Get started with Twitter

Get started with Twitter to push your brand on social media, to find and follow people. Set up your profile and integrate Twitter on your website. Before a relevant keyword use hashtags (#) to categorize tweets and show them on Twitter search. Twitter for Marketing helps businesses to describe brand personalities and start marketable tweets. Analytics and lead generation calculate the influence of each tweet for finding what works and what does not. With an Advertising account on Twitter start off with sponsored tweets and ads. Twitter for Advertising is an ideal way to define and target your audience by demographics, keyword, username, or interest. Advertise on Twitter by creating a captivating Ad to increase followers, traffic and leads. Track and measure the results of your Twitter Advertising and use this information to make adjustments to your future campaigns.

The various Twitter terms are essentials to understand the network. Read more by clicking on Twitter-glossary.

Get started with Twitter: Marketing

Optimize your Twitter profile by including your logo, brand name, location, website link, etc. Use your brand logo as your Twitter handle and use your brand mention name eg @sapcanvas. The image has to be 1500*500 pixels and place the keyword in the description (fig 1).

Twitter is a social media channel where people transmit messages called tweets. 140 characters only are a limit for tweeting. Use a URL shortner to save on characters. As profiles are searchable make sure you use keywords to reach your target audience. Use a logo for a business or a photo for self, if it is a personal account. A personal account should bear your real name. Businesses may need to have multiple twitter account for issues relating to tweets meant for employees, geographical location or that serving any other purpose.

Twitter suggests who you might like to follow and who you are following. After you have followed them, their tweets start appearing in your timeline often referred to as your Twitter stream. Viceversa anyone who chooses to follow you will see your tweets in their stream. Not everyone you follow will choose to follow you nor should you follow everyone who has followed you

Leverage your Twitter marketing strategies to influence your followers. Ask yourself the question of- why people should follow your brand? Share news and update people about your brand. If you use Twitter to promote your business then ‘Reputation Management’ is important. Tools used are Google Alerts- google.co.in/alerts and IFTTT- ifttt.com

Hashtags & Social Mentions

Do not neglect hashtags. It could be a brand hashtag for archive purposes eg #sapcanvas or trending hashtags for visibility eg #digitalmarketingsolutions | #makemoneyonline. Use keyword hashtags (#) and incorporate website links in tweets. Read more about hashtags by clicking on hashtag-marketing. Auto Direct messages grow your unfollow rates. Do not engage with longer tweets but request for retweets. There is a greater chance of retweets of tweets with photos. Use Twitter chats and monitor brand mentions to speedily engage with relevant conversations. Just type your search term(s) in the text box of the tool- socialmention.com. Select the option from blog, microblog, bookmark, image, video, or question. Sort out results by date, source, and time. Twitter will notify you if someone mentions you based on your settings for receiving notifications.

How to Tweet?

In your timeline, view a list of tweets or messages shown in order with the most recent at the top. If you have created a user list, twitter timelines show messages from these users. Search results help generate Twitter Timelines. They match the query used in the search. You may choose to follow the tweets from people you follow and engage with them. Other options of retweeting are to share the tweet with followers or scheduling tweets by adding to Buffer, or like or bookmark tweets or view Analytics. Compose a tweet when you have to share something. Images and videos can draw attention to the content you share on Twitter and are easy to insert into your Tweets. Monitor your Twitter account to address issues. Respond promptly for any queries or information requests. Use social media for customer services.

Get started with Twitter: Followers

Gain followers quickly on Twitter

• request your family + friends to follow you
• tweet to get Twitter organic followers
• get followers for free and do not buy twitter followers
• target your niche to get more followers
• manifest your expertise and gain more followers on Twitter

Best practices for growing your followers

• Optimized profile with great content
• The tweet should carry value. Pin the relevant tweet to the top of your profile based on a campaign that is running.
• Use hashtags and Twitter icons on your website.
• Engagement & Sharing
• Reach out to influencers
• Remain active and plan schedule to follow others

New Followers

To attract new followers post great content for engagement. Engagement will promote awareness of your brand and gain recognition among followers. Be consistent about your tweets and interact. Tweet a minimum of 10 tweets per day at the best times for engagement. Link tweets to content on your websites with a CTA while you retweet and interact with other Twitter users and followers. Ask questions to get responses.

Twitter Polls

Twitter users can create an opinion poll. Embed this feature in tweets to collect votes from the audience. Opinion Polls help to find out from your audience what they think about your products and services,

Twitter Lists

Twitter Lists is a compiled group of Twitter users. They can be either personal or by subscription. Create your own list. You may also subscribe to a list of others. A view in the list timeline will show the stream of tweets pertaining to the accounts on that list. Out of the Lists, individual or group members are not able to receive any direct tweets.

