This post originally appeared on Single Grain, a growth marketing agency focused on scaling customer acquisition.
Twitter is the perfect place for your business to connect with customers and potential customers. Most brands use Twitter to keep in touch with their fans in real time, but the third most popular social network (310 million unique visitors each month isn’t too shabby!) has a lot more to offer than this simple benefit.
Savvy businesses use Twitter to:
People spend an average of 170 minutes per month on Twitter, which is roughly 5-6 minutes a day, so to successfully grab a user’s attention, you’ll need to Tweet multiple times a day. Doing that manually is near impossible because it’s very time-consuming to write, post, monitor, read, retweet and reply to everything that’s going on, but with the right social media tools you can hit that target and reach your marketing goals.
Here are 10 content marketing tools that will help you increase your Twitter engagement:
What better way to relate to your audience than with quality articles. DrumUp is a social media content marketing and employee advocacy platform that lets you curate content from a large variety of sources, schedule social media posts on multiple accounts, and create/schedule custom posts. You can even add your favorite RSS feeds and save posts to your content library to make sharing easier.
This app provides you with fresh content on a daily basis and comes with a one-click scheduling feature that saves you a ton of time. Additionally, it recommends smart hashtags for your content to help you get seen more. Sharing helpful posts, videos or infographics with your audience — from your iPhone, Android or Chrome extension — is more likely to start a discussion and you can turn your employees into brand advocates with DrumUp’s employee advocacy program.
TweetDeck is an all-in-one Twitter management tool that is particularly useful for audience engagement. You can keep track of multiple accounts, topics, hashtags and mentions — all in one convenient place. You can see when users are talking about your brand and respond to them instantly without leaving the dashboard. Plus you can create Twitter lists, monitor analytics and trends, and export custom timelines to your website. This is one of the best tools for real-time Twitter management.
If you host Twitter chats on a regular basis to talk to your audience, Nurph is a great tool to use. You can instantly start a real-time video-to-video Twitter conversation by sending invitations with hashtags to your followers through text, audio and video. Unlike Periscope, Twitter’s live streaming video mobile app, which is not exactly social (yes, brands who broadcast live can interact with their audience but that’s not the same as a conversation), Nurph allows “free-flowing group chats.” And if that’s not enough, Nurph also offers sound effects and emojis.
With this platform, you can integrate hashtags, replay chats in real time and get insights into your community. Once the chat is done, you can use the post-chat analytics feature to find out details like most influential participants, most active participants, most re-tweeted tweets and much more. In case your subscribers tend to forget, you can also send SMS reminders.
Bit.ly, a link management platform, is mostly known as a URL shortening service (especially helpful on Twitter where every character counts), but it has so much more to offer. You can shorten or create custom URLs and share them across multiple platforms and then track the link you shared via a bitmark to find out which ones work best for your audience — the stats page will show you how many people clicked on it, shared it, and which websites are driving traffic. This is helpful for boosting engagement as you can target a specific set of people with certain links.
The tool also provides analytics so you can monitor and improve what and when you share — just add a plus sign (+) to the end of a bitmark and you’ll be able to see statistics for that URL. It also adapts to different platforms, detects when a user is on mobile or not and guides them accordingly, and can be integrated with 75 publishing platforms.
Hashtagify is an app that gives you information about any hashtag. Once you enter a hashtag, a word or a phrase, the tool can find up to 500 related hashtags. It can also find the most influential people for your hashtag. It offers four main features: the Hashtags Lab, Users Lab, Hashtagify Library and the Hashtags Cafe.
The Lab can be used to find, track and analyze any hashtag. The Users Lab suggests the best hashtags for you by analyzing your previous tweets and you can find influencers by tracking hashtags. The Library contains over 40 million hashtags to choose from and gives you stats about any given one. And the Cafe is the ultimate hashtag suggestions tool as it prioritizes hashtags by analyzing your tweets. It can also deliver suggested hashtags through email to make it easier for you to use. This tool is great for finding the target audience in your niche and interacting with them.
Visual content is a must on social media because it is more likely to capture and hold the audience’s attention. Piktochart is a simple tool that helps you create visual content in a matter of minutes and share it on multiple social media accounts. All you have to do is follow a simple process – choose a template that matches your style or message (they have over 500), add images, data, icons, text or videos, customize font and color, and voila! When you’ve perfected your infographic or pie chart, you can share it on multiple platforms, create presentations or simply download it for later.
