So, you want to use Twitter for marketing? Do you want to reach your target audience and grow your brand one tweet at a time?
Then you have to know about a bunch of Twitter marketing tactics you can combine for more impact.
For success with Twitter for marketing, you have to understand a couple of things:
- You need to engage with your audience to build trust and brand
- Engagement will also increase your reach in the Twitter top tweet feed
- To reach your target audience you need to stay on-topic and provide valuable information for your target audience
- You have to be consistent. Keep showing up every day.
- Don’t think about selling first, think about your audience first
To achieve all of the above you can use a couple of tactics. All of them have the power to contribute to your Twitter marketing success. All work in different ways. Some can inspire engagement, some will help you grow your audience and some can drive traffic to content. You will often see the best results if you combine several tactics. But first you need to know that most common tactics that work well if you use Twitter for marketing.
Some of the below-listed tactics for Twitter for marketing have an overlap. Some particular cases of one tactic may also fit into another tactic.
But each tactic on its own pursues its own goals and works in a unique way.
If you are looking for success with Twitter for marketing, you need to know about the following Twitter marketing tactics and find your unique Twitter strategy that combines several of the below listed Twitter tactics.
#1 The Twitter mention tactic
The idea: Tweet and mention other Twitter accounts. The goal is to earn a retweet, like, or comment. To reach your goal you need a good reason to mention the other Twitter account. If you tweet mentions without a reason it is bad Twitter behavior or simply spam.
Think of a reason for the mention in your tweet:
- Ask a question and ask a Twitter account for an answer.
- Create content that includes the other Twitter account or the person/business behind the Twitter account. This content can be a list of blogs, Twitter accounts from your niche you recommend people should follow, or experts from your niche. Mention the reason for the mention in your tweet and add a mention of the related Twitter handle in tweets of this content
- You can also create a content roundup post: A list of blog posts you like. You can now tweet the post and mention some of the authors of the content you list in the roundup.
#2 The endorsement tactic
This tactic is closely related to the mention tactic and works in a similar way.
The idea is to give a shout-out to a Twitter account – or the business, blog, or person behind the Twitter account:
- recommend an account people should follow
- mention a tool you like
- tweet a blog post of another blog
Don’t forget to mention the related Twitter account in your tweet. Your goal with this tactic is to provide value to your target audience and at the same time get on the radar of people from your niche like tool owners, fellow bloggers, and experts. The goal is to earn retweets, likes, and comments for your tweets AND in the long run get some people to reciprocate and tweet some of your content or mention your content, tools, blog, or service in a blog post.
#3 The content curation tactic
The content curation tactic is a special form of the endorsement tactic. You tweet other people’s content on your Twitter account. The goal is to provide a ton of valuable information for your target audience. As a side effect, you can earn some retweets, likes, and comments and get on the radar of people from your niche.
This tactic is especially useful when you do not have enough valuable own content to provide value with content tweets. This is usually the case when you are new to the blogging and content marketing game and do not have that many evergreen content pieces.
#4 The quote tactic
The idea of the quote tactic is to tweet many inspirational or informative quotes.
Quotes often earn likes and retweets. Try to stay close to the topic/niche of your account. Don’t just use quotes everybody is already familiar with – surprise inspires more engagement.
Keep in mind that the quote tactic is good for engagement but will not earn you much branding and expert status since you don’t provide any insights or value from your end.
#5 The traffic tactic
The traffic tactic basically means that you tweet links to your website content and convert leads and subscribers on your website.
This tactic used to work very well if you had a huge audience and many pieces of content. Link tweets do often not inspire very much engagement. Since Twitter introduced an algorithmic feed, you need to combine this tactic with more engaging Twitter tactics.
You can also earn traffic by posting a link to your content in a thread or combining the link with an image with a quote or a quick tip from the post.
#6 No-click value tactic
This tactic is opposed to tweeting links to your blog posts. Instead of trying to lure people to your blog where you provide the value, you give away a ton of value directly on Twitter. This value can be short tips in one tweet or longer tips in Twitter threads.
