Have you read about a movie studio that used Twitter to launch trailers and had great success? Feel free to read more about the success story here. What I found interesting about it is that they set time aside to think about a compelling campaign, analyze their target audience and consider how they can optimize the campaign. The movie trailer went viral. “Before I Wake” not only become a trending topic during the day on Twitter, but there was an organic trend for the next three days.
Quite inspirational. For the moment though I don’t want to talk about running a Twitter campaign, but talk about engagement. Still the “Before I Wake” case study can give you the idea of what to expect if you do it right.
With 302 million active users, Twitter is one of the largest social media platforms. If you are running or even on the phase of trying to build your business and Twitter has to be one of your go to tools, the fact that there are 500 million Tweets sent per day though means it is important to learn how to ensure engagement.
I’ll share some key tips on how to get better engagement for your tweets. Let’s roll.
1. How much tweets per day?
The polemic of how many tweets you should send per day will never come to an end. It is always difficult to say how much is too much. There’s no answer to what is just right. However, to give you an idea I’ve read two articles to base my research on. One article is by SocialBakers, they stated that engagement decreases after 3rd tweet. So from there we can take a point that less, like 3 tweets a day as a minimum is good.
To give a different perspective, Kevan Lee wrote an article on Buffer about the importance of striking the balance between informative and annoying in his social media frequency guide.
On the guide I learnt that although Buffer posts on Twitter 14 times per day, from midnight to 10:00 p.m, they think less would be best. The final conclusion they came to is to post to Twitter at least 5 times a day.
I personally think you definitely can ‘trust’ and follow the advise from any of the above, but tweet frequency basically depends on your industry and your followers too. That’s why I said at the beginning you’ll never find the perfect answer.
To know the best or the right way to do it is by experimenting. Measure your results and get your own success formula. You also need to think about what is the best time to tweet if you want to maximise your engagement. I’ll talk about timing later.
2. Visualization is important
Oh yes, we are living in a such visual world. It is no longer a secret that for gaining more engagement, clicks, retweets, and replies, Tweeting with images is best! No this isn’t an assumption! SocialTimes stated that users engaged at a rate 5x higher when a photo was included. Also check out this amazing piece on Buffer about How Twitter’s expanded images increase clicks, retweets and favourites.
So, according to Twitter, the most effective Tweet features across all the verified accounts that they looked at are:
– Photos average a 35% boost in Retweets
– Videos get a 28% boost
– Quotes get a 19% boost in Retweets
– Including a number receives a 17% bump in Retweets
– Hashtags receive a 16% boost
*That data above works for all areas, you can change it to only pick Music, TV, Sports, News, or Gov&Politics… Regardless of the topic photos are the most effective way of promoting engagement. Feel free to check this one research as well.
Now you know that a tweet with a picture gains better engagement, lets talk more about it. If you are wondering on how to insert an image to your tweet, check this article out.
A. Dimension
If you are thinking to upload a picture to your tweet, make sure that the size or dimension is correct. Twitter image dimensions are 1024px x 512px. It is basically using the 2:1 aspect ratio. So yes it is like rectangular picture. If somehow you are uploading 1:1 ratio (square) image, Twitter mostly will cut the top and bottom part of the image on its stream or feed. Though people who see the image on your tweet are still able to see the full image by clicking, it is always better to make it appear right the first time.
B. Quotes
From the above data, we see that, amazingly, quotes get a 19% boost in retweets. Can you image how high your engagement will be if you combine a high-quality image (with the right size or dimension) with a quote?
Mixing an image with a quote seems pretty easy, right? No it isn’t. Don’t be random please. Think about what image works with the quote that you are going to use. Also make sure that the image(s) that you are using is still somehow relevant to your business.
C. Tools
– Youzign
Youzign is definitely one of the most lovely platforms that I know of when it comes to design Social Media cover or post, presentation, poster and some other more. Twitter cover, Facebook banners, Youtube channel art, infographic, flyer, business card, anything.. Just name it. Youzign covers all your marketing graphics need. Youzign has some pretty cool designs and it is easy to use.
