Twitter marketing guide

Twitter marketing

Smarter Guide

Author: Rhian Simms and Susanne ColwynEdited by: Dr Dave Chaffey

Updated: November 2013

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© Smart Insights (Marketing Intelligence) Limited. Please go to www.smartinsights.com to feedback or access our other guides.

Twitter marketing

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Twitter marketing

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Contents3 ONE. An introduction to marketing with Twitter

13 TWO. PLAN: Developing a Twitter strategy

22 THREE. REACH: Reaching your audience through Twitter

38 FOUR. ACT: Encouraging interaction with Twitter

44 FIVE. CONVERT: Turning Twitter interactions into leads and sales

47 SIX. ENGAGE: Keeping your audience engaged

52 SEVEN. Resources

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ONEAn introduction to marketing with Twitter

r Q. Has a Twitter profile been set up in line with good practice?

What is Twitter?Twitter is a social media network that provides a real-time platform for companies and individuals to interact and engage with people with shared interests through user-generated content.

As a mature social network with over 280 million active users sharing over a 400 million tweets every day1, Twitter has become a key marketing platform to support a range of marketing communications approaches including: public relations (PR), customer service, brand awareness, events, engagement, lead generation and conversion, to name just a few. Its value is suggested by the $14 billion IPO in November 2013 which is likely to lead to more advertising options.

This original ‘back-of-the-envelope’ mock-up of Twitter shows that it was planned for personal updates, but it is now widely used for business updates too.

Succinct status updates are the key to Twitter’s success with users tweeting up to 140 characters, including shortened links to videos, pictures, photos and other sites or blogs, where other users will share content by ‘retweeting’ if it’s interesting, informative or humorous.

What is it? Twitter Twitter is a micro-blogging social media site providing a platform for users to broadcast up to 140-character ‘tweets’ to engage in conversation, with photos, images, videos and links.

Here’s a practical tip to start us off. Did you know that you can incorporate interesting tweets into your campaign pages by using the Twitter sharing widget as in this example? These are called ‘embedded tweets’2.

1 Twitter Press Release: Usage numbers2 Twitter support: Embedded tweets.

https://blog.twitter.com/2013/celebrating-twitter7

https://support.twitter.com/articles/20169559-how-to-embed-a-tweet-on-your-website-or-blog

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Best Practice Tip 1 Use embedded tweets to share tweets within your contentYou can include specific tweets live in your page or blog post if you go to the individual status update in Twitter you want to include. Then click on the date to the right of the post in Twitter and choose the ‘Embed this tweet’ option. What’s more, Twitter just released the ability to add photo to embedded Tweets.

This guide is aimed at helping you, either if you’re new to Twitter or already tweeting. It will show you tips and strategies to leverage all features of Twitter to give you or your clients tangible business results.

Quick Jargon GuideHere’s a guide for new users to the main jargon involved with using Twitter’s features:

þ @ Sign. Used to promote another Twitter usernames account in your tweet or to send a message. When a username is preceded by a @, it links to their Twitter account.

þ #. Hashtag. Identifies a topic, event or keyword in a tweet. þ Direct messages, ‘DMs’. A personal tweet not viewable by others is sent to another user

by the prefix ‘DM’, e.g. DM @username do you want to meet this evening? þ Tweets (verb, to ‘tweet’). An individual posts a message of up to 140 characters. It can

include an image, link or photo. þ Modified tweet, ‘MTs’. Similar to a retweet; a modified tweet paraphrased from someone

else’s tweet. þ Retweets, ‘RTs’. To share a tweet from another user prefixed by another user, for

example, RT @SmartInsights Digital marketing feedback tools: http://bit.ly/smartfeedback þ Timeline. Real-time list of tweets on Twitter by time and date, in the order they were

posted, which appear on the Twitter account user’s homepage.

https://blog.twitter.com/2013/rich-photo-experience-now-in-embedded-tweets-3

http://bit.ly/smartfeedback

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þ Listed. Included in another Twitter users’s list. þ Avatar. The profile picture on your Twitter account. þ Favourites. A Twitter user can mark a tweet as their favourite, by selecting the yellow star

next to the tweet.There is a more extended list of Twitter terms from their glossary at the end of this guide.

Who is using Twitter?Twitter is used by celebrities, individuals who follow and engage with brands, and business users. The adoption by celebrities and brands is changing the relationships between consumers and brands, and also celebrities and the media.

The Big Green Bookshop in London successfully used Twitter to save their business. In 2011, they tweeted their business was going to close so Twitter fans raised its profile through retweets in order to successfully boost sales.

Globally, large brands and those in the Fortune Global 100 companies are also reaping success whether it’s responding to customer service questions, retail stores driving foot fall into stores or web promotions, to name just a few. We’ll share more Twitter success stories throughout this guide.

Celebrities are growing their fan base via Twitter and in the UK, pop group One Direction and actress Emma Watson rank as the top 2 UK twitter accounts with most followers in the UK. Between them, they have over 25 million followers.

Social Bakers ‘brand movers’ compilation gives an interesting compilation of brands that are successful in engaging users on Twitter.

Best Practice Tip 2 Tap into the zeitgeist (what’s hot) in your countryUse the free Social Bakers compilation to tap into the zeitgeist in your country.

https://twitter.com/biggreenbooks

http://twitaholic.com/top100/followers/bylocation/London,+UK/

http://www.socialbakers.com/twitter/

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Statistics on Twitter usageTwitter has been in existence since 2006 and has a growing customer base fuelled by the use of the social network by brands, celebrities and publishers. In September 2013, Twitter announced that it has 15 million active users in the UK and 200 million active worldwide, with over 500 million registered accounts. There has been a rapid growth in usage and over 80 per cent of British users access Twitter from a mobile device.

According to a 2013 study by WebGlobalIndex, Twitter is now the fastest growing social platform in the world with Facebook a close second.

From the same survey, it is believed that Twitter has:

þ Over 500 million accounts registered on twitter.com. þ 288 million monthly active users around the world. þ Over 60 per cent of these people are now mobile users – 80 per cent in the UK. þ 36 per cent of the global internet population has a Twitter account. þ An average of 400 million tweets sent a day. þ Almost half of all users do not tweet, but instead use it as a directory to find information.

With Twitter marketing, it’s important to realise that many users are mobile, showing their context of use. This also means that many users are using apps rather than the desktop Twitter site meaning that referrals from links in Tweets are more likely to be referenced as direct traffic rather than from the Twitter site. This can underestimate the value of visits from Twitter since they will show in analytics as direct visits, showing the need to add additional tracking in Twitter links as suggested in this post by Time Leighton Boyce.

The business case for using TwitterTwitter can be integrated successfully into a company’s marketing strategy with a clear Twitter strategy and objectives as covered in more detail in the section on planning.

Prior to using any social media tool or starting a marketing campaign, there are some initial stages you should perform first as explained in the Smart Insights 7 Steps Guide to Social Media Marketing. The initial evaluation should involve:

þ Understanding and listening to your existing or potential customers and key ‘influencers’, or assessing if customers are not talking about you, and determining how to reach them.

þ Assessing your competitors. þ Experimenting with the features. þ Setting your objectives and goals. þ Deciding how Twitter can add value and meet your objectives when incorporated into

campaigns.Katy Howell, Managing Director, Immediate Future sums up the way to thinking about the business case by saying: ‘In truth, like any social media platform, there is no compulsion for brands to have a Twitter profile. There are only two reasons for being on Twitter: your audience is there, engaged and active; and you have something to say’.

Strategy Recommendation 1 Assess your business case for using Twitter before starting

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/10291360/Twitter-claims-15m-active-users-in-the-UK.html

https://www.globalwebindex.net/twitter-now-the-fastest-growing-social-platform-in-the-world/

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Being active on Twitter can expand your visibility and promote your products or services online regardless of the size or sector of a company. It can meet a range of objectives and while it needs resourcing at the right level, no media budget is required. Define your objectives and assess how it can add value to you and your customers. It works better in some sectors, but many business-to-business and consumer companies use it successfully.

Companies are using Twitter to support a range of business objectives, including: customer service; branding; product development; assessing user experience; obtaining customer feedback; keeping customers informed about latest news; driving traffic online; and much more.

The benefits include: improved brand awareness; increased traffic to their website; increased sales and leads; improved search engine optimisation (SEO); additional PR coverage; improved customer insight; and improved customer satisfaction.

To add some detail to this, to make a business case for more activity on Twitter, you can also consider how Twitter activity can help assist:

þ SEO: Twitter creates direct traffic to sites from links, and also sharing content across a wide audience through retweets. This improves search results indirectly since when Twitter links are retweeted some websites which embed their tweets may pull through your tweets and mentions, extending your content to other websites or blogs and improving your search rankings.

þ Social media marketing of your business: Brand metrics can help you understand your brand equity, recall, recognition, propensity to buy or recommend, and favourability.

