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HubMasters - How to go from 0 to 80,000 engaged Twitter Followers
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HubSpot invited social media power influencer, Lilach Bullock to tell her story of how she grew her Twitter following from 0 to over 82,000 engaged brand evangelists. Not only that, but Brian Lavery of Twitter joined to reveal his secret to growing and engaging your followers. For a free consultation with Lilach Bullock, click here http://www.commsaxis.com/webinar-follow-up/
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HubMasters - How to go from 0 to 80,000 engaged Twitter Followers
- HOW TO GO FROM 0 TO 80,000 ENGAGED TWITTER FOLLOWERS. Lilach Bullock & Brian Lavery
- 1 All lines are muted, use the chat panel for tech issues. 2 Q&A at the end, ask questions via #HubMasters. 3 Unanswered questions will be answered on Twitter after the webinar. 4 Webinar recording and slides will be emailed to you tomorrow morning. House Keeping
- Meet Your Experts Lilach Bullock Social Media Expert Comms Axis @lilachbullock Brian Lavery SMB Partnerships Manager Twitter @lav #HubMasters
- Twitter is a powerful tool for businesses. Listening Support #HubMasters Rela1onship-‐ building Promo1on Adver1sing Engagement Conversa1ons Awareness Learning
- #HubMasters
- Followers are loyal. 90% retention rate over six months. A community built on shared interests means low churn and your audience stays intact.
- It’s all about ENGAGEMENT! #HubMasters
- But without a following, that’s a challenge. #HubMasters
- It doesn’t happen overnight. #HubMasters
- HOW I GREW MY FOLLOWING. #HubMasters
- First Things First 1. Set realistic expectations; it takes time and effort. 2. Vital to have a sticky and engaging website – ensure pages have easy, one-click sharing buttons. 3. Ensure you have tracking and analytics in place. #HubMasters
- @ @ @ @ Business Cards Products Merchandise Transport Get your handle on it.1
- Leverage influencers reach. #HubMasters 2
- Create competitions. #HubMasters 3
- A/B test your tweets #HubMasters 4 4
- HELPFUL TOOLS I FOUND ALONG THE WAY.
- Manage Flitter 1. Clean up and manage who you follow 2. Find out who isn’t following you back 3. Find out which inactive accounts you follow
- Social Omph & Buffer 1. Schedule Tweets 2. Automatically send direct messages to new followers 3. Automatically follow back 4. Vet new followers 5. Purge delete inbox 6. Multiple accounts
- Commun.it 1. Manage Twitter lists 2. Manage Twitter relationships 3. Focus on your top influencers and supporters
- Social Inbox 1. Create ‘streams’ of your leads, customers, competitors and get notified when they mention your keywords 2. Schedule posts across multiple networks and accounts 3. Prioritise the conversations you participate in 4. Track the ROI of your social media efforts
- SUPERCHARGE YOUR ACCOUNT. #HubMasters
- Twitter UK&I SME @TwitterUKI_SME Quickly get your account in front of users likely to be interested in your business, ! who will share and amplify your message 123 characters
- Promoted accounts in who to follow
- Promoted accounts in search • Increases the reach of Promoted Accounts campaigns • Shown to users with high intent, who are ready to take action
- Promoted accounts in timeline WHAT IT IS New ad format that runs in the home timelines — on mobile & desktop — along with a Tweet WHAT IT DOES Puts your business in front of more people and gives them a specific reason to follow you EXAMPLE Now, Barista Bar can explain to coffee lovers what they’ll get by following its account
- Tell users why they should follow you INCLUDE THE WORD ‘FOLLOW’ Be direct in asking people to follow your account PROVIDE A CLEAR REASON TO FOLLOW YOUR ACCOUNT Explain the value you will bring to their Twitter experience RUN OFFERS & CONTESTS Highlight special offers or contests that are exclusive for your followers
- Don’t offer any distractions. # www
- Target @usernames WHAT IT DOES • Allows you to target Twitter users that look like the followers of specific accounts. • E.g. competitors, influencers, industry media & events HOW TO USE IT • Add at least 10 @usernames to broaden your reach and get good value • Use the ‘Expand your reach’ tool for suggested @usernames similar to the ones already included
- Success story: @CleanAirLondon CHALLENGE Increase brand awareness while increasing followers and engagement SOLUTION Used Promoted Accounts to grow their audience of relevant influencers, using targeted @usernames & similar followers in London RESULTS “Twitter has a great ad platform with a tremendous toolkit. We couldn't wait for the opportunity to start advertising on Twitter and it has far exceeded every expectation” Simon Birkett, Founder and Director, Clean Air London 100% 19.4% 3x increase in followers peak engagement CTR increase
- QUESTIONS?