Commun.it is a valuable tool to build relationships by providing insights into your Twitter community. You can manage multiple profiles, know who to follow or unfollow, identify key influencers and monitor hashtags. It separates the real information from all the noise and gives you the ability to prioritize your Twitter tasks by dividing users into three categories: Influencers, Supporters and Engaged Members, depending on multiple factors. You can then browse through these categories and establish your target audience and influencers. The tool also provides free analytics and allows you to invite your colleagues to manage your community and see reports.
Note: Audiense was formerly called SocialBro.
Audiense is all about audience insight. It’s a combination of various tools that can enhance your community management by giving you a much more precise understanding of your community, including what kind of content they like, gender ratios, languages spoken, influential people who follow you, and so much more. With all this information, you can make informed decisions about your audience instead of guessing. You can also target them better by using Ad and Direct Message campaigns. It is a paid tool but if you’re serious about marketing, this platform can be an amazing resource.
As your Twitter account grows and your brand becomes more popular, managing your followers is a lot more difficult. ManageFlitter is “the most powerful Twitter bio search on the planet” and suggests users that you can follow (or unfollow) based on various factors. For example, it will identify people who are inactive, don’t follow you back, have no profile picture, etc, so that you can remove them from your list. It also features PowerPost, an in-app tool that shows you the best time to post in order to be visible to your target audience, analytics, and you can manage multiple accounts.
SocialRank is a tool to identify whom you should attempt to get to retweet you by using your connections to boost your social presence. It essentially uses the Halo Effect by providing you with endorsements from your followers. If X Brand is following you and I love X Brand, then that automatically makes me more prone to seeing you in a favorable light. Co-founder Alex Taub calls it “endorsements for the 99%.”
SocialRank sorts your followers into 5 categories — Most Valuable, Best Followers, Most Engaged, Most Followed and Alphabetical — so you can easily decide who is worth starting conversations with. You can also target specific groups of users by sorting followers through geographical location, verified accounts and interests.
These 10 tools are valuable resources for businesses looking to form relationships with their customers as well as a wider audience — provided that you know how to use them right. Keep in mind that you don’t have to use all of them; experiment a little to discover which ones suit you best.
In addition to these 10 tools, here are 10 useful tips to help you rock your presence on Twitter:
This post originally appeared on Single Grain, a growth marketing agency focused on scaling customer acquisition, by Peter Boyle.
The marketing world can be pretty confusing, right?
We all want the best results, but it’s hard to know whether you should focus on the current model of content marketing, e-mail campaigns (the king of ROI), or the social crowd (Twitter, Facebook, and other social media networks).
The list goes on and on. Every year new marketing methods spring up and with them a new set of gurus who vehemently defend that particular approach as the best thing for taking your business to the next level.
Rest easy, I’m no guru and I’m not going to push a new marketing method with some terribly hyperbolic sales pitch on you. What I am going to do is examine one of the more popular marketing approaches that has not only outlived many fads, but has adapted to the times.
I am, of course, referring to paid advertising.
The act of paying a third party with better visibility or larger distribution to promote your business is as old as marketing itself. But one of the reasons paid advertising has remained so popular is that it’s managed to adapt with the times.
Technological developments have enabled marketers to set up and implement a campaign in next to no time, and the data that’s available from these campaigns makes getting the most out of your campaigns easier than ever before.
One of the more recent developments, and the one I’d like to focus on in this piece, is how paid advertising has crossed over into the world of social media.
Large numbers of people use social media in their day-to-day lives. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other networks each attract anywhere from hundreds of millions to billions of monthly users. With such a huge user base, social media is the ideal platform for you to increase the reach and visibility of your business.
While all networks share some common features, getting the most out of each with a paid campaign is an entirely unique effort. This article is going to focus on how to get the most out of your Twitter paid ad campaign.
Read More: The Complete Guide to Gmail Ads (How We Got $.10 CPCs & Leads As Low As $7)
I know what you’re thinking.
Paid ads are great and all, but is Twitter really the best option? I mean, if you’re set on a paid social media ad campaign why not go with the big fella—Facebook?
I can’t argue that the reach Facebook offers is greater, quite a lot greater in fact!