þ Impact on PR: Assess the impact of Twitter on your PR strategy through your mentions and tweets appearing in other blogs, websites or influencers writing about and sharing your content.

þ Customer retention: Engaged customers are more likely to remain loyal to a company. Twitter is a cost-effective way to retain your customers as they are excellent ‘Referrers’. Customer retention rates and the percentage of orders from existing customers will help you evaluate Twitter engagement.

þ Sales and profit: This measurement may be long term as the company may focus on less tangible objectives such as customer service, resolving issues and more to reduce their churn rate. Longer term it will result in positive recommendations, high satisfaction and increased customer acquisition.

þ Influence: To assess if your brand, company or person is changing behaviour or perception, you may wish to consider this new measure. Third-party tools can help to define a score based on different metrics. Read more in the next Section on Tools to measure Twitter on how to set this up.

þ Customer service: Many customers now require service via Twitter, so it can be damaging if Twitter customer service isn’t available.

An outline of how to get started on TwitterIt is quick to set up a Twitter account. If you aren’t yet an active ‘tweeter’, then here are some practical steps to get you started, if you are going to manage a company profile or setup your own profile.

Before you start, it’s important to have your Twitter Strategy defined, as detailed in Section 2, ‘Plan’, to set you on the right track.

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How to get started on Twitter...For each of the steps listed here, refer to the Virgin Atlantic on Twitter for a real-world example of a well-designed brand profile.

þ 1. Register with Twitter. Visit https://twitter.com/signup to sign up and create an account. þ 2. Choose a Twitter name. Either choose your personal name or your company’s name

for business purposes. Even if you are not looking to use your account immediately, create your account as soon as possible so no one hijacks your brand. Well-known brands can apply for a verified account3 (look for the blue ‘tick’ icon next to the Twitter User name in the header.

Best Practice Tip 3 Company account – secure your brand name You secure your brand by registering a domain name for a website, so protect your business Twitter account too. If your name is gone, you can add ‘official’, e.g. @OfficialAdele, @SpursOfficial.

þ 3. Customise your profile. Update your online bio, personal details, link to your site or blog, and if using Twitter for customer service, add any user information about response times or who will be responding where relevant.

Best Practice Tip 4 An interesting bio will create good first impressions and create followersOther followers will read your bio to identify if you are an expert in your field and whether you are tweeting interesting and informative content, which they can share. You are limited to character spaces, so avoid glib words such as technologist, passionate, strategist, unique, authority, workaholic, guru and serial entrepreneur.

þ 4. Define the privacy settings of your account. Set up your account as public (visible to everyone) or private account (visible to your followers). It’s recommended to set up a public account for SEO and Google indexing.

3 Twitter support: creating a verified account.

https://twitter.com/signup

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505143_162-47741752/8-words-that-should-never-appear-in-your-twitter-bio/?tag=bnetdomain

https://support.twitter.com/groups/31-twitter-basics/topics/111-features/articles/119135-about-verified-accounts

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þ 5. Add a profile picture. If you have a personal account, use a high resolution image of a personal photo which will help you with networking and meetings. However, for business accounts, it is professional to use the same image across all other social digital channels for brand consistency. Perhaps use your logo, or an image that represents your company.

Best Practice Tip 5 Avatars can be small images in Twitter accounts so use with cautionIf you have a business and personal account, be careful with using Avatars for both accounts – it’s hard to distinguish between your accounts.

þ 6. Customise the background. You should customise the background of your account to include branding or information on your brand to the left of your tweets as shown in the Virgin Atlantic example. Use this with caution since depending on screen resolution, some followers only see tweets and not your background.

Best Practice Tip 6 Make sure your profile images work at a range of resolutionsUse an appealing profile image that your background works well with for all screen resolutions. Some companies include different contact points in the left area such as phone numbers.

This is how Tony Hsieh of Zappos uses the left area on Twitter to give contact information:

þ 7. Customise your header. In September 2012 Twitter added an option to improve the header of each profile, and it is anticipated that another one is afoot. You can learn how to update your profile change in this Twitter support article4 but also using this Social Media Cheat Sheet from Media Bistro.

4 Twitter support article: Customising your image.

https://support.twitter.com/articles/15357

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þ 8. Customise your email settings. Decide if you wish to receive email notifications for actions with your account, i.e. if someone adds you to the favourites list, retweets or follows you. Customise this in ‘Settings and Notifications’ to change your settings.

þ 9. Set up your Twitter lists. Once you are following more than a handful of people it will be difficult to follow your stream. Lists are invaluable here to group and segment your audience. They are key to using tools such as HootSuite where streams for different lists can be set up in different columns as shown below:

Best Practice Tip 7 Use Twitter lists to review communications from different types of audience and content providers

Examples of lists you should create and then follow, starting with your own company include:

þ Employees (you can share this one within Twitter). þ Sites (if you have several Twitter sites from your company you want to follow. þ Competitors broken down by sector. þ Key influencers (tools to identify these are described in Step 3). þ Media sites/trade publications.

Here are some examples of well-designed Twitter profiles:

þ Innocent Drinks þ Mini þ Domino Pizza þ Asda þ Adidas þ Bang & Olufsen

You can set up your main Twitter lists in one tab of the social media management tool HootSuite5 as shown in this example:

5 HootSuite is the management tool we recommend for posting updates to Twitter, reviewing interactions and tracking. It can be used across a range of channels.

http://www.hootsuite.com


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Larger brands may decide to use multiple twitter accounts for different purposes. Here’s how Dell do this on their social media hub page :

Best Practice Tip 8 Larger brands should consider a range of accounts for different purposes

Large companies may need different Twitter channels, for example:

þ Corporate Twitter. þ Country sites. þ Customer service sites. þ Journalists’ sites (Twitter does this).

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TWOPLAN: Developing a Twitter strategy

r Q. Has a Twitter plan been created?

To use Twitter to best effect for your business, it’s important to have a strategy that fits your audience needs and business priorities. Depending on your current usage of social media and the marketing mix, you will need to consider how to best integrate Twitter with your communications strategy, both online and offline. Like any plan, it will evolve as you monitor and measure against your objectives and aims.

Katy Howell of Immediate Future reinforces the importance of planning: ‘One word: plan. It might be easy to set up a Twitter profile, but the hard work (and the results) is in the planning. And don’t just plan for the next few months – think long term.’

Strategy Recommendation 2 Ensure your Twitter strategy is aligned to your followers’ needs Understand how Twitter can help your audience since the profile and wants of your Twitter audience may be quite different from other channels. Review typical profiles, then define your goals, assess your competitors, understand your target audience, define your content communications strategy and determine your knowledge performance indicators (KPIs) for success.

Create an outline of your Twitter plan r Q. Have we outlined a brief plan of how we will use Twitter?

You won’t want or need to write at length on how Twitter will be used, it’s only one channel. But to make the most of it, you should be clear on how you want to use it for communications otherwise you will miss opportunities, waste resources and, worst still, could damage the company reputation.

Has a Twitter plan been written? Follow the same method of writing a marketing campaign plan.

r Q. Has the business case been assessed and objectives defined? This guide will help you understand how Twitter can support your business goals and provide examples of case studies of those who have had successes.

r Q. Has the market usage of Twitter been assessed (customers, competitors, influencers)?

r Q. Have you defined your business case and evaluated how Twitter can support your objectives?

r Q. Have you set your communication strategy (type and frequency of status updates and interactions and how they align with marketing campaigns)?

r Q. Is there a governance policy in place to reduce the risk of damaging your brand?

r Q. Have you assessed and agreed your resources to manage your account?

As a starting point for creating your plan, ‘listen first’.

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Strategy Recommendation 3 Start by listening to Twitter conversations for your market Don’t jump straight in, understand what is shared to start with.

Start monitoring Twitter interactionsYou can set up standard searches in Twitter and in management tools like HootSuite so you can review the latest activity related to your company and market.

Listen to what your customers are discussing about your brand, your product or your services and how your competitors are using Twitter. Use tools like Twitter Search or Twitter Advanced Search to explore the keywords, #hashtags and brand terms which are prominent in your market.

You can also use these social media monitoring tools6. Of these, Social Mention is the best of the free tools for all networks with Topsy, which we reference later, the best specifically for Twitter.

Best Practice Tip 9 Monitoring keywords and using advanced search operators can identify opportunities and threats

Listening and monitoring Twitter will help you evaluate your brand awareness, competitor analysis, challenges and, more importantly, the size of your potential audience.

6 Smart Insights: Reputation management tools.

http://twitter.com/#!/search-home

http://www.smartinsights.com/online-pr/reputation-management-online-pr/online-reputation-management-software/

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Keywords you should monitorThe most important keywords you should monitor in Twitter or your social media management platform are:

þ Your @brand name or @Twitter name for when someone mentions or retweets your company name.

