"Secrets" of Social Media Revealed - Part One: Twitter

On Wednesday April 23, Hubspot, the inbound marketing and sales company, hosted an exclusive, live webinar with social media big guns, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

While The Secrets Behind Social Media Today webinar was widely popular, (self proclaimed as the world's largest webinar) it was more of a rehashing of social media best practices than a huge reveal of the industry's top held secrets.

In any event, if you weren't in attendance, the Brockett Creative Group marketing team was there, and we break it down for you.

And, because each social media platform is different. We are going to delve into each one at a time.

Let’s take a look at what Twitter’s Russ Laraway outlines as the keys to success.

 

Look good.

Pay attention to your profile. Make sure your bio is reflective of your company's brand. Give people a compelling reason to follow you.
Use appealing images, logos and photos. Be sure to know your audience and that they're mobile. Seventy five percent of Twitter followers are on mobile.

 

Keep them coming back for more.

Give audiences what they want. Nearly 40% of Twitter followers look for new products; 39% seek support; and 21% are looking for information.  The key is relevancy. People join Twitter to connect with their interests. Make it easy for them to find their interests and keep it, well, interesting.

Laraway cited Buzzstream (@buzzstream) as one good example of a company doing well for themselves on Twitter.

 

Content is (still) king.

Revise your content strategy using the 80/20 rule. At least 80% of your messages should be valuable content—something informative or helpful to your followers. Twitter recommends to use an appealing image or Vine video. Only 20% should be sales pitchy.

Images—Twitter has found that followers engage twice as much with a brand when there are attractive images attached. Use relevant images around trending topics. Pair an image with an offer, for example.

Twitter's content restraint (140 characters) are no excuse for lazy copy. Be creative. Pack a punch. Laraway also spoke of direct messages. Make sure they are compelling, with a strong call to action and no hashtags.

That brings us to hashtags. Hashtags are used to create instant connections with other users. Use the correctly. Treat them as part of one giant conversation. Build on relevant, trending hashtags to increase twitter engagement.

 

Consistency, consistency, consistency.

If you aren’t posting with some regularity, why should anyone continue follow you?  The recommended Tweet frequency might be more than Facebook or Linkedin for example, but experiment and find what builds the most engagement.  Find your groove and maintain it.

 

Pay for Engagement? Not as a first rule.

Twitter says first aim to achieve engagement organically. Ads should be an extension of that.

 

What's new?

Check out the latest on the new Twitter redesign now live. 

 

To Summarize

So info from the world’s biggest webinar certainly wasn’t earth shattering, but still a good reminder of social media best practices. There were some good nuggets of information and a few key tips revealed that Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin all agree are crucial to online success. What are they? Stay tuned for that and more in our blog series. Next week, we’ll discuss Facebook.

Have a burning question on social media marketing in the meantime? Drop us a line, [email protected] or call 315.797.5088.