- THANK YOU. @HubSpot
Editor's Notes
- Lisa: Good afternoon, my name is Lisa Toner, I’m a marketer at HubSpot and I’m so excited to have you all join myself and our guest presenters (who I’ll introduce in just a minute) on today’s webinar where we’re going to learn how to to from 0 to 80K engaged twitter followers and what tips we can take from this story to apply to everyday businesses like yours.
- Lisa: runs though the housekeeping notes. Encourages all questions to be tweeted – we will not be monitoring the chat panel for questions, instead use this for any technical queries.
- Lisa: Introduction to speakers For Lilach: Lilach is the Founder of Socialable - and highly regarded on the world speaker circuit. Listed in Forbes as a social media power influencer, she is one of the most dynamic personalities in the social media market. For Brian: Brian is the partnership manager at Twitter and works with partners like HubSpot to reach small- and medium-sized businesses across EMEA. Brian: hi and happy to be here, excited for today’s webinar and to be working with Lilach and HubSpot! Lilach: Hi, I’m excited to be able to share some tips today that I hope the audience finds helpful. Lisa: Great, with that I’m going to turn things over to Lilach to kick us off.
- Twitter is one of the most powerful tools for businesses. There clearly are many benefits from brand awareness to being able to listen to what people are saying about your company or service or indeed your competitors. It’s a great way to learn and connect with like minded people and I’ve met so many amazing people over the years that I’m fortunate enough to meet online and then take it to the real world! In fact my business partner and co-founder of Communications Axis, Dan Purvis, is someone I met on Twitter around 4 years ago We also have acquired clients from using Twitter effectively too – so it’s a great business development tool, if used right! Back in January we wrote an article on 21 of the best video tools. For this post we had to research and learn how to use around 100 different video tools. We then listed our favourites and the ones that we felt our readers would get the most value from. Not only did we list the tools but we took the time to review each one in more detail so that we could help our audience choose better. Once we published the article and shared it across our networks, we also sent a tweet out to each of the companies letting them know about our article and that we featured them in it. It’s worth noting that beforehand we had no relationship with any of them and the tools we reviewed were based on our honest feedback! We wanted to ensure that the post was authentic as possible! As a result one of the tools (and I maybe slightly biased but they were our favourites!) was GoAnimate - this is a video animation tool where you can make professional animated videos and infographics in only a few minutes…well…they saw our tweet, read the post, got in touch to thank us and the rest, as they say, is history! It’s a fantastic tool where you can literally do it yourself and is based on a low budget subscription model, so perfect for SME’s. They have around 9 million users too. Simply from tweeting out to them and then directing them to our article not only did they share it to their networks but it started a relationship from proactive engagement, and led to them being one of our clients. So a great example of Twitter being able to generate leads and business!
- Ok so now let’s take a look at my Twitter handle. As you can see, I currently have just over 82,000 followers. I don’t follow everyone back and there is a lot of debate about whether you should follow people back for the sake of it but we probably don’t have time to go into that today! It’s worthwhile making the most of your bio space that you have. I’ve chosen to go for a key word route to optimise my profile. I’ve used hashtags as well as keywords. This helps others find you organically as well. Alternatively you could think about posting a descriptive profile. For example Oreo Cookies use a descriptive bio. However they are a very large and recognisable brand so this works particularly well for them. If you’re smaller and keen to get more followers you may find it more effective to use keywords in your bio space. Also think about the url that you use. Where do you want to direct people to? It may sound obvious but not everyone wants to direct traffic back to their website. Perhaps you have an event or an offer with a separate landing page or want to grow your Facebook Page and send people back there?
- Whilst many people want to have a large following it’s more important to have an engaged following that is loyal and that communicates with you and is happy to share your tweets or content with their audience. It goes without saying that it needs to be as targeted as possible. This is where you will see the real value and get the benefits from using Twitter. But if you want loyalty, you’ve GOT to be engaging and be proactive. If you broadcast a load of content or opinions and then just sit back and expect followers to flock to you, then you’ll be disappointed! Sounds obvious? Well I think it is, but too many individuals and brands (who really should know better) still take this approach. You won’t build a loyal, engaged and growing digital community if you do this!
- These numbers here are an overview of around 18 days in February. It was at a time when we were testing sending out more tweets and what the impact would have on it, whether it would turn people off or not – as you can see from the numbers it didn’t! None of of the tweets were salesy and in fact that is something that we have always shyed away from – instead, we try to give as much value as possible. What actually happened was that we had a very large spike in engagement and generated a lot of replies, retweets and mentions as well as people favouriting our tweets. The additional benefits were also being able to join and network with new people - we were able to join more conversations and traffic back to our site.
