5 Twitter Hacks Your Brand Should Use

Simply Measured’s Instagram Hacks post was so successful that we decided to share the top Twitter hacks we’ve found, as well.

These social marketing and content optimization techniques factor in the most recent changes to Twitter’s platform. We’re hoping they inspire you to make some creative moves for your own brand.

1. Understand Different Engagement Types

It is helpful to know which Tweets bumped up your engagement, and where your engagement peaks and valleys fell over the course of a campaign.

But it’s more helpful to know which types of engagement your peak and valley posts received.

These are the different engagement types on Twitter and what they mean.

Replies: Twitter followers/users felt passionately enough about your brand and/or its Twitter content to reply and try to engage directly. Next steps: Conduct sentiment analysis and drill even deeper into the specific replies to understand what’s going on.

Retweets: Twitter followers/users either very much like what you’re saying, want others to see what you’ve said — or both. Next steps: Pay special attention to your Tweets which get a lot of Retweets, make sure you understand why, and try to replicate.

Mentions: Twitter followers/users want to talk about your brand. Next steps: Jump into the conversation, even if it isn’t directed at you. Whether a Twitter user is complimenting your brand or complaining about it, do whatever you can to make yourself an ally and give your brand a personality.

Favorites: Twitter followers/users are big fans of your Tweet, but don’t necessarily want to take their love a step further. Next steps: It’s worth looking at the overlap here between Twitter users who Favorite your content and also Retweet it. This is a simple yet effective way to benchmark the resonance of your Twitter content over time.

2 – Experiment with Twitter Moments

Treat Yo’ Self To Dessert On This Blessed Day

We explored what Twitter Moments can do for your brand in a previous post, but here are some concrete ways you can generate awareness for your own brand using the new feature:

• Tweet GIF’s, video clips, and eye-catching and/or surprising images during and leading up to major events. These will capture the most attention as Twitter users scroll through a “Moment.”
• Put together short video breakdowns of an employee giving the “need-to-know” facts about a major news story, industry event, or any other “Moment” you want a piece of. Help Twitter users cut through the noise.
• Do you have a major influencer or partner with his or her own significant Twitter following? Host a Q&A focused around that person. Twitter Moments offers greater visibility for events like this than ever before.

The opportunities for experimentation with Twitter Moments are endless. Get out there! Turn a Twitter Moment into your brand’s moment.

3 – Make the Most of Your Ad Real Estate

I turned to our Senior Marketing Manager, Danie Pote, to understand how she makes her paid efforts on Twitter work.

Danie says, “This goal is to make people want to click just by looking at your image, without even having to read your Tweet copy.” You can do this by:

• Taking advantage of additional space for text in the image to place a strong CTA
• Using vibrant imagery to capture attention
• Testing two different graphics against one another in Twitter ads to understand which performs best during the campaign

4 – Turn Notable Users into Twitter Lists

A Twitter list is a curated group of Twitter users. You can create your own lists or subscribe to lists created by others. Viewing a list timeline will show you a stream of Tweets from only the users on that list.

Twitter lists help you keep an eye on people who are important to your brand, whether you’re looking at them on the Twitter platform or using a multi-column app like Tweetdeck.

First, find out who your brand’s most engaged users, most followed users, and top users by Klout score were for a particular Twitter campaign.

Then, create a Twitter list which incorporates all these users.

When you put together a similarly focused or themed Twitter campaign in the future, begin by reaching out to these users to build initial buzz.

5 – View in Context

Most likely, your brand isn’t just on Twitter, so remember not to look at your efforts and results on this network in some kind of vacuum.

You might find you can reutilize resources, from text to videos to captions, on Facebook or Instagram, and cut down on your time spent creating brand new content for these networks. Or you might find the opposite — that you’ve been trying to post the exact same content across all your active social networks, and this isn’t creating the kind of engagement you’re looking for.

Examining your campaign results on Twitter alongside results on your other social networks will tell you whether you need to pivot for the next time or keep doing what you’re doing.