þ Your brand name and company sub-brands. þ Hashtags related to your campaigns. þ Your competitor @name and brand name and company sub-brands. þ Hashtags relevant to your market. Remember that a Twitter search shows the most

popular tweets which can be useful for curating content. þ Other keywords referencing the interests of your audience, particularly those which show

an interest, for example: questions, problems or positive comments. Some listening tools such as Viral Heat (www.viralheat.com) will identify these terms as leads for you to follow-up on.

Best Practice Tip 10 Use advanced search syntax to better understand how your audience uses Twitter and to overcome the limitations of Twitter’s basic search

Use search operators such as those outlined in the table below, in particular: @username, ‘phrase in quotes’, question, local search phrase near:location. Particularly interesting are the sentiment measures and questions about a topic which are available at the bottom of the Advanced search box also.

Alternatively, you can use the Advanced Search: https://twitter.com/search-advanced to apply some of the relevant shortcuts.

http://www.viralheat.com

https://twitter.com/search-advanced

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Review target audience types for your communications plan r Q. Have you defined your target audience for your communications plan?

Before you start any marketing plan, identify who you are communicating with on Twitter and build a profile about them. Your Twitter audiences will likely include these types:

þ Existing customers. þ Prospects. þ Influencers such as bloggers and the media. þ Trolls or troublemakers.

Twitter provides tools to help you segment your audience within lists, which in turn helps with your followers’ strategy, outlined in Section 3 ‘Reach’.

Strategy Recommendation 4 Create profile personas of your key audience types Take a sample of your Twitter followers (or competitors if you’re not fully launched on Twitter) and identify key audience types. Use these personas to inform your communications strategy for Twitter.

We recommend you audit followers based on their profile information and activity to get an idea of three to six typical customer/prospect personas. You should consider these details for profile:

þ Age and gender. þ Location. þ Type of sites/social pages they link to (if any). þ Types of company (for business-to-business). þ Activity on Twitter – type of information shared, sites and content they link to (including

yours). A good free tool to help you understand your audience’s locations, interests and demographics is available from the ‘Audience Analysis’ function at Twtrland.com, or from Followerwonk.

Once you have audited use of Twitter in your marketplace, you can then outline the communications approach to interact with different audiences.

http://www.Twtrland.com

https://followerwonk.com/

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What should be included in a Twitter communications plan?As we noted previously, since Twitter is only a single channel, this plan doesn’t have to be too involved. It should be based around key communications issues and resourcing to keep your content fresh and relevant. It should reference content creation strategies, resourcing and communications to build brand awareness, favourability and purchase intent using Twitter.

Twitter objectives r Q. Have goals been defined for Twitter?

Along with other social media platforms, Twitter gives an opportunity to link your digital and offline marketing strategy with social media and so the image you present must represent your company well.

You should think about and ask yourself the following questions:

r Q. Which business goals can we support by using Twitter?

This may be increased brand awareness, increased interaction with customers, to reach out to new customers, to build a brand identity, to humanise your brand, to show what you represent and your core values.

r Q. Who will be responsible for managing Twitter and how much time can be dedicated to it?

Twitter isn’t as sophisticated as other tools like Facebook and Google+ for sharing administrators, so you will need to share logins, or post using a tool like HootSuite. Depending on the size of the company, different people may be administrators for different brands, countries or for promotion against customer service.

r Q. How will we measure success?

You need to know whether your Twitter plan is working so decide which methods described later in this step will be used to track your success. Measure the impact of your Twitter campaigns or plans against key metrics so you can improve your strategy and attain management buy-in for future investment, whether this is financial or more resources. Measurement is not always financial and can include softer metrics, which the next Section will cover.

Using Twitter to support lifecycle communicationsIn this section we will cover how to use Twitter to support communications throughout the customer lifecycle. In each section of the report you should sketch out your initial thoughts here, by answering these questions:

1. Method for generating awareness (covered in ‘Reach’ Section)How will you encourage people to visit or sign up to your Twitter profile(s), for example through integrating it into your site, outreach to other sites, shareable content and Twitter-spe-cific campaigns? Decide on how you wish to promote Twitter across other channels, either through displaying your tweets or your Twitter icon to show your audience that you have a Twitter presence so they can connect with you. It may be across your website, on other social media channels, within email campaigns or within your blogs.

Here are some ideas to review:

r Using existing content assets.

r Sourcing popular, interesting assets from other sources.

r Running Twitter-specific competitions or promotions and then featuring them in your other social sites and email.

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r Specifically developing interesting content that encourages users to retweet.

r Linking to Twitter from your website, blogs and social presence or using ‘embedded tweets’ as shown in the Introduction.

r Adding Twitter sharing buttons within content.

r Replying to, retweeting or favouriting other people’s tweets.

r Participating in Twitter chats relevant to your product, service or industry using designated hashtags. A list of all chats can be found here.

r Tweeting and outreaching when your audience is most active.

2. Content types that will encourage engagement with brand (covered in ‘Act’) These are your status updates that will use content to engage and share with your audience for the purpose of lead or sale generation. Finding a balance of content types that can help you achieve this engagement will be key to a long-term Twitter communications strategy.

Best Practice Tip 11 Test content typesTest different content types are different points of the day and week to understand the impact it has on action. Understanding this will help you to plan the content that is most appropriate for sharing with your audience.

3. Lead generation and sales strategy (covered in ‘Conversion’)Do you know how tweeting will deliver leads and sales, both directly and indirectly? Examples of ways in which Twitter is an important tool in new product launches and campaigns include:

r Showcase products/launches through content sharing

r Support campaigns and encouraging conversation e.g. using official #hashtags.

r Offer discount codes.

r Reach new customers or make new ones more aware.

r Remind users to purchase.

4. Frequency/target for updating (covered in ‘Engage’)You need to decide roughly how many times a day or week you are planning to update. If you don’t specify this, Twitter updates can wither and die. Of all the social media channels, Twitter tends to be updated most frequently, so typically this will be at least daily, but so long as the profile appears active and managed it doesn’t need to be this frequently.

Measuring your Twitter strategy effectiveness using KPIsOnce you have determined your reason for using Twitter and what you wish to achieve, then set your KPIs, which may be short or long term.

What can you measure?Katy Howell, Immediate Future advises: ‘For many brands, Twitter is an integrated element in a wider marketing mix. In this situation metrics focus on more specific elements that can be evaluated as part of a wider programme. For instance: a brand wanting to increase advocacy, may look to measure retweets or recommendations. A company wanting to increase e-commerce traffic will measure click-throughs on links, or traffic to their site.’

http://www.gnosisarts.com/home/Tweetchat_Wiki/By_Day

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Best Practice Tip 12 Use attribution reports in Google Analytics to review Twitter contribution

These new reports were launched in 2012. They are the easiest way to find the impact of Twitter on leads and sales. You can review ‘last click’ conversions and also ‘assisted conversions’ where a visitor is referred from Twitter initially, but generates a lead or a sale on a later visit referred from other media such as search.

Some areas to review for Twitter measurement include:

þ Traffic: Understand the traffic and referrals being generated from social media and other sites to help you evaluate your visitors.

þ Engagement: How people are engaging with you on Twitter, via comments, RTs, mentions and favourites? Knowing this will help you to understand customer loyalty, satisfaction and the likelihood to switch brands.

þ Sales: Tracking sales from links shared in Twitter will be relevant for particular businesses, such as e-commerce sites. Use Google Multi-Channel Conversion Reports to measure this.

þ Leads: Non-ecommerce companies measure leads based on online activity and calls to action. For instance, downloading a brochure, requesting a call back or similar interactions.

þ Brand awareness: The wider result of sharing your content and understanding the global reach of your tweets or hashtags. Use TweetReach to gain an estimated exposure.

Do you have specific KPIs to measure?Site metrics provides an indication of your effectiveness but should be used with other metrics for a full evaluation of your Twitter use.

Site metrics available directly from Twitter can be summarised in a weekly or monthly reporting spreadsheet and include:

þ Number of followers and unfollowers: followed ratio. þ Retweets. þ Number of replies or engagements. þ Number of lists/favourites added.

http://tweetreach.com/

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Third-party tools can give more metrics and report sharing through time. For example, such tools can give:

þ Number of links clicked. þ Click-throughs to your site. þ Source of referral. þ Location of click. þ Time of day of click.

Using Google Analytics to measure TwitterTraditionally, using Advanced Segments in Google Analytics has been the best method to understand the volume, quality and value of visitors referred from individual social networks.

Today, Google’s new Social Media Reports (available from Traffic Sources > Social) and Multi-Channel Funnel feature (shown previously) can help you isolate the contribution you are getting from Twitter and the other social networks already. Look at trends to set targets to grow the number of visits and sales from the channel.

As well as showing the ‘last click’ conversions from each network that lead to conversions on the visit, you can also see the ‘assisted conversions’, where conversions may have been influenced based on previous visits from the social networks.