- First and foremost whilst I have a large following, if you are in a certain sector you only need a few of the right followers. Social Media and Twitter in particular is about being as targetted as possible. You need to think about who you are trying to connect with. What is their reach as well? How engaged and how responsive are they? Just think about the age old business tenet of “know your customer” – your audience is your customer…so serve them well, get to know them, learn what their interests and needs are. If you don’t, then don’t expect to get too many followers!! As we mentioned earlier by having a loyal and responsive Twitter following you are much more likely to have better results. Quality versus quantity will always win.
- Gaining a following that is engaged and loyal takes time. I started using Twitter in July 2008 and have always had and continue to have a very strategic plan. I have built this following by providing great content that offers huge value and makes people want to share it. We continually test everything (will talk about this on the a/b testing slides) and that’s also been a key part in helping with the growth. Experiment, learn, measure, adapt…and repeat! For me, it’s really about old school networking in the real-time digital world…and as my following has grown, the more I have engaged. Guest blogging opportunities have grown as a result and the more I networked and spoke at events and was published in magazines/websites – all of these things have contributed to the growth. Not only does it take time, but it’s also hard work! Ultimately, like everything - you get in what you put out!
- Some people get frustrated or perhaps are a little skeptical but really you just need to get back to basics. You need to put content at the heart of your strategy and use Twitter to kick off conversations. This, in turn, will help amplify the reach of that conversation, and therefore faciliate more engagement with more people. So let’s dive in to this a bit more.
- It takes time and a lot of hard work. You cannot just rely on following people and play the numbers game. There is so much more to it than that, particularly if you want to get results from your twitter. You need to get back to basics and make sure your website is working as well as it can – there is no point in driving traffic back from Twitter to your website if it then lets you down and doesn’t convert. You need to ensure that your website has clear calls to action. I liken it to a puppet show – you’re pulling the strings and directing people where you want them to go. It’s so much easier to convert existing traffic than have to constantly get new traffic! Test your sharing buttons – we’ve experimented frequently and changed our sharing buttons recently…forget vanity - the less “sexy/pretty ones” actually resulted in a dramatic increase of our shares. You can test with where you position them as well as which actual plugin you use. Also ensure that you have your settings set up correctly – too often we see websites where we share content and companies aren’t making the most of linking back to their twitter handle where it says via @ xxxxx this is such a simple thing to do and is often overlooked! If you’re not tracking, and measuring – to put it bluntly - there really is no point. You’re blindly using it and have no idea of whether it’s working or not working and how you can improve things. Whilst this isn’t as much fun or as exciting, for me it’s the most important part. Social Media is constantly evolving and changing. You therefore need to measure what’s working for you, you need to aspire to continuous improvement, and you need to stay up-to-date so you can maximise your ROI.
- Make sure you make it as easy as possible for people to find you and connect with you on Twitter. Post your twitter handle in your email signatures, in forums (where it allows you to!) and of course your business card! Also cross promote where you can – so shared your Twitter profile URL on Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn etc.. Cross-pollination works really well! Try posting an update on Facebook simply asking are you following us on Twitter, come and connect with us here too and vice versa Whilst it’s obvious to post it on your website and blog think about sharing your twitter handle on any presentation decks and any offline marketing material you create.
- One tactic that I do and has worked really well for me is engaging and working with key influencers in my space. Don’t be afraid to approach and ask influential people in your industry/niche. UK people have a “fear” of asking, but it’s rare that people will say no. For example I’m often asked by charities to share their content and will happily do so. Twitter is the easiest and quickest, and can be the most effective way to connect with people that you can’t normally get in front of. Sometimes it really is just a case of reaching out and asking them. It’s also worthwhile investing in the time to find out who are the influential people/journalists/bloggers in your industry. You then need to take the time to build and nurture a relationship with them. Whilst this can seem like a time consuming task the reality is that you will get much better results than just asking them for a favour, they’re much more likely to say yes if they actually have got to know you a little. Much better than a cold salesy tweet! Again, think about old school networking – the same principles apply. There are lots of tools available which can help you save time so it’s really worthwhile leveraging tools like Twtrland, LittleBird and Twitonomy. They can dig deep into the metrics of their Twitter handle and the more you know about them and who they are connected to the easier it can be for you to then connect with them! It goes without saying that if you’re looking for them to share your content – make sure the content provides value and that their own followers will therefore like it. Think about ways you could incorporate them within your content too – in the past we’ve approached influencers and asked them for a quote which we’ve included. This is a great way to connect, get you on their radars, and be able to give something back. More often they will also then share the article to their own audience which amplifies the reach and adds to the credibility of the article too!. If you’re struggling to make contact with someone it can also be useful to look at their followers and see if there is someone there you know or know of someone who does and see if you can get an intro that way. It takes time and sometimes a little creativity and perseverance!