But as folks are given to saying: size isn’t everything. Yes Facebook might be bigger, but Twitter has a few little gems that make it a pretty worthwhile contender for your attention.
What really makes Twitter worthwhile is its effectiveness.
Call me old fashioned, but if I’m running a paid campaign, I’m most interested in the financial side of things. I want to know how much it’s going to cost and how great the ROI is. As such, I’ll track:
You might notice how I’ve completely omitted a few favorites.
As far as I’m concerned, CTR, impressions or any of the other favored metrics don’t affect your bottom line and as a result shouldn’t be your focus. They’re still important and will play an important role in optimizing your campaigns, but your primary focus should always be on how it affects the company’s bottom line.
And it’s here that Twitter excels.
A couple years ago there were a number of studies conducted on the effectiveness of paid advertising on different networks. Below are the results for lead gen from Optify.
Studies also point to Twitter dominating the mobile space. A pretty big deal considering that 2015 saw the first instance of mobile browsers exceeding their desktop counterparts.
But this was a few years ago; surely the faster growth of Facebook has skewed these results and left Twitter in the dust, right?
Not according to this study by Yotpo, which found that Twitter still has a higher conversion rate and average order value.
Twitter may well be smaller and have a more limited reach than Facebook, but that hasn’t stopped it from pulling ahead in the metric that counts: conversions.
The question, then, is how to ensure that you’re seeing the greatest conversion and revenue gains with your Twitter ads.
What do you want to achieve with your Twitter advertising campaign?
That should be the first question you ask yourself. Admittedly it’s pretty broad and can encompass a lot. Thankfully, Twitter’s selection of campaigns should help you decide on what next steps are best for your needs.
Upon logging into the Ads dashboard you’ll be greeted with the below:
Here’s how each campaign breaks down.
Followers
As you’d expect, this campaign is aimed at increasing your Twitter following. The cost for the campaign works on a cost-for-follow basis, meaning that you only pay when you gain a new follower.
The ads appear in two different formats depending on whether you include a tweet or not. Those who don’t will have an ad that looks like this:
And those that do will have an ad that looks like this:
This is a great option for new businesses on Twitter but it’s not really the best option for an established brand. If you’ve been around a while, there are plenty of other smart tactics I’d recommend over paying for new followers.
Web clicks or conversions
This is one of the best options for those looking for quick traffic or conversions. The parameters you set when establishing the campaign define the audience that will see these tweets. The tweets you create are accompanied by a ‘learn more’ button which redirects them to your website or landing page.
Read More: LeadPages CEO Clay Collins Talks About How To Ramp Up Your Conversion Rates – Up To 75%! (podcast)
Tweet engagements
This is one of those options that’s really only useful if you’re looking for an incredibly engaged audience. It’s not a bad campaign by any means, but it’s not necessarily going to have the same impact on your bottom line.
Aside from the obvious benefits of increasing reach and visibility, this campaign can be a goldmine for marketers doing a little audience research.
Ask a question to which you need to know the answer so that you can optimize your marketing and promote it. More people will see it and, on top of the retweets and favorites, you’ll get some great answers to help hone your approach.
App installs or re-engagements
Got an app? Want more people to use it? Then this is the campaign for you.
This campaign puts a direct install link on your tweets so the prospects you’re targeting can quickly and easily install the app at the touch of a finger.
The great thing about these ads is that you’re not going to waste money through dumb folks on desktop computers clicking the install button. These ads are only displayed to Twitter users on mobile.
Leads on Twitter
Twitter offers an easy sign-up procedure that integrates with many of the popular e-mail marketing services. You’re able to include a lead generation card in your ad which then adds the prospect directly to your list.
These are great. They not only contribute to a meaningful metric (the money’s in the list, right?), but they abolish the need to fill out a form. With these, your prospects literally just click a button.
Video views
This is a relatively new feature.
Twitter will promote your videos to targeted customers. What’s key to note here is how they charge. According to their info page, they consider “a chargeable view as 3 seconds of playback in 100% view in the timeline, or a click to watch in fullscreen/unmute — whichever comes first.”
Of course, video is well known as being an incredibly engaging and successful form of content. However, you’ll need to keep an eye on whether that three-second rule is ruining your campaign budget.
