Twitter Engagement Optimisation

This guide contains information on how to get the most out of your Twitter marketing.

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The majority of businesses are unsuccessful with their social media campaigns due to several simple reasons. They do not test and measure what works, they do not promote and share quality content, they do not engage with their audience and most importantly they do not optimise their Twitter profile and activity for best results.

Twitter optimisation looks at all aspects of your Twitter activity including keywords, links, followers, tweet times and much more.

Tweet and re-tweet local businesses, this is a great way to promote, engage and build relationships with local companies as well as their customer base. For instance a printing company will have very similar clients to a web design company, however there will be no competition between the print and web design company as neither offer the same service. This leaves both companies with a great opportunity to engage with each other and promote each other’s services.

Most companies we work with find it challenging to know how many tweets to publish each day and what those tweet should contain. Through trial and error, we tend to find that a minimum of 3 tweets per day tends to work best.

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These tweets should be spread across the day as no one wants to see their feed filled with tweets all from one person or company. Each tweet should be unique even if it is a re-promotion, try and capture your audience from another angle.

Mentioning people and businesses from your networking group is a great method of building strong connections, promoting the tweets your clients post is always well received and complimenting a business that provided you with a good service displays gratitude and respect for others.

It is terribly frustrating when we see businesses trying to entice as many people as possible through any means, such as ‘win an i-pod mini if you follow us on Twitter’ Unless you are Apple or an electronics retailer then you shouldn’t be enticing others to follow your companies brand through another companies products. This will attract the wrong audience, there is no point in gaining followers that will not buy from or promote your business.

Unlike other social media websites, Twitter users tend to be online more sporadically. Through a simple click of a button, Twitter users can access the latest tweets. Hence the importance to tweet throughout the day. Our experience suggests that a great deal of users engage with the tweets they see early in the morning 6.30am – 8am, 12pm – 1pm are also good times to post however there is typically less engagement.

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Whereas tweets posted between 6.30pm and 11pm tend to receive the highest proportion of engagement. Since this tends to be a less convenient time for business owners, we suggest that you use a social media marketing company or a social media management system such as Hootsuite to post your updates for you.

Whilst links shared through social media networks are set to ‘no-follow’, several leading social media experts have seen associated websites shoot up the search results once their web address had been shared a number of times. One study suggests that 2,500 or less URL shares will have little impact on your websites ranking, however 5,000 URL shares will have a significant impact on your ranking. This study also suggests that the website monitored ranked in the top 35 places or better once this had been achieved, and 7,500 URL shares or more leads to an almost first page guarantee with the website ranking in the top 10 for most terms.

Please bear in mind that this study was based upon unique users sharing the URL. Simply posting your website address thousands of times will not work. This study is a great indication as to how social media can have a large impact on your websites search ranking. But remember, quality is paramount, short term – unsustainable stints will not work for long, if at all.

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