September 26, 2022
Last update
9.26.2022
08 MIN.
In this post, we will look at some of the most effective ways to increase your Twitter engagement.
Marvellous
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Engagement is one of the most important metrics you should consider when you are building your brand presence on Twitter. Because no matter how many followers you have, if your audience isn’t engaging with your content, then your marketing efforts won’t be as effective. It will be an uphill task to boost brand awareness and reach new audiences on Twitter if your current fans and followers are not engaging with your tweets.
So in this post, we will look at some of the most effective ways to increase your Twitter engagement. Whether you are a business owner, marketer, or freelancer, you will find tips that will help you take your Twitter engagement to the next level.
Let’s get started.
With over 330 million active users and 500 million tweets posted each day, it’s easy for your tweets to get lost in a sea of content. And one way to ensure that your audience sees your post is to tweet when they are most active online.
However, finding the right time to tweet can be tricky. But there are a couple of ways you can go about it.
First, you can find out the best time to post by digging into Twitter’s in-built analytics tool. Twitter analytics will give you a complete overview of your profile visits, tweet impressions, likes, comments, and other engagement metrics. To get started, go to the analytics section of your Twitter account and click on Tweets. Here, you can see your top tweets by engagement and impressions. The chart on Twitter analytics will give you a general idea of which days your tweets get the most engagement.
But if you want a more accurate insight into the best time to post, use a social media management tool like Iconosquare. On Iconosquare’s analytics dashboard, there is a section that shows you the best time to post for maximum engagement. It removes all the guesswork for you.
If you are just starting out with Twitter marketing and don’t have enough data to make a concrete analysis, several studies from multiple brands show that the best time to post on Twitter is weekdays around mid-morning from 8 to 10 am. As you learn more about your audience, you will be able to determine the right time to post for your audience.
This is one of the simplest ways to increase your Twitter engagement. Tweeting regularly ensures that your tweets are constantly seen by your target audience. The more of your followers that see your tweets, the more engagement you will most likely get.
But how often should you post on Twitter daily?
There are different studies online on how many tweets you post daily.
Hubspot suggests that three tweets a day is the sweet spot before engagement starts to drop off.
Constant Contact recommends that brands share a minimum of five tweets per day.
LocoalVox recommends tweeting a minimum of five tweets per week and a maximum of five tweets per day.
Quick Sprout suggests that you tweet 5 - 20 times every day since most retweets happen within an hour after tweeting.
Adobe recommends that you tweet 3 times a day.
From all the studies, the common insight is that you should tweet at least 3 to 5 times per day. The main thing is to regularly analyze the performance of your tweets to see if your posting frequency is working.
Note that engagement doesn’t strictly depend on how often you tweet. You also have to tweet content that your audience will find interesting. You can check out this article to find out effective tweet ideas to help you keep your audience engaged with your content.
Running contests are an excellent way to increase your Twitter engagement as it attracts both your current followers and new fans. And when done right, the new people will continue to engage with your content even after the contests.
Before you start running contests, ensure that you follow Twitter’s guidelines for promotions. For instance, you shouldn’t set contest rules that encourage users to post multiple duplicates or near duplicates of the same tweet repeatedly (e.g, rules such as “whoever retweets the most wins”.)
To run an effective Twitter contest, here are some best practices you should follow;
Here is an example of a “comment to enter” contest from Lays.
If you are not adding hashtags to your Tweets, you are missing out on a ton of opportunities to increase your post reach and drive engagement. Hashtags increase the visibility of your tweets by grouping them into conversations that users can easily find. So when a user clicks on a specific hashtag, they will see all the posts that use the hashtag. For example, if I search for the hashtag #FashionWeek, I can see all the tweets related to the New York Fashion Week.
The quickest way to find out which hashtags are trending is to use Twitter’s native search feature. Click on the #Explore section and go to the “Trends” tab to see which hashtags and topics are trending in your location.
You can also find a list of trending hashtags based on the interests you choose when setting up your Twitter profile. But note that with Twitter Trends, it will be difficult to determine which hashtags your audience interacts with the most. To do this, you will need a dedicated social media tool.
Iconosquare allows you to track hashtags so you can know how well they perform. This will help you to determine the best hashtags to use for optimal reach and engagement.
There are also several creative ways you can use hashtags in your tweets. You can use hashtags when:
Tweeting about events or conferences. For example #NYFW, #Emmys, #SocialMediaWeek. See how Netflix uses the #Emmy hashtag to tweet about how a star of one of their shows won an Emmy award.
You can also use hashtags when celebrating holidays like #Thanksgiving or for promoting branded campaigns. For example, Social Media Examiner uses #smechat to promote their Twitter chat where they discuss the hottest social media news topics every Wednesday.
On every social media platform, photos and videos perform better than just plain text. Using visual content in your Tweets makes it more visible as users scroll through their feeds which increases the likelihood of them engaging with your content. In fact, tweets with videos get 10 times more engagement than those without. Twitter even Tweeted that simply adding a GIF to your tweets can increase your engagement by 55%.
So posting visual content is a creative way to increase your Twitter engagement. Here are some examples of how you can use visual content to grab the attention of your audience.
#1: Airbnb used beautiful and engaging images to promote unique accommodations during #TopGunDay.
#2: Post shareable graphics. For example, you can share images with interesting quotes.
