simply direct traffic to older, evergreen content to drive traffic.
If your tweets are flopping, or just not getting the traction you’d like to see – try one of these 5 simple tweaks and see what happens. I hope this post helps you boost the performance of your tweets!
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