Strategy Recommendation 5 Use Google Analytics Social Reports or Multi-Channel Funnels to help prove the value of media throughout customer journeys

Use ‘Multi-Channel Funnels’ to show you the relative contribution from different social media referrals comparing number of visits, number of conversions (last click and assisted) and conversion value.

Comparing the relative number of visits and assists from different social networks can help you decide where to best put your efforts. At Smart Insights we find that Twitter is highest for visitor numbers, but LinkedIn is highest for conversion and value.

The Google URL builder tool can help you tag your links before posting them in your tweets to get an even more accurate view of Twitter conversions since otherwise apps may not record these. Read Smartinsight’s post to find out more to how Google can help you track your social media marketing.

Measuring the influence of Twitter activitiesThere are various third-party tools to provide you with summary information on followers, number of replies, retweets and other activities to give you an idea of your influence. The most popular influencer finding tools which also define score algorithms are Klout, and Peer Index and Kred score to determine the impact of Influence. Each has its own algorithm which attempts to give the best indication of influence. Klout groups metrics into the following categories below to measure Twitter for personal and company profiles:

http://www.smartinsights.com/google-analytics/google-analytics-campaign-tracking/using-google-analytics-to-track-social-media-marketing/

http://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-media-analytics/tools-for-finding-influencers/

http://www.peerindex.com/

http://www.peerindex.com/

http://www.thesocialworkplace.com/2009/12/01/measure-your-twitter-clout-with-klout/

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There are also other free and others paid, to help evaluate your Twitter account or all of your social media channels. They include TweetDeck, Followerwonk, HootSuite and Tweetmeme to name only a few.

http://www.tweetdeck.com/

http://followerwonk.com/

http://hootsuite.com/

http://tweetmeme.com/

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THREEREACH: Reaching your audience through TwitterTwitter supports companies and individuals to build awareness, amplify their messages and so reach a wide audience of potential new leads. It can also be used to establish stronger connections with existing consumers. Through an integrated communications approach, it can drive visitors to other touchpoints (online and offline) within the organisation to attain tangible benefits.

In this section, we will discuss how to use Twitter to extend a company’s reach, through Twitter features such as timeline updates, #hashtags, developing a follower strategy, targeted advertising, integration with other channels and SEO.

Given Twitter is a strong digital platform to provide real-time updates and so build awareness, both companies and individuals, including celebrities, are reaping the benefits.

Understanding changing Twitter behaviours

As all social networks start to mature, audiences are evolving. Twitter is no exception and its user base does not stand still.

To illustrate this:

þ Active users continue to grow - according to a 2013 study by WebGlobalIndex7, the number of active Twitter users grew 40% from Q2 2012 to Q4 2012.

þ Country adoption changes – most recent numbers for 2013 show Hong Kong, USA and Russia are leading the way in terms of the Twitter universe.

þ Age profile changes – the over-55 age segment are the fastest growing demographic on Twitter growing 116% between Q2 and Q4 2012. In an aging population this represents a significant audience.

þ Growth of second-screening – users are not concentrating on one media or device whilst Tweeting. Integration of official hashtags into TV, films, radio, sports and advertising has provided people with reasons to use Twitter that go well beyond social.

Encouraging more retweets or sharing of your tweetsIt’s simple. The single best way to grow your Twitter following is simply to share content that others will share. This is the foundation of growing a following in all the social networks.

Best Practice Tip 13 Analyse the most shared types of content in your market and then share more of this type of contentReview what your followers or those of your competitors share and then find a way of sourcing more of this type of content. Topsy is a good way to find the most popular tweets for an account.

To increase followers, be ‘interesting’ and ‘useful’ since people will read your bio and your tweets. Add useful links and resources to your Tweets and don’t oversell your business. Always try and retweet good content so you are not ‘hard selling’ yourself or your company and engage in conversation. To be ‘interesting’ and ‘useful’ requires a sound content strategy. We will talk more about how to create this in the ‘Act’ Section.

7 GlobalWebIndex Study 2013.



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Even if you are tweeting about your company, then the human touch is key so don’t be afraid to occasionally tweet about topical issues and interests. Like most social media channels, it is about ‘engaging’ and ‘connecting’, so always listen and comment and make conversation with other Twitter users. You may find out new ways of developing your product or services. Treat this as free customer feedback to help your business, so be open-minded. Customers can be negative but as a company rise above this and take any negative conversations offline if necessary.

You need to understand the type of content that is most shareable. That’s one of the reasons we said you needed to ‘Listen First!’ in the previous Section. Through reviewing what is shared already by your audience you will see what is popular. Depending on audience it will likely be interesting, useful or funny. Those who retweet want to look good to their followers. It’s something to look out for as you audit the profiles of your followers. Find out what your most popular followers share from other accounts and then give them more of the same.

Even though tweets can only be 140 characters, a good tip is to use a picture – it can portray a thousand words.

Best Practice Tip 14 Share images and videos Use photo sharing tools, such as Twitpic, as it can be very powerful to convey a message. Twitter now features images and videos more prominently within its site, apps and widgets for embedding in sites, so this can help increase reach.

Using video in tweetsIn October 2012, Twitter purchased Vine – a clip sharing app that allows users to create and share 6-second looping videos.

Vine now offers a way for businesses to produce original content for their own brands, but also engage with users by means of video media.

Brands can use Vine to:

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þ Create their own content – show product features, launch new collections, show a light-hearted personality to their brand, or even showcase behind the scenes footage. These clips can then be used to engage with customers but also influencers.

þ Engage with users – asking followers to create their own Vines at official events, video themselves using their products, or even use Vine as a competition mechanism for user-generated content.

þ Embed official links and hashtags to their websites or campaign collateral.

A good example of a brand using Vine is from Topshop who create looks, show off new products, or release insider clips of fashion events.

Here is a summary of tips on sharing and interacting to help you build your followers:

þ Be useful and entertaining. Share content which is useful, entertaining and interesting so people follow you. Remember, this can also be a first impression for new followers, so give the a reason to follow you.

þ Participate in chats. Participate in chats using #hashtags to demonstrate your expertise and knowledge. This will attract new followers and they could become new customers or advocates to your business. If it is not too forced, try to use your brand name in the chat so that followers are engaging and reinforcing your voice through Twitter. For example, #HyattWLFG – Hyatt Hotels World’s Largest Focus Group.

þ Engage with influencers. Engage and interact with experts or personalities in your sector or field.

http://seenive.com/u/906620192736546816

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Km0wIh9qvLE&feature=c4-overview&list=UUUGuMStB8ziF7qJerLxMRzg

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þ Share content from other followers. Tweet or retweet content which relates to your business and share content; it adds value for your own followers.

þ Answer questions and monitor channels. Engage with similar experts in your field by answering questions, engaging with ongoing conversations and being friendly – like networking! It’s good to have different opinions so you don’t have to follow the crowd. But remember that a reply to someone specific might not be interesting to the more general public. To avoid this, use “@Reply” in the beginning of a tweet if you only want your followers who follow them to see the tweet. Add words or a character in front of the @reply if you want all of your followers to see the tweet.

þ Cross promote. Include your Twitter profile on other channels, where it will add value to the customer journey. It may be across your blog, landing pages of your website or other social media channels like LinkedIn or Facebook. Using your sharing button is also great for ‘advocacy’ – if your tweet is valuable then people will share your content.

þ Remember your manners. Say thank you to people for comments on blogs, shares of your content, or even replies and RTs.

Using #hashtagsTwitter #hashtags give options to expand your reach since some Twitter users will monitor certain topics and they may then share your tweet if it interests them. To look at it another way, it’s a way of labelling the topic of a tweet, giving it an obvious context This can give it more emphasis and encourage people to share it.

Brands can use hashtags to not only identify conversations that are happening and often trending, but also to direct the conversation for their businesses.

For example, if you search on #LOST (or #Lost or #lost, because it’s not case sensitive), you’ll get a list of tweets related to the TV show. What you won’t get are tweets that say ‘I lost my wallet yesterday’ because ‘lost’ isn’t preceded by the hashtag.

What is it? #Hashtag A #hashtag is a way of labelling tweets and in Twitter or Twitter readers it can be used to link to search results containing all mentions of this.

Best Practice Tip 15 Use #hashtags in your tweets where relevantBy tweeting using #hashtags used by your audience that relate to your brand, product, service or event, you can grow your follower base and engage with a large community. It helps to promote tweets around key campaigns and events which can be used across different social media platforms and your website.

To find out which hashtag is relevant to your business, there are free tools to help you identify the right ones for you:

þ Hashtag.org: It is powered by trendistic allowing you to identify the peak times to use the hashtags, as far back as 180 days ago. It doesn’t have good coverage of all terms. Topsy tends to be more comprehensive

þ Whatthetrend: Provides information by country and city, showing trends and statistics across Twitter, as well as searches (like Hashtag), to receive related tweets and news by that keyword.

