How effective are your tweets? Do you get a lot of retweets?
The key to successful Twitter marketing is getting people to engage with you. This is almost an intuitive truth.
User engagement leads to more retweets, greater brand exposure, and more followers who may turn into leads.
Here’s how to get more engagement using refined tweeting techniques.
#1: Tweet During the Day
This is a reliable guideline to follow; but there are always exceptions. Be sure you know the time zone for your audience. Research consistently shows a 30 percent higher level of Twitter engagement between 8 AM and 7 PM.
There’s a cool free tool that will tell you the best times to tweet: Tweriod
Tweriod analyzes your tweets and those of your followers and tells you the best time to tweet.
Then you can take your optimization further to maximize engagement with the following user research data.
A. Retweets reach a peak about 5 PM.
B. User Twitter presence is greater during their daily commute; roughly 180 percent greater chance.
C. Click-through rates are highest between 1 PM and 3 PM.
#2: Optimize Tweet Character Count
Help people to “want” to retweet your stuff by shortening your tweets. But why and what’s the optimal tweet character count?
A. People who retweet typically add something to the tweet. And they really don’t want to edit the tweet to make space for their comments. If a tweet is maxed out at 140 characters, some people won’t want to bother editing; so it’s a lost opportunity.
B. Research shows tweets in the neighborhood of 110 characters have a 17 percent higher user engagement. But of course there’s nothing wrong with fewer than 110 characters.
#3: The Call to Action – Ask for a Retweet
Salesforce research reveals several interesting points on this. First, less than 1 percent of brands ask for a retweet. Amazing, isn’t it? Secondly, asking for a retweet produced more retweets by a factor of 12.
Killer Tip: You’ve probably seen the common abbreviation for retweet; RT? Well, bad idea because it is not as effective as asking for a “retweet.” Spell it out and you’ll fare better. How much better?
Asking for a “Retweet” produced more retweets (user engagement) that were 23 times higher than if “RT” was used. Test with “Please retweet” and see what happens.
2 words; one of caution and one of encouragement.
A. Don’t abuse the “retweet” request. That should be common sense but still, use judiciously.
B. Do not be shy about asking for a “retweet.”
Bonus Tip:
Do a little Twitter marketing on the weekends. That’s right; do some tweeting on Saturday and Sunday because it’s worth it. This is driven by data.
User engagement is 17 percent higher on Saturday and Sunday compared to Monday-Friday. And it gets even better; this is related to #1, above.
The best weekend hours fall between 8 AM and 7 PM. Tweeting during these (weekend) hours resulted in 30 percent higher Twitter user engagement.
Wrap-up:
These are just a few proven, research-backed Twitter marketing strategies you can begin using right now. Yes, there are people who swear Twitter is useless as a business marketing medium.
That’s their experience and it does not have to be yours even if you’ve tried your hand at Twitter and found frustration.
Give these tactics a reasonable shot and see what happens. You’ll see higher user engagement that you can parlay into your business.
Tags: best time to tweet, how to get more retweets, twitter marketing, twitter research, twitter user engagement
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