Thanks to the current POTUS, Twitter is in the news every day. It’s one of the oldest social media platforms and a part of many U.S. business’ social media management efforts.
And rightfully so: Twitter can be used as a customer service tool, to promote your content and to join conversations. Plus:
66 percent of Twitter users have found a new small or medium-sized business on Twitter
75 percent of Twitter users feel better about a new business after following it and reading its tweets
So in theory, you want to grow your audience as large as possible to attract as many customers as possible, right?
Wrong.
If you’re using Twitter marketing to strategically generate leads and awareness for your brand, you want to attract your target audience. And you can definitely grow your Twitter following to be within your target audience – if you do it right.
How to grow your Twitter following without paying anything
If you want to grow your Twitter following, you have a few options:
Run paid advertisements promoting your account
Buy your followers (which we do not recommend. Learn why you shouldn’t buy your followers here.
Apply tried-and-true best practices to acquire real followers
This post explores the third option. But first things first:
Is Twitter marketing right for your business’ target audience?
Have you ever stumbled upon a company Twitter account that hasn't tweeted since 2014? What even happens there? If I was a betting woman, I'd say one of the following:
Someone from the company forgot the password, so they just stopped using it.
The results from Twitter seemed to be super small - so the business owner or CEO decided to call it quits, without deleting the account.
The company downgraded their marketing budget, laid off their social media manager and/or asked their marketing manager to stop posting to Twitter.
These things happen.
The only problem is that when someone - a potential customer or client - researches your company, they'll find this dead account that looks like you went out of business or just plain forgot about it.
So the first question to ask yourself when growing your Twitter business account is: Are you prepared to invest time, energy and marketing spend into Twitter?
To answer that question, you should know who your target customers are and whether or not they use Twitter. Currently, the latest available Twitter demographics are:
Urban – 30 percent of urban Americans online use Twitter, while 21 percent of suburbanites use the site
Young(ish) – 42 percent of online youth between 15 and 17 use Twitter and 32 percent of people who use the internet between ages 18 and 29 use Twitter
Almost an even split between men and women, but mostly men – in the adult population on Twitter, 25 percent of adult men who are online use Twitter
If you answered "yes" to the above questions, congrats, let's move along.
To build your Twitter audience, start with researching other accounts to follow/unfollow
The accounts you follow serve two purposes:
Curate your own Twitter feed to retweet, like or reply to
Indicate to your followers what type of content you’ll post – i.e. what industry you’re in and what topics you cover
Start with the leaders in your industry.
If you sell clothes geared toward middle-class Americans, follow the likes of Target, H&M or T.J. Maxx.
If you sell a luxury lifestyle product, follow accounts like Mercedes, Prada and Hermes.
Over time, you can manage your followers with a tool like Circleboom. Check in with the tool weekly or monthly and unfollow inactive accounts or accounts who don't follow you. That way you'll have high-quality followers in your home feed, who you know will post high-quality content and have a higher likelihood of engaging with you.
And keep in mind here that you want be following less than your number of followers. If you're following too many people, it could signal to followers that you're a spam account and it could signal to Twitter that you're "aggressively following" in an effort to quickly gain followers.
Next, research hashtags
When McDonalds made up a hashtag for a 2012 Twitter campaign, it backfired and resulted in “bashtagging.”
Use tools like Rite Tag or Hashtagify to find hashtags Tweeters are already using. While there’s no set system to determine the value or popularity of a hashtag, these hashtag tools do offer their own scale to determine what’s a strong hashtag versus what’s a basically useless hashtag.
Remember: A hashtag indicates a topic you’re talking about.It makes it easier for other people and brands to find you.If you make up a hashtag that no one is using, it will not help with generating awareness or allowing your brand to enter the conversation on Twitter.
Or, you could end up accidentally spreading rumors or getting media coverage for all the wrong reasons. Case in point, that time McDonalds tried to get good buzz on Twitter with #McDstories and it backfired.
Plan your content
What do you plan on Tweeting?If you’re at a loss for what to Tweet, take a look at your marketing strategy.
If you don’t have one of those, ask yourself: If my company was a person, what would he/she share?
It could be:
Educational content like recent studies or industry news
Entertaining content like GIFs, videos or listicles
Visually appealing content like photos
Informational content like infographics
Inspiring content like motivational quotes
Or it could be a mix of the above.What’s important is that your business creates a baseline for what type of content you do share – and what you don’t.From there, consider outlining a content mix. You can start with the “golden ratio,” which is:
60 percent from other sources – i.e. other blogs, news outlets or publishers
30 percent of your own content – if you’re developing blogs, videos, infographics or whitepapers
10 percent promotional – your sales, events or contests
Plan to post anywhere from three to five times per day on Twitter.
Yes, that sounds like a lot, because it is.
The good news is you can batch this – i.e. create content for the whole week or month - and schedule it for posting using a tool like Hootsuite or Buffer.
Prep for engagement
Twitter seems like a freaking free-for-all. It freaks out many business owners, entrepreneurs and marketing managers because it seems so public and so chaotic.
Well, it is.
So prepare for engagement by creating internal business documents such as:
FAQs - What are some the most asked questions you already get from your customers? Chances are you'll get these on Twitter - from customers and trolls alike - and you'll be expected to answer quickly.
Brand voice - Does your brand swear? Is it friendly? Does it offer to help - or simply answer questions? Do you use emojis and gifs, or keep it straight-forward and professional?
Posting guidelines - You may have more than one person manning your Twitter account - so make some rules. How quickly should your social media manager move a discussion to direct messages (DMs)? Should they sign their tweets with their initials? At what point should he/she ask another person to review their responses? Document the answers to these questions and update as you come across unexpected scenarios.
Engage with your followers
Plan to engage with your Twitter followers. This means you take time each and every day to:
Like
Retweet
Reply
to Twitter followers talking about your company or your industry.
Some brands are great at this, effectively using Twitter as a customer service tool.
An example of a consumer brand effectively using Twitter as a customer service tool.
Here’s an example from Guinness.
Other brands, with minimal demand for customer service, actively participate in Twitter conversations to remain relevant.
Example of a brand responding to a Twitter conversation and news item in a timely manner.
Here’s an example from Charmin.
In both cases, each brand was ready to hop into a conversation and add to the conversation, for both comedic and informative purposes.
If you’re ready to participate in real-time conversations, you increase the opportunity for tons of exposure for your brand and an increase in followers.