þ Trendsmap: Tweets are visualised on a worldmap, drilling down to city on the latest real-time local trends.

þ TweetDeck: This tool will help you locate other Twitter users following similar subjects or trends.

http://twitter.com/reply

http://www.hashtags.org/

http://www.whatthetrend.com/

http://www.whatthetrend.com/

http://www.tweetdeck.com/

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Best Practice Tip 16 Ideas on effective use of #hashtagsUse hashtags to:

þ Use hashtags to: þ Label tweets – to empahsise relevance to a subject. þ Share campaign names or specific types of content, e.g. #marketing #infographics. þ Start own trends; don’t just piggyback onto others. þ Ensure content is interesting, entertaining or educational to encourage sharing. þ To integrate with other forms of marketing e.g. tv or outdoor advertising, or special events.

Here are some examples of @ASOS #hashtags which show how they can be used systematically and creatively:

þ There’s £500 up for grabs, whoop! RT & follow for your chance to win. #ASOSMidseason-sale. http://asos.to/SVWvYq

þ Countdown for #ASOSonXfactor. Free garms, just for seeing us on your fave TV show - sweet

þ HURRY, the #ASOSDailyEdit competition finishes real soon. þ Fun #LookOfTheDay (and Halloween outfit inspiration: http://goo.gl/xKqKm @Deleving-

nePoppy þ Who wants to see a private screening of #DarkShadowsDVD? Tweet a pic of how you

style the gothic trend using #ASOSLoves to win tickets.

Be careful of hashtag hijacking. Hashtags are powerful at promoting events or your products but sometimes as tags become popular, spammers will target and hijack these keywords and start ‘spamming’ including irrelevant tweets containing the hashtags. Some brands such as retailer Habitat have been guilty of this and received negative publicity for it.

The Twitter timeline widgetA Twitter timeline widget shows all tweets by time in a line on your homepage or on the sidebar of your blog listing your tweets, others who have retweeted or if you have been added to a list. A recent interactive version developed in 2012 expands to show videos, pictures and photos associated with the tweets or any associated tweets to the conversation. It is now possible to interact with those identified on the ‘timeline; tweets, retweets or favourites.

Best Practice Tip 17 Embed your timeline on your siteEmbed a HTML code into your website to show your timeline of tweets. It could help showing tweets around key campaigns or launches. Depending on the relative popularity of your Facebook and Twitter, it may be better to feature Facebook widgets rather than those for Twitter.

According to Twitter: ‘These new tools are built specifically for the web: they load fast, scale with your traffic as your audience grows, update in real time, and work great in modern, legacy, and mobile browsers.’

https://dev.twitter.com/blog/embedded-timelines-howto

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Targeted advertisingTwitter’s advertising features have greatly improved and companies now have the choice of a variety of targeting through their product offering. However, despite the 2013 IPO, Twitter ads are generally limited to larger companies. Unlike ads on Facebook, LinkedIn and Google AdWords, a typical monthly spend of $10,000 is required in many countries. For this reason, our coverage of Twitter advertising is relatively brief. We hope to expand this in future as Twitter makes advertising available to smaller and medium businesses

Twitter now offers brands the ability to target:

þ Promoted tweets - ordinary Tweets labelled as ‘Promoted’ purchased by advertisers who want to reach a wider group of users or engage existing followers.

þ Promoted trends – seen in the ‘Trends’ section of the Twitter feed, Promoted Trends appear at the top of the Trending Topics list - marked as ‘Promoted’. Advertisers can buy these trends based on time, context or event targeting.

þ Promoted accounts – these are part of the ‘Who to Follow ‘ section of Twitter suggesting accounts to people don’t currently follow the brand or to whom it may be of interest.

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Best Practice Tip 18 Review the relevance of Twitter advertising for your brandFor brands with advertising budget to deploy on key campaigns, Twitter’s advertising can be used to connect with people by their interest, to improve the reach of your Tweets.

There are the options to target by category related to your business as shown below in the image or via @usernames. Micro-targeting by using @usernames, allows Twitter’s users to create custom segments with those who have shown an interest in an event, your company, product, related brands, celebrities or perhaps competition. It allows you to reach beyond your current followers to engage with your brand.

It is similar to Facebook’s feature to target ads according to the ‘Likes’ of users. However, it does not enable you to target specific users. Twitter explains: ‘Custom segments let you reach users with similar interests to that @ username’s followers; they do not let you specifically target the followers of that @ username. If you’re promoting your indie band’s next tour, you can create a custom audience by adding @ usernames of related bands, thus targeting users with the same taste in music.’

Best Practice Tip 19 If you are using promoted tweets then spend time choosing your keywords

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It is still early days for Twitter’s promoted products so brands are experimenting. It is similar to Google Adwords, where the advertiser chooses keywords which are relevant to its brand, product or service. The promoted tweet must be relevant to what the Twitter search is asking for or it will damage your brand.

Strategy Recommendation 6 Use the Advertiser analytics to review your Twitter advertising against KPIs

Use the in-built insights function of a Twitter advertising account to track the components of your Twitter Ads activity. Similar to Facebook insights, learn about the behaviour of people who interact with your ads and optimise the targeting options.

Ways to connect with people who aren’t following youHere is a summary of how to successfully follow people who can add value to your brand through influencing and sharing content, or they could become a new customer:

þ Retweets: Other Twitter users will see that you are ‘retweeting’ their content, and engage if relevant.

þ Conversations: Join in conversations with the friends of your Twitter followers who are conversing with others, by using @ tag.

þ Lists: Add Twitter users to your lists. You can engage with them even if they are not following you. Consider organising your followers into groups and then find similar people who fit. There are third-party list-building tools including Listorious and Tweetmeme.

þ Influencer marketing: Profile and identify Twitter users with a strong influence that will be beneficial to your brand and the sharing of your content. Forming relationships with these people will strengthen the reach of your brand. We will focus on influencer marketing later in this step.

Best Practice Tip 20 Use email notifications or if volumes are higher view @mentions and new followers periodically to identify new influencers to contact

Twitter’s email notifications inform users if they have been retweeted, received mentions, added to lists or tweets added to favourites.

Creating a follower strategyWhen you follow people on Twitter, a proportion will follow back, so through following other profiles, you will increase your own profiles. Ideally your followers will be larger than the number following you since this shows your brand is more credible.

Strategy Recommendation 7 Carefully identify who to follow to help grow your followers It is important to build credible followers on Twitter to increase reach and ensure it’s in line with your Twitter Strategy to add value, and be a cost-effective use of your time and resources.

You can start to follow new people if they are interesting, they fit in with your business and you may like who they are following. Or it may be simply be about connecting with your new customers to keep them informed with your latest news. Be selective and targeted, so you are not seen to be ‘spamming’ and lose credibility, which in turn will damage your brand.

http://listorious.com/

http://tweetmeme.com/

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Best Practice Tip 21 Be selective and targeted in defining your followersIt is important to ensure that you follow people with similar interests or who fit with your client base, or they may have followers who could be influencers of your brand or industry. It’s not quantity which counts but the quality of followers. Do not use autofollow tools!

Using autofollow tools to grow your followersA word about ‘autofollow’ tools, ‘Don’t!’ These enable users to rapidly grow their followers by using software or services that find relevant followers in a category and then automatically follows them. If some of these users automatically follow back their followers or tend to manually follow back people who follow them this can lead to rapid growth in numbers – tens of thousands of followers can be generated.

Understanding who your influencers areWe talk about the importance of influencers in social media marketing at some length in the 7 Steps Guide to Social Media Marketing, but for the purposes of Twitter will cover is in this section of this document. It’s also worth taking a look at the Smart Insights Influencer Outreach Guide since this focuses on using Twitter for outreach since it works better than any other social network for this!

Strategy Recommendation 8 Segment and prioritise the full range of influencersYou should segment influencers in the same way you segment customers. You can them prioritise which types of influencers you target since some influencer types will be more effective for you.

Influencers don’t just have to be individuals. Think about the who is right for your brand (and audience) in terms of organisations, journalists, bloggers, complimentary brands, celebrities etc.

We take this example from the Smart Insights Influencer Outreach Guide to demonstrate a suggested approach. You are running a travel business and want to reach a wide audience who want to rent cottages in France. The chances are it’s going to be very hard to find potential customers on Twitter that have any of this information in their bios. Therefore, you need to find people who are having conversations about holiday rentals in France and who are likely to be followed and mentioned by a large number of potential holidaymakers:

þ Tourist authorities that share info on particular regions in France (where your cottages are located), where to go, what to do etc.