- Another great way to increase engagement on twitter is by creating competitions. We’ve found by creating competitions and contests that used topical hashtags helped spark interaction and helped discovery – kind of like how we are using the #HubMasters hashtag today to get questions in for this webinar! There are some great tools available which can help you manage the competition and help facilitate it too. We recently did a competition for a client, gamesGRABR - a social network for gamers. Not only did they want to increase their engagement and following across Twitter and Facebook but they also wanted to increase their users and grow their list. We decided to create a point system whereby if you tweeted about the competition you got 2 points, or signed up as a user you would get 4 points. Each point represented an entry, and the more entries you had the more likely you were to win! It really was a win win!! And everyone likes free stuff! When creating competitions and contests it does pay to take the time to plan and think about what your objectives are. It’s very easy to get excited that lots of people are entering but you want to make sure that it’s the right people. And make the prize as targeted as possible…. So, for example, if you offer money or vouchers it then opens up the competition to others that may have no desire in your product and simply be a competition seeker! This is great if you’re looking to have large numbers of followers but negates the whole targeted following – they won’t engage with you after the competition and could well unfollow you, which defeats the object of the competition. By having clear objectives this will help in terms of the prize you offer and how it’s promoted as well.
- As I’ve mentioned earlier it is crucial that you are testing and measuring your results. But before you do, you need to have a goal – What are your objectives - What do you want the tweet to achieve? Is it click bait? Traffic? Sign up to list? Increase engagement/likes/followers? Split testing your tweets is in fact a very similar process to split testing emails or newsletters. The simplest way is to create 5 or 10 different tweets and test which headline generates more clicks, or more email opt-ins ((you can do this by setting up individual trackable link for each one), or whatever your metric is. So for example, if you’re giving away a free report you could test it and write the word free or not use that word. You can also test different hashtags There are many different variables that you can test. From the time of day or evening so that you can work out your best performing time and also which actual day. Again, the more research you do here on where your customers are located and online the easier it will be to reach out to them. If posting tweets with images or videos/vines – you’ll see that they typically receive more engagement/shares than without. Particularly as Twitter is evolving to become a much more visual feast! Although bear in mind you may then need to split test the actual images as well! Also test the type of tweets that you send – do questions work well? How engaged and responsive are people?
- Twitter is an amazing platform to engage with your audience on and get real time feedback. But there are a lot of conversations happening on twitter these days as the member growth and engagement has exploded. So I’ve found that by using some helpful tools to manage my twitter interactions I can be more efficient. It’s also worth noting here that we are being inundated with more and more tools – there really is a plethora out there. On our blog we have researched literally 100’s of them and have many articles and reviews. In particular our “101 tweet-tastic tools” post provides a greater insight on them so please feel free to check them out or connect with me and I can point you in the right direction! Here’s a few of those tools that I would recommend.
- Manage Flitter is a great tool to really understand and dig in deep to your followers. It helps you understand who isn’t following you back and more importantly analyses your followers and works out which ones haven’t been active. It’s all very well having 100’s or 1000s of followers but if they’re not actually using Twitter or engaging on there then they aren’t going to be seeing your tweets. Therefore by taking the time to understand your followers you will have a much more effective results.
- Social Oomph is currently the only tool where you can send recurring scheduled tweets out. Whilst this is a great time saving tool, like any of them they can be mis-used. So be careful not to overuse it and, for best results, you cannot beat real time live engagement!
- Commun.it is a tool that helps you analyse your followers and gives you a great insight into the relationships you have with them. It highlights who are your most engaged, loyal and supportive followers. It can also focus on your top influencers.
- With Social Inbox from HubSpot, you can get really targeted and engaged with the people who matter most. The product has a colour coding system that clearly displays who are your customers, who are your leads, and who are your prospects so you can reply accordingly. You can create what they call ‘streams’ that monitor Twitter for anyone (as broad or as targeted as you like) mentioning you, or any of your keywords. You can then get email notifications so you can respond in a timely fashion. Because it’s integrated with the entire marketing platform of HubSpot, you can start to really see the ROI of social marketing, with visit to lead, and lead to customer analytics.
- Lisa: Thanks so much Lilach! There’s been so many great tips in there today for our audience that I’m sure they’ve found helpful. For our audience listening please do tweet any questions you have for Lilach using the hashtag and we’ll be answering those very soon. For now I’m going to turn things over to Brian Lavery from Twitter who is going to share some of the exciting developments from inside twitter in recent months so as you can understand how to get the best out of your twitter experience to help drive business results.
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