#3: Create a custom blog graphic when sharing blog posts on Twitter.
Other ways you can use visual content include sharing user-generated content, behind-the-scenes photos, and using video demos to show how your products work.
You can get more people to see your tweets by jumping in on relevant topics and conversations in your industry. This will allow even people who do not follow your brand on Twitter to come across your posts, which will lead to more engagement.
The easiest way to find out what’s trending is to go to the “What’s happening” section on Twitter. You can also go through the Trends list to see if there are any topics you can talk about.
And one way you can tap into trending conversations on Twitter is by relating the topic or moment to your products. For instance, you can use the tweet to promote what your business has to offer while talking about the trending topic. Here is an example from Cuisine de France. During National Beverage Day, they reminded their audience that their pastries pair perfectly with any beverage.
Tip: You can follow Topics that are relevant to your brand on Twitter. This will make it easy to follow conversations related to that topic so you can join in when appropriate.
Reciprocity is a key part of social media. The more you engage with other people’s content, the more likely they are to engage with your content. Instead of just regularly tweeting, you can take it a step further by liking, commenting, and retweeting your audience’s posts.
Plus the more you interact with your audience content, the more visible your brand will be in the feeds of people that follow your audience but do not follow you. So even people who haven’t heard of you can still come across your brand. Here is an example from L’Oréal Groupe responding to a compliment on their eye makeup set from a Twitter user.
People who follow Belinda can see L’Oreal commenting on her post and can decide to check them out.
You should also engage with people who mention your brand on Twitter. But since not every user might @mention when talking about your brand on social media, it will make sense to use a social media monitoring tool. Iconosquare will make it easy for you to monitor all the mentions of your brand on social media. This way you won’t miss any conversation related to your brand.
You can use your website to boost your Twitter engagement by displaying your Twitter content on it. So visitors to your website can see your Twitter posts, engage with the content, and even follow you. If you have a website that sees a lot of traffic, it wouldn’t hurt to integrate your Twitter feed.
To do this, you can install a Twitter plugin on your website. This will make it easy to display the tweets and the plugin will automatically update whenever you add a new tweet. But the main thing is to choose a lightweight plugin that won’t slow down your website. Before you install any plugins, make sure you read the reviews from other users.
Asking your audience questions is one of the most classic ways to get them to engage with your tweets.
And the reason this strategy works goes right back to psychology and human nature. People like to talk. Whether it is about themselves, their jobs, their experience with a brand or product, their opinions on a specific topic, etc. People will talk as long as they feel that they are being heard. And the more conversations you have with your audience, the more engagements you will get.
Here are examples of questions you can ask your audience to drive engagement:
Here is an example of Lufthansa asking their followers how they spend vacation time with family.
The use of interactive content like polls is an effective way to increase your Twitter engagement while learning more about your audience.
A Twitter poll allows you to ask your audience questions with a maximum of four response options. And unlike surveys, participants don’t have to spend valuable time filling out a form. In three seconds or less, users can vote for answers making them more likely to engage the poll. Plus since users can see the results of the polls instantly, it is more likely to spread organically because more people will retweet, like, and comment on the results.
Here is how you can create a poll on Twitter:
Here are some creative ways brands use Twitter to drive engagement on Twitter.
#1: Use polls to settle debates among your audience. Here is an example from Mcdonald's.
The poll had over 71k votes, 4000 likes, and 500 retweets.
#2: Use polls to build anticipation. Here is an example from Android.
#3. Use polls to get feedback from your customer. Here is an example for Skims.
#4. Use polls to add fun and humor to your Twitter content. Here is an example from Poppin.
Twitter liked the fun poll so much that they asked to Highlight it in an upcoming project.
Another example of a fun poll from Subway.
You can increase your Twitter engagement by hosting weekly Twitter chats. These chats offer you an opportunity to interact with your customers and followers in real-time. To encourage your followers to participate in the conversation, include giveaways. And after you inform your audience, also create a hashtag for the chat. If a lot of your followers tweet about the chats, it can start to trend – which will mean more engagement.
Now that we have seen how you can increase your Twitter engagement, let's look at how you can measure whether the strategies you implement are effective.
But first, let's look at the different types of engagement on Twitter:
How to find this data: You can find this data by going to your Twitter Analytics dashboard. Click on “tweets” and click on “view tweet activity” for any tweet you want to see engagement stats for.
This leads us to the next subject – how can you determine your engagement rate?
Your engagement rate is the number of engagements you get per post or profile divided by the total number of impressions. In summary, it lets you understand the percentage of people that interacted with your tweet(s) after viewing it.
Calculating your Twitter engagement rate gives you insight into the types of posts your followers like and interact with. Maybe your audience prefers video content or engages tweet polls more. This insight will help you optimize your Twitter content strategy.
Note that besides likes, retweets, and comments, they are other engagement metrics you should also consider. For example, measuring the performance of branded hashtags and monitoring mentions of your brand. Using Twitter’s native analytics tool will not get the job done. You will need to invest in a more advanced Twitter analytics tool.
Iconosquare will offer you deep insights into the performance of your Twitter marketing strategy including your engagement, impressions, and performance of your content. You will also be able to monitor what is being said about your brand with ease. Start your 14-day free trial.
Hi! I'm Marvellous, huge fan of Iconosquare as a product, and determined to help experienced social media marketers thrive in the various aspects of their career.
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