þ Travel writers and bloggers þ French property news þ British expats who are in France þ Ferry companies þ The French Consulate þ Forums where travellers share their views

These are just a selection of people you could be following. A simple search on Twitter such as “Travel Normandy” will help you find the influencers you are looking for, but an easier way to get ideas it to look at the Twitter accounts of your competitors and see who they are following. Once you start selecting a few influencers, Twitter will start suggesting others for you to follow. Just click on the “discover” link on your navigation bar and click on “who to follow”.

http://www.smartinsights.com/guides/influencer-outreach-guide/




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Best Practice Tip 22 Rate your influencers to prioritise themAs well as rating influencers by Reach, Resonance and Relevance you should also rate them according to whether you can influence them. For example, it is rare for Seth Godin to mention, let alone recommend a brand, but an influencer like Chris Brogan will in the right situation.

Outreaching your influencers You need to ensure that you appear relevant to the influencers you have identified and would like to engage with. Again, covered in the Smart Insights Influencer Outreach Guide, you need to exhibit four key traits in your updates in order to attract the attention of influencers:

þ You’re informative –keep your target audience updated on the latest developments in your industry. This gives you credibility by establishing you as having a good knowledge of your industry.

þ You educate your audience – give away free insights into your business that prove you are competent. It might be free legal advice, or information about your manufacturing process, but it helps influencers make an informed decision about whether you know what you’re doing

þ You’re engaging – be open, accessible and friendly. It needs to be clear to you’re inviting

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your audience to interact with you. þ You’re visible – be posting updates and discussions regularly in order to be noticed. The

more an influencer sees your updates, the more likely it is that you’ll have a share of your mind space.

By exhibiting these traits, you’ll enable an audience of complete strangers to know you, like you, and most importantly, trust you.

Once you’ve got your content right, there are three steps you need to take in order to engage with influencers:

a. Identify “conversation triggers”, that is opportunities where you can enter the conversation.

b. Reply to content they have posted and share engaging content that will get them to sit up and take notice

c. Have a strategy and content plan to convert them from being engaged to being brand advocates

d. Identify ways you could partner, think what you could offer them to make them look good to their audience or improve themselves in some way.

The key above all else is to resist the urge to sell. When the opportunity arises, engage by taking an interest in the influencer:

i) Ask them for advice

ii) Comment on something they have said (And don’t be scared to rock the boat!)

Tools for identifying influencers using TwitterApart from the paid social media monitoring tools we mentioned in Step 2, there are free tools you can use to identify influencers to follow and reach out to using these tools and approaches:

þ Wefollow - one of the the best directories of Twitter users ranked by number of followers and influence, for example Wefollow (http://wefollow.com/twitter/digitalmarketing).

þ The main cross-platform brand reputation assessment tools (Klout, Kred and Peerindex8). þ Brandfluencers (www.brandluencers.com) shows you the influencers who drive the most

visits by connecting to your Google Analytics þ Commun.it (www.commun.it) - aspecialist community tool to help you manage your

contacts within Twitter and find others to follow.

The screengrab shows how you can use it for thanking followers for sharing.

8 Smart Insights: Tools for finding influencers.

http://wefollow.com/twitter/digitalmarketing

http://brandfluencers.com/

http://www.commun.it/

http://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-media-analytics/tools-for-finding-influencers/

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þ Klout (www.klout.com) shows the most influential people and sites on a topic. þ Manage Flitter (www.manageflitter.com) – use to manage your followers and find new

followers (Pro version) þ Google queries. Use to search for particular types of people9 or locations based on

their bio and Google’s ranking of key twitter accounts limiting results to Twitter using the site:twitter.com operator, e.g. https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=social+media+marketing+site%3Atwitter.com Note, though, that this gives preference to Twitter pages with the term in their user name rather than individual influencers.

þ Use tools that show the most popular tweets on a topic. Topsy (www.topsy.com) is one of the most useful tools for this since it not only shows recent tweets like Twitter, but has older tweets too. It also includes data from blogs and other social networks, so you have to select ‘Tweets’ from the left menu as shown in this example.

9 Smart Insights: Using Twitter advanced search to find influencers.

http://www.klout.com/

http://manageflitter.com/

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=social+media+marketing+site%3Atwitter.com

http://www.topsy.com/

http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/marketing/article/7-insanely-useful-ways-to-search-twitter-for-marketing-john-jantsch

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Integrating Twitter with other digital marketing channelsConsider displaying your Twitter content or the channel across other touchpoints, both offline and online, where it add values to your leads or customers, so they can find out more about your products, services or latest news in the sector. Remember that your leads or customers will connect with you in different environments, so make sure they are all covered, where relevant. It will increase your Twitter visibility both with existing customers and potential leads, driving traffic to appropriate entry points so you can interact with them further.

You may consider integrating Twitter through incorporating Tweets which show interaction and value across your:

þ Website (see the earlier reference to embedded tweets). þ Email campaigns. þ Event campaigns. þ Offline publicity, i.e. programmes, flyers. þ Other social networks.

Website integrationTwitter can work two ways with your website: by driving traffic to specific landing pages on your website for key marketing campaigns; and for capturing leads. It can provide additional content to those visiting your website, as part of your communications strategy.

There are plug-ins to add to your website to show tweets and mentions for key campaigns or topics, and it can be helpful to encourage people to engage and interact further with your brand in another environment as part of your community. It also helps with your SEO strategy, covered in this section.

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Best Practice Tip 23 Add a plug-in to your website or blog to show your tweets and mentions

Companies are successfully showing interesting and relevant tweets and mentions on their website, to help with their SEO strategy and to interact with their website visitors, and to encourage them to join their community with similar like-minded visitors.

Useful tools to support this include:

þ Wordpress Twitter widget. þ Embedded Twitter Timelines code. þ Social plug-in for Wordpress.

Email marketing campaignsIntegrating social media buttons into the content of your email, including Twitter buttons with key calls to action, can extend the reach of your emails to new audiences as recipients share interesting content, identify key influencers through email analytics and it helps you to grow your lists. For your leads and customers, it also creates another platform to connect and interact with your brand.

Best Practice Tip 24 Integrate Twitter in your email content to share your emails and connect with your recipientsInclude the Twitter social icon in your email with clear benefit-driven messages to connect. The messages will be tailored to your audience, you can use humour, incentives with coupons to promote events, or to simply highlight key tweets in your email.

Marketingprofs uses the technique of highlighting interesting tweets to ‘retweet’ which fits with their community.

EventsTwitter is very effective in promoting both online and offline events for companies, using the #hashtag or coupons to drive people to either retail stores or exhibitions. It can boost foot visitors or simply promote an event virally for people to sign up to a key landing page on a website.

Best Practice Tip 25 Devise online events to engage and add value to your audience through timeOnline events can be regular daily, weekly or monthly features or more specific campaigns.

Starbucks is very successful with their events. With over 2 million followers they will drive fans into their stores with free drinks or promotions. They are also consistent with their timely offers through their email campaigns, but many are timebound and specific to Twitter fans.

http://en.support.wordpress.com/widgets/twitter-widget/

http://blog.twitter.com/2012/09/more-tweets-across-web.html?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed&m=1

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sociable/

http://twitter.com/starbucks

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In B2B marketing, webinar and online events are growing their registration base and promoting future events by using Twitter. It is promoted via #hashtags and they live-tweet the event. It provides reach outside of those purely attending the live event and offers real-time content and future followers, also helping with SEO.

It’s worth following ASOS for the events which they run, both regular features and more substantial events like this live chat with the hash tag #styleSOS.

Twitter eventsA special class of new event enabled by Twitter are Twitter events where a topic is discussed over a pre-defined period.

Best Practice Tip 26 Consider Twitter events to build a community and awarenessSome businesses host regular Twitter events for a set period using a hashtag. These work particularly well for B2B professional services, but can be used as a Q&A in consumer markets.

To gain an idea of how a Twitter event works see the EcomChat chat hosted by Smart Insights Expert commentators Dan Barker and James Gurd.

Offline campaignsCompanies highlighting a presence on offline material such as brochures, catalogues, billboards, etc. extend their brand within the marketplace.

Other social networksTwitter should be integrated across all of your media channels to share content, engage and promote your brand. Your audience may engage with different social media channels and reach your business at different touchpoints.

http://ecomchat.org/

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Strategy Recommendation 9 Plan an integrated social media strategy and do not plan Twitter in isolation

Twitter is powerful to support your marketing campaign, and can be integrated across other social media channels; sharing software, LinkedIn, Facebook, blogs, etc.

SEO strategySearch engine optimisation can be impacted significantly by using Twitter. It provides the dual benefit of Twitter links driving direct traffic to your website and sharing (retweeting) content globally to a new audience. Content will be distributed across a wider audience and potentially picked up by the media. Media journalists, professionals and bloggers are constantly seeking new content on stories and will republish online, increasing traffic throughput and brand awareness.

Best Practice Tip 27 Encouraging retweets can give SEO benefitsRetweeting will indirectly help your company’s search rankings through links from widgets on other sites (but not Twitter itself since links on Twitter are nofollowed). Of course retweets also drive extra traffic to your website, or others sharing your content on their websites and blogs. Content is key so make sure it is relevant and interesting.

Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land says: ‘Both Google and Bing tell me that who you are as a person on Twitter can impact how well a page does in regular web search.’

A company who has been successful by improving their search rankings in Google with their Twitter Strategy is Moz, a developer of SEO tools and resources. Their Twitter account is: @Moz. With over a quarter of a million followers, they distribute and promote content and use Twitter to help with customer service. Following this tweet on design publisher site Smashing Magazine, they ranked on the first page of Google. Prior to this, they were not ranking on this keyword ‘beginner’s guide’, as it is fairly generic.

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FOURACT: Encouraging interaction with TwitterThere’s a great danger of using Twitter simply as a broadcast tool. You can treat it as a focused channel for promotional offers like text messages or email blasts and you will get some take-up of these offers, but this is really missing the power of Twitter as a social network to share content and ideas and so expand your reach.

How will you interact with your audience and vice versa? It could be to encourage your audience or influencers to ‘take the next step’ and reach your defined goals. For example, clicking a link in your tweet, driving traffic to reach your landing page to fill in a form or register for an event, download a coupon for an instore promotion, to retweet your content or read your blog.

Strategy Recommendation 10 Plan your content strategy and think about where you are ‘adding value’ to both your business and your audience

Even social media is about defining the online value proposition (OVP) with your calls to action in your tweets in Twitter – plan, define and communicate the messages within your content strategy to interact with your audience.

This section will provide tips on how to maximise these opportunities through your content strategy, which is really your communications plan, and how to use it as part of your public relations and customer services strategies.

We believe that encouraging ongoing interaction needs a content marketing strategy and integrated approach to communications.

Here are some ideas to encourage interaction to get us started:

þ Ask questions around your tweets or those from other brands you follow. þ Use competitions based on interaction and sharing, e.g. recommend an XYZ. þ Use #hashtags to form discussion. þ Interacting with your audience on Twitter, whether it’s through tweeting their name starting

with ‘@’, retweeting to share content or answering customer questions. þ Don’t make tweets too long - then they can’t be retweeted once the followers @name is

added on þ Ask users to tweet you with pictures or Vine video clips in return for a RT, mention or incentive

Remember: Twitter users actively publish and leave comments on blogs, write product reviews and more so it’s increasingly important to interact with them positively as they become either your next customer or will reinforce your brand to a wide audience and ‘sell for you’.

http://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/online-value-proposition/online-value-proposition/

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Statistics in 2011 from a survey from Exact Target figures speak for themselves to show the influence of Twitter for you and your brand:

þ 72 per cent publish blog posts at least once a month. þ 70 per cent comment on others’ blog posts. þ 61 per cent write at least one product review a month. þ 61 per cent comment on news sites. þ 56 per cent write articles for third-party sites. þ 53 per cent post videos online. þ 50 per cent make contributions to wiki sites. þ 48 per cent share deals found through coupon forums.

Content strategyYour Twitter communications strategy which includes your content strategy is the same approach as planning for any other social media or marketing communications plan, to clearly define its purpose, choice of channel(s) and frequency of communication: For example are you: showcasing your company? Capturing an enquiry? Promoting an event or competition? Driving traffic to your website? Or obtaining customer feedback?

We are all taught the value that ‘content is king’ in online media. Think again. It’s true but everyone with a Twitter account will feel that their content is going to stand out from the crowd. You need to consider what to tweet, how often and why, to ensure you are interacting with your audience. Like any communications activity you need to constantly monitor and evaluate it, refine it accordingly, own up to your mistakes and learn from them!

Here are some tips for your content strategy:

þ Define the purpose of your message or content, to add value to your customers and reach your business or campaign goal(s).

þ Think about your style, tone and voice to portray your messages. Perhaps look at how your competitors are communicating. Define your own personality in line with your brand and values.

þ Consider not just up to 140-character tweets with text. You can share photos and images, Vines, link to videos, other channels or key landing pages to reach your desired goal.

þ Using adjectives to highlight the type of content can help it to be found but also entice the clickthrough e.g. [VIDEO], [INFOGRAPHIC] etc.

þ Tweet your feature stories: breaking story, quote and longer or short heading. þ Tweet enticements ‘in case you missed this’ or ‘coming soon’. þ Talk about other brands or new stories and join in, if you feel your followers would be

interested. þ Tweets should be part of an overall strategy or individual campaign and have a purpose. þ Search and interact with twitter users using @username and add to favourites, to show

you are open to ‘interact’. Defined further in followers’ strategy. þ Answer questions and encourage discussion but use quotes sparingly. þ Ask followers questions and use their answers in your blog posts, or retweet.

Buddymedia’s report on effective tweeting published in 2012 reinforces the impact of your content on a company’s engagement strategy: ‘Overall, the most successful brand Tweets are short (Tweets under 100 characters receive 17 percent higher engagement than longer ones) and link-based instead of original content (Tweets that contain links received an amazing 86 percent higher engagement than non-linkTweets). Perhaps surprisingly, requests

http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2011/08/18/twitter-users-are-more-likely-to-impact-your-brand-than-any-other-social-network/

http://twitpic.com/

http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/to-tweet-or-not-to-tweet-a-beginners-guide-for-brand-awareness-on-twitter/

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to Retweet prove to work, increasing their engagement by 12 times or more, especially if the full word (“Retweet”) is used instead of an abbreviation (“RT”).’

Set the right frequency of messagesTiming of tweets is important in the same way it is with TV advertising since you need to ensure your campaign messages are being displayed at a time when your audience is available and the message is potentially repeated to have an impact.

It’s difficult to get the balance right if you have a key message to communicate about a campaign or product launch; you don’t want to spam followers by repeating tweets, but the short half-life10 of a tweet (c 3 hours) means that you could miss communicating the message.

It can be useful to look at the frequency of tweets of your company and competitors in xefer (www.xefer.com/twitter) although the retweet number isn’t accurate and it’s based on US time. This example clear shows preferred times for tweeting. Tweriod (www.tweriod.com) is a more sophisticated tool that offers the same functionality.

10 Smart Insights: Half-life of different social media

http://www.xefer.com/twitter/

http://xefer.com/twitter/

http://www.tweriod.com/

http://www.smartinsights.com/email-marketing/email-marketing-analytics/did-you-know-how-scary-the-half-life-of-your-online-comms-is/

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You can use third-party tools to schedule your tweets and repeat messages, like HootSuite and Virtue. To help with scheduling, it’s worth reading Chris Soames’s blog post on Smart Insight’s website for the most popular tools being used at the moment to schedule tweets.

Best Practice Tip 28 Reach your audience when they are free to talk with you or will pick up your message – what is best for them as well as yourself?Scheduled tweets can help you reach your audience when they are ready to interact and help you manage. Use the auto-scheduling feature in HootSuite or tools like Buffer to assist with this.

A practical approach to emphasise key messages is to use a different tweet about the offer or campaign marked with a common hashtag to emphasise it. @asos use hash tags to emphasise a promotion, for example, #midseasonsale.

It’s worth planning a Twitter schedule by time and day, in an excel sheet, to remind you when you are tweeting during the day, week or month. For overseas audiences, remember the time difference, just as you would schedule your email campaigns. Some say to tweet at least five times a day but not in the same hour if it’s relevant – all commonsense which doesn’t always prevail!.

Buddymedia (with Salesforce), published a report which looked at ‘Effective Strategies for Tweeting’ around scheduling. Findings reported that scheduling can vary according to industry. It reported that the Entertainment industry which is tweeting on Sundays and Mondays are receiving 23 per cent higher engagement than average. Whereas, publishing companies tweeting on Saturdays are achieving 28 per cent higher than average rates. Overall, companies tweeting during the day and are attaining 30 per cent higher engagement rates between 8am and 7pm. So it’s worth evaluating and investing the time in this!

PR strategyCompanies are aware that defining the online PR strategy is important for SEO but are not quite ready for it, as evidenced by Chris Lee’s blog. Though, by defining a listening strategy you can gain insights into your brand, products and customers to help with your Twitter strategy. Find out what people are talking about, how they are using keywords and hashtags; use this to engage in conversation and start conversations. Read Chris Soames’s blog provides useful information on how to create a plan for Social Listening.

Eurostar is an example of a company who learnt the hard way when they set up Twitter as a marketing channel to purely push out messages. When they had a train crisis, their customers were tweeting for real-time information but no one was replying. A year later, their Senior Press Officer Aude Criquie announced: ‘They have turned about the negative comments with a solid social media strategy. Before 2010 we used social media mainly as a marketing channel, and not as a corporate communications or customer service tool. It was a missed opportunity, and since then we’ve listened and moved on.’

Another example of a brand using Twitter for real-time information is @SW_Trains who provide passengers on the South West Trains network with regular updates to journeys, delays and track maintenance.