– PicMonkey
PicMonkey is fun to use when you want to have a shape (you want to set its opacity), put up some texts, banners and everything. No need to do any registration and you can straight use it. If you can do it right or have the art sense in your heart, a beautiful piece is pretty easy to resulted with PicMonkey. PicMonkey allows you to load your picture from your PC, Facebook or online storage like Dropbox. Pretty legit.
– Pablo
I use Pablo if I want to create an image and putting a quote plus my logo on top of it. You can use Pablo by signing in using your Twitter account. The size of the image comes in 1024 px x 512 px, it can be downloaded or directly share to Twitter / Facebook / Buffer.
D. Extra tips
Speaking about adding picture or image to your tweet, you should know that you can add up to 4 images now in a tweet. You can click the Tweet icon, and “add photo” (pick one photo) and click the “add more” button afterwards until you’ve added up to four photos. I personally love seeing four photos uploaded rather than seeing one photo of four images that are part of a collage.
For getting better engagement, you can also tag people on the image(s) that you uploaded. You can tag up to 10 people. Of course it is simple to do this. Just click the “Who’s in this photo?” text and add people’s Twitter handle. Can begin with “@” or just write their name. Tagging people is a good way if you want to get certain people’s attention on your tweet.
3. Use a strong call to action
A call to action is not only for banners on your website nor sale pages. A CTA can be inserted to your tweets as well and it works. For example you can ask for retweets. Keep in mind that people love to know what they are expected to do. So just ask nicely to improve your chances of getting a retweet.
Of course you can also ask people to favourite your Tweets, reply your tweets or other things besides. If you need help with composing a call to action for Twitter then consider using these words: please, retweet, free, help, please retweet, follow and check out. (source: Dan Zarrella).
Keep in mind you have to keep it balanced. Don’t ask for people to do you a favor all of the time. That just becomes annoying rather than appealing.
4. Tweet length and timing
Length
We all know that Twitter limits you to a tweet of 140 characters. To get the best response from your Tweets use 80-110 characters so that people have ‘space’ to add their own opinion while they retweet your tweet.
I would say that I agree to use a max of 110 characters, but not for above reason. Leave the 30 characters, well actually 23 characters, for picture placement on your tweet. Why? Simple, back to tip no. 2.
Timing
The best time of the day to tweet: 5 pm for the highest retweets. 12pm and 6pm for highest CTR. If you want more tips on the best time to post on social media check out Adweek. They talk about the best times to post on Facebook, Linkedin, Pinterest, Instagram and also Google+. You can also use platform like Klout to give you the right timing to tweet (they give suggestion time to tweet when you are about to schedule tweets).
5. Great content
At the end of the day, people always love and appreciate great content. Tweet with a high-quality image, give a link (that lead your followers to great content) and don’t forget to be clever with your Twitter copywriting.
Buffer wrote a piece about Twitter copywriting formula. It’s a good article and some of these tips might work for your industry. I like formula no. 1 (Before – After – Bridge), 2 (Problem – Agitate – Solve) and 4 (The 4 C’s (Clear, Concise, Compelling and Credible)). There are more than 20 copywriting formulas there (and all include great examples) so have a look and analyze which one (or two or three) that are the best for you! Then experiment
Extra tips: What goes around comes around. Yes, besides tweeting and providing great content (either by tweets or articles), you can also find other people content (that is also great and still relevant to your followers) to tweet about or retweets.
Your followers will appreciate the fact that you are not only focusing on yourself.
LAST
So that is all my tips for maximizing your tweet engagement. Be sure to set up a great Twitter cover for your account, because that counts too.
I hope that you find these tips useful. Besides applying these tips, you also split test your Twitter marketing to learn what works and what doesn’t. Measuring your results is always better than making assumptions right?
Back at you. How do you get maximum engagement from Twitter? Do you mind to share some other tips that I haven’t mentioned above? Let us know.
P.S. Feel free to check out Youzign – the most powerful graphics tool to design anything online today!
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