This tactic is awesome to build community and audience on Twitter.
You can find out more about zero-click content in Spaktoros recent blog post.
#7 Twitter conversations tactic
At the center of the Twitter conversations tactic are the conversations, questions, and comments that are already happening on Twitter. You are looking for conversations about topics from your niche that you can join. This is not about following a handful of experts from your niche and responding to their tweets. Instead, you are looking to connect directly to your target audience with tweets.
You can use Twitter advanced search to find relevant conversations from your niche. Try various keyphrases in your searches to find the most relevant conversations. When you find interesting tweets you should comment, answer questions and provide insights.
The goal is to engage your target audience at their points of interest and exactly the time when they are looking for answers.
The Twitter conversations tactic works wonders if your Twitter audience is still very small. You do not need a single follower to use this tactic.
#8 Twitter Thread tactic
A Twitter thread is a series of tweets that are strung together to form a thread. With Twitter threads, you can tweet a lot more information than with a single tweet.
Twitter experts use Twitter threads to provide a ton of value and thus grow their audience.
Often the thread tactic is used as a form of the no-click value tactic. While you can of course add a link within the tweets o a thread the tweet should already give away a large chunk of information.
The goal of Twitter threads is to provide the full information on Twitter without forcing people to click through to your website. A thread is often easily shared and liked by many Twitter users. The effect on branding and your audience can be tremendous.
Twitter threads work the best if you provide awesome value.
Find our how to set up a Twitter thread and utilize it in your marketing in this post.
#9 Twitter poll tactic
Twitter polls are an easy way to ask your audience multiple choice questions. You can provide up to 4 answer options.
Polls are a form of tweet with which people can easily engage with one click.
Simple questions that everybody understands and that everybody wants to answer will get more votes.
To boost engagement, you can ask for additional information so that people want to comment on the poll.
Make the poll relevant to your target audience so that it attracts the right people!
#10 User-generated content tactic
Ask customers or your Twitter audience to tweet branded content.
For instance, an image of them using your product or a tweet with a branded hashtag. This works better if you provide an incentive, for instance, a competition with a chance to win a month free of your product.
The goal is to make people talk about you and your Twitter account!
If you want to learn more about user-generated content for your marketing, check out my recent post about user-generated content.
#11 Twitter space tactic
Twitter spaces are live audio conversations on Twitter. Spaces are public, everyone can join as a listener even if they are not following you. Up to 13 people can speak in a space. You can promote a space via Direct Messages, tweets, or sharing the link to the space anywhere else.
Spaces have the advantage over a video that you do not have to worry about things like background, lighting, and camera perspective. At the same time, live communication is a great way to build community.
You can use spaces to teach something to your audience, you can also make it a Q&A session or talk about features they would like for your product.
Inviting guest speakers or co-hosts can help you to reach a larger audience with your space.
#12 Twitter chat tactic
A Twitter chat is a scheduled public conversation on Twitter around a specific topic. Usually, chats are recurring events. Each chat has its own hashtag – every tweet within the chat needs to feature the same hashtag to make the tweet recognizable by the participants of the chat.
The Chat tactic works in a similar way as conversations in spaces: Build community, trust, and reach through conversations around specific topics.
The best way to run a chat is to specify a topic for every chat event and prepare some questions for the chat in advance. Don’t expect participants to run the chat but be prepared to guide them through the chat with questions and some answers.
As with spaces, it could help to have a co-host or invite a guest to each session to increase the reach and audience of your chat.
You can find Twitter chats via the tool Tweetreports.
#13 Follow-unfollow strategy
The follow-unfollow tactic was huge a couple of years ago but it always had a shady or spammy touch. You could grow a huge audience by simply following people from your target group, a certain percentage always followed back.
This can only work well if you combine it with providing a lot of value in your tweets.
When you are starting out, this tactic can help you to get some followers. But you need to focus on targeting and providing value.
