1. Increase Your Twitter Reach With These 8 Simple
Strategies
8 Tactics for Increasing Your Twitter Reach
As a marketing channel, Twitterâs no longer optional. Everyoneâs using it, which means
you need to be too.
But because everyoneâs using it, you can get lost in the crowd. Itâs tough to make an
impact.
The only way to stand out is to be really good at Twitter. Your tweets need to be A+. Or
even A++++:
Click here for the best way to grow your twitter page
2. Outstanding content is more likely to be retweeted, increasing your reach and audience.
Your best bet for increasing Twitter reach is to get more of them, and the best way to do
that is to post better content.
To help you out, weâve put together eight quick tips thatâll make your tweets more twitt-
ilating.
Shall we?
We also put these tips into a checklist for your office wall. Grab it here.
3. 1. Know your audience
Hint: Itâs not everyone.
You want your tweets to hit home with the right people, so youâd better know what those
people like.
Brittany Berger wrote all about the benefits of social listening. She says it lets you:
Find out what your customers really think
Re-evaluate your brandâs strengths and weaknesses
Supplement hard data with genuine opinions
Get customersâ views of your competitors
Find new campaign ideas
Target specific keywords and hashtags that suit your ideal buyer. See what theyâre talking
about and update your content strategy accordingly.
Great marketers can even use monitoring to generate leads.
Letâs see how they do it.
How to listen
Option 1: Get familiar with Twitterâs Advanced Search.
4.
5. It lets you narrow your search to find exactly what youâre looking for.
Like a regular search, but more advanced.
If youâre listening for generic terms or popular phrases, this helps you eliminate some of
the noise.
The best part is you can save your searches â up to 25 per account. Itâs like having
custom hashtags, just for you.
Create a handful of useful searches and revisit them each week. This is an easy way to
follow conversations in your specific niche.
Option 2: use a monitoring tool. These take all of the work out of social media listening.
Set up alerts just like youâd build an advanced search. Receive daily reports about
conversations on social media, plus real-time alerts when keywords are trending.
For social media, our favorite tool is obviously Mention.
2. Talk with your followers, not at them
Bufferâs Kevan Lee says you need to know the difference between âvoiceâ and âtoneâ.
Think of voice as your brandâs personality â a core part of its identity â and tone as your
brandâs mood from day to day. As they explain it:
âVoice is a mission statement. Tone is the application of that mission.â
Voice doesnât change â this is how you want your brand to be represented, always. But
tone changes with context.
You also canât always be selling.
Twitter is a giant chat room. Most people are there for conversation, jokes, or education.
And you canât spend all your time talking about yourself.
Here are some suggestions to help you balance promotion with other content:
The 80/20 rule: 20% of your content can be promotional, but 80% of your content
should be interesting and engaging to your audience.
The 5-3-2 ratio: Five relevant pieces from others, three non-promotional from you,
then two promotional posts.
The 4-1-1 rule: Four pieces from others â plus one retweet â for every promotional
tweet you send.
Focus on offering value to your followers â thatâs what matters. Choose a ratio that makes
sense to you, and try to keep to it.
6. 3. Use relevant hashtags
Hashtags are Twitterâs way of bundling information together by keyword.
People following hashtags are interested in that content. If your content suits one, youâll
reach an audience thatâs keen to engage with it.
If you want to get the most from hashtags, check out Danielle Pragerâs hashtag best
practices. Some of her key tips are:
Never use more than three hashtags per post.
Keep them short. #LongStringsOfWordsAreAnnoying.
The more precise, the better.
Make them easy to remember and easy to spell.
If youâre creating a campaign hashtag, be original.
Finally, a word of warning: donât try to piggyback on irrelevant hashtags; youâll look
foolish.
4. Know when to tweet
Twitter is time-sensitive.
Even with Twitterâs new algorithm, only the beginning of the userâs stream is affected.
And itâs optional. That means youâre still relying largely on timing to get your content seen.
It may feel like the whole world is constantly online, but some times of the day are busier
than others:
7. Image courtesy of QuickSprout
Think about television ads.
Primetime spots are the most expensive, but theyâre not right for every product. Toy
brands prefer after-school slots when their target audience is watching.
Likewise, youâll make the greatest impact on Twitter when your target audience is
engaged.
Use tools like Audiense, Followerwonk, and Mention to find out when your target
audience is engaged. Prioritize tweeting at these times, for maximum impact.
8. 5. Add calls-to-action
You want engaged followers.
Every retweet is an opportunity to reach a whole new audience.
But people donât engage with a piece of content just because they feel like it. Tell them
what you need from them.
Dan Zarella analyzed over 2.7 million tweets to see which CTAs led to the most retweets:
9. âHelpâ, âretweetâ, âpleaseâ, âhow-toâ, and âfollowâ are among the most retweeted words.
If you want to see engaged Twitter followers, youâd better use âem.
Twitter power use Madalyn Sklar uses CTAs extensively to boost her posts:
10. Madalyn loves Twitter chats, and CTAs help her spread the word about her
#TwitterSmarter
6. Realize less isnât more
Twitter is a âmicrobloggingâ site.
It would make sense that Twitter content should be shorter than posts on other social
networks. Not exactly.
Buffer and SumAll teamed up to make this monster infographic showing the optimal
length for posts on various social networks.
For instance, Facebook posts with around 40 characters see the highest engagement.
For LinkedIn, youâre aiming for 25 words.
11. Even though Twitter places a premium on characters, the sweet spot for Twitter copy is
between 70 and 100 characters.
To improve your copy, Cornell University made this funky A/B tester to predict which of
two tweets should get more retweets.
If youâre looking to measure the engagement rate of a Twitter account, our Twitter
Engagement Calculator can help.
7. Use images
Buffer found that pictures triple the rate of retweets, and nearly double the rate of likes.
And because images take up Twitter real estate, your message becomes more prominent
with a picture.
But what if you donât have good, original images to share?
Create âquote picturesâ
One Twitter study found that pictures lead to 35% more retweets and that quotes increase
retweets by 19%. Iâm no math magician, but 35% + 19% = billions!
Or maybe it doesnât work like that.
12. The point is, combine quotes and images for maximum impact.
There are plenty of tools thatâll help you do this.
Canva, Pablo, and PicMonkey are all popular choices. Quote pictures are simple to make
and are sure to increase engagement.
8. Be personal
When appropriate, name the person tweeting. It gives a more personal feel to your
tweets.
13. Harvard Business Review says that âempathyâ is the key indicator of whether a
company âgetsâ Twitter or not.
14. They say empathy consists of âreassurance, authenticity, and emotional connectionâ.
Basically, the best brands on Twitter donât sound like brands. They sound like people.
Your tweets donât need to save the rainforest (although great party trick, if you know how),
you just want to seem human.
So there you have it
Eight quick and easy tips to make your tweets more impactful. Start using them right
away!
Click here for the best way to grow your twitter page