A couple of us from the Browser Media office tuned in to the #TwitterAcademy webinar this afternoon to find out how to “unlock more value from Twitter with data driven best practice”.
The webinar, hosted by Lari Numminen from marketing, was a short but sweet look into best practices when connecting with relevant users via Twitter. There were a few helpful takeaways and interesting statistics about connecting in a more meaningful way, which inspired this post.
Considering the number of active users, the frequency of tweets and the level of activity through mobile, Twitter is a great place to focus if you’re looking to kick-start your mobile marketing. What’s really important – and was the subject of the webinar – is that you’re speaking to the right people, at the right time, in the right way.
According to data gathered by Twitter, 9 out of 10 users are talking about SMBs through tweeting and 60% of users have made a purchase after viewing a tweet from an SMB. If that doesn’t encourage you to spend more time making sure you’re engaging with the right people online, I don’t know what will.
5 Best practices to improve your business’ presence on Twitter
1. Keep it short
Although it can be difficult to say all you want to with just 140 characters, keeping your tweets under 100 characters has proven to encourage 18% more engagement
2. Give clicks context
Using Website Cards to surface your website’s content inside a tweet can lead to up to 43% more engagement
3.Make it visual
Tweets that include an image, see double the level of engagement compared to a tweet with no image. Even better, tweets using “rich media”, for example vine videos, see 300% more engagement
4. Optimise for leads
Tweets using Twitter’s new Lead Generation Cards are said to receive 42% more engagement than tweets without the card
5.Start a conversation
Advertisers who @reply to tweets directed toward them at least once a week see 18% more engagement with their brand
Getting started
If your business is yet to use Twitter, or you’re looking to increase your level of activity on Twitter, it’s important to first identify your goals (are you looking to get more followers, increase traffic to your site, increase engagement with your tweets, all of the above?) and then only spend your precious marketing budget on what matters. Lari gave us examples of how to apply these best practices and use the Website Cards, no matter what the campaign:
Creating a new campaign is pretty easy. Go to ads.twitter.com, and choose “Create new campaign”. You then need to select your main objective, you get a preview of how it should appear, and after naming your campaign, you can either compose a tweet, or select an existing tweet:
The example above is the format for a Website Clicks or Conversions Campaign and utilises the Website Card feature. After writing your tweet, you can select a relevant image, add a short headline, choose a CTA from the drop down and then name the card. You can also preview the tweet for Web, iPhone and Android:
How much do Twitter’s Website Cards cost?
Nothing. You can use cards in organic tweets. It’s worth bearing in mind though, according to Lari, that what works well engagement-wise for organic tweets, also works well for Promoted Tweets. By experimenting with non-promoted tweets, you will be better informed if and/or when you choose to use Promoted Tweets in your campaigns.
Have you been using Twitter Website Cards?
What did you think? Let us know in the comments.
