A few things have changed over the past few weeks with Twitter, like its launch of the Communities feature and, of course, Elon Musk’s deal to acquire it for $44 billion which is currently on hold. Despite all that, the social media platform is an important tool being used by organizations and individuals alike to brand and market themselves to whoever their target audience is.
As such, it’s important that you know how to engage with your audience effectively. However, if you’re struggling, don’t worry; I’ve rounded up nine practical ways to boost genuine engagement on Twitter. The list is just based on my own personal experience, but try it out anyway and see if it works out for you.
I created this in 2019 way before I started to get more active on Twitter. But somehow, this strangely looks like my Twitter Engagements.#fineartphotography #conceptart #message pic.twitter.com/axWDIS9ahi
— Sherry Akrami (@sherry_akrami) July 10, 2021
Curate your feed
You might be following big influencers on social media, but it’s important to understand first what you want to portray your account as. Rather than following a lot of random accounts, add the ones that make sense for you as a brand. If you want to brand yourself as a tech enthusiast, follow accounts like, oh say, TechAcute. This isn’t just to curate your feed, too; it lets Twitter’s algorithm get to know you better as a brand and suggest other accounts to follow.
Another thing to look out for is to avoid being a hard sell and commenting about yourself or your products on another account’s post. People are generally turned off by Twitter accounts that blatantly self-promote on other posts that are viral without getting into a genuine conversation first. Instead of doing that on someone else’s feed, you should post your promotions first on your own page.
Know your keywords
As I mentioned a while ago, you should always consider what your business, brand, or personality would be for the account you’re making. If you’re in the coffee industry, make sure to familiarize yourself with keywords that are associated with owning that kind of business such as “coffee”, “brew”, or “coffee dates”. From there, plan out your Twitter posts and make sure your keywords are included in your post.
Eventually, your posts will paint a picture for your viewers of what your account is all about even if they just stumbled upon it randomly. This will also spark the start of your Twitter engagement with your soon-to-be followers.
Less is more
Now that you have your related words, make sure your tweets are short and sweet. People don’t really have time to read a long tweet or thread unless it’s a full-blown discussion on something important or viral at the moment. Other than that, adding color to your tweet by being too emotional might portray you as downright biased, especially if you are talking about preferences. You can make a stance on your Twitter account but do so while making sure you can back up your claims with credible sources and without exaggerating things.
https://twitter.com/hootsuite/status/1455516081313955852
Avoid overusing hashtags
This is might be a contradicting piece of advice against most tips and suggestions out there on using Twitter. After all, hashtags are good when you want to promote something for a day. However, it’s not good in the long run especially when you bombard your post with a hashtag list that’s longer than the actual tweet. Your tweet will also eventually be overshadowed by the other more interesting tweets people find that are in the same hashtags.
Aside from that, hashtags are like category folders; when you add more than five hashtags to your tweet, Twitter will get confused about where exactly to categorize your tweet. Even worse, it might tag you as spam. Instead of relying too much on hashtags, focus on your keywords instead and come up with interesting tweets that speak about you and your brand or business.
Don’t post to be viral
Everyone wants to know how to post a viral tweet to gain traction. While it is important to know that your content is being appreciated and engaged with on Twitter, viral posts also invite bots, spammers, and even bullying to your timeline. This is also not mentioning the unspoken expectation that you have to always post tweets that can go viral.
The key here is consistency. You need to be consistent with the amount of engagement and the number of posts in your Twitter timeline. Attract a steady amount of attention to your tweet so it will not get lost. If your tweet will become viral, you don’t need to respond to yourself by stating the obvious saying how your tweet blew up while adding your products and services as a hard sell post. People can smell insincerity from a mile away and might stop interacting with you then.
Today's #Instagram Insight is brought to you by the letter B, for Behavior.
You’ve heard the saying: Consistency is key. The more often you post, the more likely you are to yield a higher engagement rate.
See the full A to Z of Instagram Insights: https://t.co/cCIrHjx1Vc pic.twitter.com/ndQfa1hS5z
— Sprout Social (@SproutSocial) April 13, 2022
Keep the conversation going
Once you do have a viral tweet going, look through your tweets and try to reply to comments as much as possible. This can open up conversations with potential consumers or even have questions regarding you and your services. The point is to keep reaching out to them in an organic way by looking at their comment and sincerely responding to them in a manner that’s on-brand with you and your Twitter account.
Of course, engaging with your consumers on a tweet that has a steady flow of engagement is more manageable since there are fewer comments to reply to. What’s important is how quickly and sincerely you reply to a comment to deepen your relationship with your readers or customers. Once people become more familiar with your handle and you get to know more about your followers, they will become more loyal to your brand.
Comment on your favorite Twitter posts
While I did say that you shouldn’t interact with other Twitter accounts by making hard sell comments on their posts, you can still definitely interact with them. Whether it’s an account that has a large following or just starting out like you, it’s good to create your own community by building relationships with like-minded people.
By building relationships, you can support and promote each other’s products or services. With this amount of support, businesses get to become a stronger community. A stronger community will lead to better engagement with other businesses and also their own users and followers, giving you more leverage on networking with an even larger community. It will just continue to grow as long as you’re consistent.
https://twitter.com/NealSchaffer/status/1339945051120611331
Know when the best time is to post
Knowing when your target audience is online is important to post on Twitter. Usually, it’s either in the morning while people are getting ready to work or in the evening while people are winding down for the day. These downtimes are usually the ideal time to post because people are most likely scrolling through social media.
Make use of these times by posting on your account to market your product and interact with your followers to get better engagement on Twitter. If you have a global audience, think of international timezones. You can always schedule your posts accordingly, but it would be better to have an organic interaction with your consumers. You’ll also need to consider off days like Sundays when things are usually quiet or Mondays when things become busy.
Just be yourself
The most important thing is to be yourself. As mentioned before, your posts will ultimately reflect what your Twitter handle is and its personality. It’s easy to get tangled up and lose your handle’s “identity” if you’re purely running after the analytics or engagement performance of your account.
If you focus on the numbers too much, you might lose the interest of your consumers entirely. People are actually attracted to Twitter accounts that portray a unique personality. Instead of copying how others tweet, post tweets that truly speak about yourself or your brand.
Photo credit: The feature image has been taken by Marten Bjork.
Sources: PR Newswire / Benjamin Curry (Forbes)