Twitter Cards

Allow your users to have a rich media experience using Twitter Cards for tweets that contain links to your website content. A Twitter card lets you use 200 characters per tweet. More space than the limit of 140 characters per tweet that can accommodate details about eg: product, price, where to source from, etc. The Card types are summary card, app card, and player card which display images, show content previews and play videos, to increase visitors to your site. The Twitter platform can generate leads for your business. Integrate Twitter lead generation cards with CRM providers such as MailChimp.

Twitter Chats

To host a Twitter chat you will require a chat hashtag revolving around a specific topic. The hashtag calls for discussion and participation connecting like-minded persons sharing common interest on a recurring basis The outcome of running a twitter chat will obviously be for networking to increase your reach and impressions. Include Twitter chats in your social media strategy and build a community around your brand. Interact with your followers to promote your business and grow your social media followings. Use Twitter chats to gain exposure for engaging with your community and attract new followers. To a great extent, The Twitter chat success will depend on how creative you are on formatting, and managing tweets, predetermined timing, and frequency of tweets, etc.

Influencers

Twitter strategies must include ‘Influencer marketing‘ and use tools such as ‘BuzzSumo’ for research. Twitter offers many influencers, but retweet tweets of those influencers that are relevant to your business.

Get started with Twitter: Analytics

Twitter Analytics provides insight for your customers and the market. It shows the engagement in your campaigns and who your top followers are? Advertize on twitter and gain access to Analytics. After advertising on Twitter your account changes to advertiser status. Then log in to view the Twitter Analytics Dashboard detailing tweet activities, followers and twitter cards. Track your conversion for running campaigns that connect your twitter followers to your site. Twitter conversions allow you to know how your tweets have worked based on the action these followers take on visiting your site.

Get started with Twitter: Advertising

Twitter is a microblogging service platform. Three types of Twitter ads you can run on Twitter have Promoted Tweets that display tweets to people who do not follow you, Promoted Accounts that increase your followers, and Promoted Trends on most trending topics using the hashtag from the explore page in the twitter app or on user’s timelines. Meet the Twitter advertising criteria, to set up a campaign on Twitter. It is obvious those who tweet more are the ones that have the most followers. The fastest way to gain ‘followers’ is through Twitter Ads which is a paid option.

Twitter ads account setup

For beginners to create a Campaign Objective click on (…) more tab in your Twitter Home page. In the display menu, click on Twitter Ads.

Select your Campaign Objective-based on the options outlined in fig5 eg Website clicks or conversions.

Campaign Setup

In the Campaign setup page, name your campaign. Next, choose how you want to pay? Set your campaign budget. As a beginner add a low budget say $20 which you can keep increasing later with experience. The budget you set here is the total amount you are willing to pay for the whole campaign. Schedule your campaign whether you want to start right away or later. Then click next to land on creating your ad group and bidding.

Ad Group setup

An ad group can have multiple ad groups and an ad group with multiple ads. To get started with Twitter, go for one ad group. To run the campaign continuously throughout the day leave the setting empty. Leave the total budget for this ad group empty so Twitter automatically takes the budget of the campaign we created. Here choose the specific bid amounts you want to pay for each engagement. From the bid type options, you have a choice of selection from an automatic bid, target cost or maximum bid. Set the bid amount to say $2. Choose maximum bid which means that you will not have to pay more than $2 for any click that you get for your ad. This will allow 10 website clicks of $2 for your campaign budget of $20 which is a very small ad budget.

Twitter Ads result in an increase in your audience size. This can be estimated by the interface. Create a conversion metric to set up tracking events on your website. Under ‘Measurement options’, find two options. They are ‘Audience measurement tag’ and ‘add DoubleClick tracking’. For it to work you can place codes on your website. After clicking on Next, Twitter displays Your audiences page.

Your Audiences

The three categories to target your audiences are – Tailored and flexible, Demographics and Creatives.

Choose the audience that suits your ad. and maximize your budget. Twitter has a number of options to target. Tailored audiences can include those from your list, web and mobile apps, Demographic targeting defines audiences by gender, age, location, language, and technology. Finetune location targeting by going into area details such as postal code or the entire country. Use technology to target your visitors’ device.

Under ‘Creatives – Tweets’, select the tweet(s), you want to promote.

In Campaign setup ‘Display creatives’ expand your reach by advertising on the Twitter Audience Platform.

Also, choose the ad placement to the right and click next for audience selection. The audience can be your follower base or your own list which can be uploaded. Under ad Categories, choose ‘website clicks and conversions’ so that your ads not only run on the Twitter Timeline but also on mobile apps network on the Twitter Audience Platform. If you choose multiple categories it will only limit scale. Choose the ad format for your ads and select the ad category. Excluded apps fig 11 is optional and enter your domain name to conclude.

Review and Launch your Campaign

For a review of what options you have selected for your campaign click ‘Next’. The Launch campaign tab will launch your ad.

Software

Software solutions such as Buffer, Hootsuite, SproutSocial, etc can schedule your tweets.