Remember, this campaign is costing you cash. You’re going to want every click you pay for to have the best possible chance of converting into a paying customer.
The biggest mistake marketers make with PPC campaigns is going on gut instinct. You might know your product better than anyone else and you may well have some pretty kickass audience personae mapped out, but that doesn’t mean that you can implement your targeting without doing a little research first.
The targeting parameters with Twitter Ads aren’t going to present anything you haven’t seen before.
The only things that may surprise veteran marketers are the specificity of the locations (seriously, you can target specific postal codes which is great for local businesses!) and perhaps the option to target by TV show preference.
The rest are pretty run of the mill so I’m not going to waste time with a redundant explanation of what location is or how to target followers of larger related accounts.
Instead I want to quickly touch on how to get your campaign off to the best start. Not by targeting those you think might be interested in whatever it is you’re offering, but by using the data of those who have already converted.
Your Google Analytics account has a wealth of information to get your campaign off to the right start. to begin with, you can pull interest data straight from GA as is. Organize this data from highest-converting interest category to lowest and you’ll have a great starting point for your interest-targeting Twitter Ads.
You can do exactly the same to pull pertinent information for other key demographic information.
After you’ve done this you’ll want to find the keywords that convert on GA. You should already have tracking set up on GA so you know the exact behavior of those who convert and the revenue they bring.
The next thing to do is implement this custom report created by Griffin Roer over on KISSmetrics. The report will show you your landing pages organized by organic searches. Again, filter this by conversion rate to know which landing pages have the highest conversion rate.
Make a note of the top-converting landing pages before heading over to Webmaster Tools. Open Search Traffic > Search Analytics and use the filter option on pages to find the highest-converting pages outlined in the above GA report.
Once you’ve filtered by your top-converting pages, click on “Queries.” This will bring up a great list of the terms that garner the highest number of clicks on Google.
These terms, while from organic results, obviously appeal to the segment of your audience that converts, so they’d be a good starting point for you in your targeting.
Once you’ve done the whole GA thing, you’ll want to supplement and cross reference the information with the engagement rates that your Twitter account is already receiving.
Your next stop is over on Twitter’s Analytics suite.
There are lots of visually impressive results in Twitter’s Analytics dashboard, but more often than not they’re just a visual representation of your audience. I’m not aware of any way to track conversions unless you’ve already set up Twitter’s conversion tracking. Something that very few people I’ve spoken to seem to have done.
Read More: 13 Quick Tricks to Increase Conversion Rates that You Can Do Right Now
However, you can track which of your tweets gained the highest engagements by clicking on the “Tweets” heading in the menu.
Ignore the pretty graph at the top of the page, scroll down, and click on “Top Tweets” and you’ll find a list of your tweets with the highest engagement rate.
Copy the text from your top tweets and cross reference them with your GA data. Doing so should help you understand the kind of copy that resonates well with your audience.
If there’s a keyword or phrase that pops up across both platforms regularly, it’s likely that it’s going to grab attention and convert those users into list subs or paying customers. Use it in your keyword targeting and in your Tweet copy.
Over 80% of Twitter users access the platform through mobile. If you’re redirecting users to a landing page on your site, make sure it’s optimized for the device and OS they’re using.
There’s nothing worse when on mobile than clicking a link and finding yourself on a page optimized for desktop. Links are too small to click with a finger, copy gets cut off by the smaller display, and the whole process just seems to run sluggishly.
These little annoyances are enough to put anyone off converting. Target your ads to appear only to those on mobile or desktop, but ensure that the links within those Tweets link to pages that are optimized for that audience.
You’ll also want to target ads and have specific landing pages for:
It seems like overkill, but the best way to ensure a higher rate of conversion is to provide an ultra specific and tailored experience.
You’ve got to ensure that the page you’re directing people to is perfectly optimized for their needs and behaviors.
Twitter often seems to get overlooked simply because it doesn’t have the reach of Facebook. But studies clearly show that it’s an incredibly effective platform for gaining a higher level of conversions.
Implementing any form of paid marketing strategy shouldn’t be done without thorough planning. Before you pay for your campaign to go live make sure that you’re not only comfortable with the way Twitter Ads works, but also feel confident that you know exactly who you’re targeting.
Have you used any other methods to help better target your Twitter campaign? Leave a comment below and let us know!