#14 Hashtag tactics
There are some niche hashtags that help you to grow. Take a look at #writerslift or #shamelessselfpromosunday – you will see many tweets with that hashtag and get a feeling of how this can work for you.
These hashtags can tremendously increase your follower numbers – however, you need to be careful how targeted this audience will be.
Apart from these growth hashtags, it also helps to use hashtags from your niche in your tweets to increase your audience.
You can also consider using a unique hashtag for your brand and find creative ways to promote this branded hashtag. A good way to do so is user-generated content and asking people to add your branded hashtag to their content tweets.
#15 The Twitter live tactic
The Twitter live tactic utilizes the live streaming option on Twitter. In live videos, you can connect with your audience. They have the option to answer and comment during the live stream. You can pick up questions and remarks and make it a conversation with your audience.
Lives are great to build community. But you have to have a plan about how you will distribute your planned live stream. If you are new to Twitter and do not have many followers, you have a risk of talking to yourself in your live stream.
Final Words about Twitter for marketing tactics
It is not ONE Twitter tactic that is the key to success. A combination of a couple of these Twitter marketing tactics usually works best if you are using Twitter for marketing.
For instance, if you use quotes to increase the engagement on your tweets you need to post something of more value that shows YOUR knowledge too. Quotes don’t show your expertise and don’t brand you as an expert they are just easily liked.
How to use Twitter for marketing – build a Twitter marketing strategy
Here is a quick rundown of the steps you need to take to set up your Twitter for marketing strategy.
Assess what you already have:
Do you already have a Twitter account? Do you have your profile filled out and everything set up?
Do you have an audience?
Do you already tweet? What is your experience: what has worked in the past?
Find the tone for your tweets.
Are you going to tweet very seriously or will you include some fun?
Find a voice that fits you: Don’t try to be someone else. Authenticity is key to building community.
Use the most important keywords and hashtags from your niche in your tweets. Use the language your audience uses.
Find out when your audience is online.
It is much more efficient if you tweet when your audience is online. and ready for you.
Which time-zome is your audience in? Do you address them during their working hours with work-related content or do you want to speak to them when they are off-duty and on family or leisure time?
Set a schedule.
Consider using a Twitter scheduling tool – there are several that you can start for free.
I started with Buffer early on, you can also use the Twitter scheduling feature. I am also using SocialOomph (yes, this is an affiliate link, I may earn a small commission if you decide to get SocialOomph) for tweets that I want to reuse after a while. I have them in recurring queues and there are not so many tools that can do that.
Create a mix of updates from the above tactics.
You now have to find a mix of tactics and updates that works for you – and that you can do daily. Keep in mind that you have other work to do, don’t try to follow a daily routine that you can never live up to!
For example:
If you want to tweet around 10 times a day, the following tweets could be your start setup:
- 1 quote – I would aim for quotes from your niche instead of common motivational tweets.
- 2 Links to content on your blog – consider creating tweets that contain more information than just the link and headline. Give away some tips in the tweets. If you have evergreen content, you can set up a new tweet for the same content piece every couple of days.
- 1 endorsement tweet – recommend one tool, one blog to read, one podcast or a new blog post. Mention the Twitter handle of the author in the tweet.
- 1 Twitter thread: You can create a Twitter thread from the content of one of your blog posts. Keep in mind that a thread can be a ton of work. If one thread a day is too much, start with one thread a week!
- 1 no-click content tweet. This could be an image with a short tip, or a snippet of information from your niche.
- 4 comments on tweets from other people. You can use a Twitter list of people from your niche to find relevant tweets – or you use the conversations tactic.
Schedule the tweets out over the day.
This is a simplified Twitter strategy – or rather not really a complete Twitter for marketing strategy. We have not talked about goals and how to work towards reaching them. We have not talked about the setup of your account or how to measure the success of Twitter for marketing.
This is just a simple way of using the knowledge of the above tactics to fill your tweet schedule with a variety of tweets.
How to create a complete Twitter marketing strategy will be a topic for another blog post.
Have I missed a Twitter tactic that you are using? Let me know!