Customer serviceCompanies are also using Twitter for customer service if it’s backed up that their customer insight is showing that their audience is using this channel. It can provide your company with huge benefits to answering customer queries with a cost-effective channel rather than via a call centre or doubling up, to reduce the strain on staff at peak times.

http://hootsuite.com/

http://www.vitrue.com/

ww.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-media-platforms/which-are-the-most-popular-social-media-management-tools/

ww.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-media-platforms/which-are-the-most-popular-social-media-management-tools/

http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/11207.aspx

http://www.buddymedia.com/

http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/to-tweet-or-not-to-tweet-a-beginners-guide-for-brand-awareness-on-twitter/

http://www.smartinsights.com/online-pr/online-pr-strategy/why-pr-agencies-should-own-seo-but-often-dont-deserve-to/

http://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-media-listening/social-listening-to-what/

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It can also provide real-time information and consistence messages with new and existing customers if it’s embedded across your organisation. Depending on the size of your company, it can be integrated with your online frequently asked questions (FAQs) and advanced customer relationship management (CRM systems), to ensure consistency and to manage peak times questions, setting and managing customer expectations.

If you are offering customer service as you likely will, it’s worth considering:

þ How quickly you are able to answer your customers’ questions and how you communicate your service levels in your profile bio?

þ How to personalise the customer experience? To add a personal touch, you can end your tweets with your personal name and/or for small businesses you could even use your face with the company logo:

þ How to build a relationship? Brands such as @npower and @VirginAtlantic use a consistent format to tell the user who is responding to customer enquiries.

https://twitter.com/VirginAtlantic

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A good example of a company committed to using Twitter for customer service by exceeding customer expectations is Best Buy and Twelpforce (@Twelpforce, @BestBuy, @BestBuyUK). Best Buy have a Twelpforce account on Twitter, where their employees use their company and Twitter ID to register, and all employee tweets are streamed into one account across their network of staff. It still allows customers to connect to an individual person and to view their profile.

Their strategy is focused on retention to build customer relationships and for acquisition, through running competitions and free prize giveaways for retweeting, links or using #hashtags.

Best Buy also monitors Twitter for brand mentions and reaches out to try to solve these problems. Kerry Bridges, Social Media Manager of Dell has said that around three-quarters of Dell’s Twitter service is in this category.

Best Practice Tip 29 Don’t expect service enquiries to go straight to your profileMonitor brand mentions and reach out to try to ameliorate negative experiences.

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FIVECONVERT: Turning Twitter interactions into leads and salesTwitter will help your company gain new enquiries or leads but they will not add value to your bottom line, unless your content links to sale. Of course, you also need a good conversion strategy to convert followers into customers.

It’s a matter of getting the balance right between sharing on Twitter and offering promotional lines.

It can take time to develop a long-term relationship, in particular with new customers, before they will commit to purchasing your product or service. Be patient and provide them with a good experience and useful content information that represents your company. Then, when they are ready to either buy into your company or perhaps refer you to a friend it’s worth the time, you know they have a good experience of your brand. Don’t forget your existing customers too.

This section will discuss how to improve conversion, using your retweeting strategy and reinforcing the importance of link building. Integration with other channels is covered in the content strategy in the ‘Act’ section.

Retweeting strategyRetweeting is where another Twitter user will either copy your original tweet or add their own commentary, customising it with colour or images, and sharing this content on Twitter or across other social media channels. It is abbreviated to ‘RT’.

It is great for extending your audience, increasing your brand, gaining more credibility with your area of expertise and, in turn, increasing your customer base/sales and acknowledge-ment of good content. Another benefit is that it will encourage new tweeters to follow you back if you have acknowledged their content.

There are mixed opinions about retweeting your own tweets. Some experts advise against it whereas others suggest you trial it. Why? There are thousands of tweets out there and sometime your own tweets are not read by even your own followers, so you can retweet occasionally as a reminder message.

Best Practice Tip 30 Encouraging commentary on retweets is powerfulLeave extra space on your tweet to allow others to comment as it adds credibility and positive comments, and encourages more followers.

How to retweet1. Autoretweet: click the retweet button. Automatically it retweets the message along

with the original Avatar attached to the tweet.

2. Manual process: copy and paste the message from the original Tweet. You copy and paste the tweet, and precede it with ‘RT’.

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How to increase your retweetsHere are some tips on how to boost your retweets and it’s worth reading the guide from Dan Zarella, who works at Hubspot, on how to quantify this.11

It overlaps with the content strategy advice in Section 4 ‘Act’, so only a few will be summarised below to reinforce the importance:

þ Less is more: leave space for your @username, follower comments and for ‘RT’. Use ‘RT’ even though it’s not necessary in the new feature as it returns a higher volume of retweets.

þ Timing: scheduling at the optimal time (as mentioned previously). þ Content quality: add value with interesting and informative content, with good links.

Where relevant, use images, photos or links to videos. Quality persuasive headlines are also important.

þ Add personalisation: Twitter users are more responsive to personalised tweets with words such as ‘you’.

þ Shortened URLs: you only have 140 characters to use it wisely. This also helps others retweet you and provides quantitative analysis on your clicks. A tool such as Bit.ly Pro is a good tool to use.

þ Use adjectives: they improve content and when retweeted it looks as though followers have added the adjective and it gives more credibility.

For more tips, read the July 2011 blog by Stephen Waddington, Managing Director of Speed Communications. His research findings showed that more than 20 per cent of Twitter users are spammers, so it’s important to prune your network regularly to sort out these issues.

Converting leads to sales through integrationThis guide has covered in great detail the importance of content and integrating Twitter with other channels, but ultimately, it’s all about the bottom line to the business – sales.

Here are some specific ideas on encouraging sale:

þ Drive traffic to your website for specific promotions. It’s a matter of balance. Although you shouldn’t oversell, you shouldn’t undersell either. If you have a great offer or a campaign you should mention it as a teaser, then provide the link and follow-up too. But don’t overdo it. Of course, you should direct to specific landing pages. Here you will be able to capture their details including email for example for a competition, drive them to the shopping cart, or simply to request a call back or instant messenger live chat when you can take their order. In addition, ensure your deepen engagement with clear navigation on your website and ensure your pages are fully optimised.

þ Use of images and photos. You may add photos or images to your tweets to display your products and then drive them to your point of sale.

11 Dan Zarrella: The Science of Twitter..

http://iwantmyname.com/services/url-shortener/bit.ly-pro-custom-domain-short-url-forwarding-service

http://www.speedcommunications.com/blogs/wadds/2011/07/06/sage-against-machines-the-new-twitter-rules/

http://www.slideshare.net/danzarrella/the-science-of-twitter

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þ Invites to events. Depending on your business, some companies convert their enquiries through either online webinars/events or through invitations to specific onsite events. Some consumers prefer face-to-face contact or to speak to someone if they are new to the brand or it’s an expensive product, or a technical product. Perhaps, link your tweet to a registration form on your website, drive them to your CRM system or provide an offer to drive them to a store for a timely discount for their first purchase. For online events, tweeting the event generates a wide audience and encourages the sharing of content, and they will have the opportunity for live chat. There are now iPhone Apps to help you tweet quicker.

þ Competitions and offers. Twitter will allow you to promote short-term campaigns only available on Twitter for a limited time. It also supports capturing your leads and encouraging people to experience your product or service, encouraging purchase. Producing Twitter coupons can be used to print off, shown on their phone with a unique code or used online. Using TwtQpon is one way to run Twitter coupon campaigns with mitigated risk of codes becoming viral.

Companies are using Twitter successfully to add value to their bottom line. Dell announced in 2012 that it reaped $3 million from Twitter-related sales. Primarily, it sells refurbished sales through @Delloutlet. Their success is attributed to sending tweets to subscribers, tweeting about their cost-effective systems, and providing coupons and clearance events.

In 2012, MTV Awards increased their viewers by nine per cent through Twitter, receiving over 10 million tweets, 3.37 million mentions of hashtag #VMA and driving 128,000 people to follow their MTV account on the day of the event. How? They prepared an integrated TV and Twitter campaign to provide an interactive experience using mobile and online ‘Twitter tracker’, using promoted trends. 2012 wasn’t an exception either, as demonstrated by the 2013 VMAs. Find out more from their article.

http://twtqpon.com/

http://www.informationweek.com/hardware/desktop/dell-makes-3-million-from-twitter-relate/217801030

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1713119/vma-ratings-record.jhtml

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SIXENGAGE: Keeping your audience engaged

Managing publishing for your Twitter profileLike all social media tools, you have to create dialogue and interact with your audience to fully ‘engage’– not just push out mass messages as a one-way broadcast channel! It is crucial that your organisation has an integrated communication plan as part of the overall marketing strategy, your company is ready to embrace cultural change and management is ready to it back up with the required resources and commitment.

Strategy Recommendation 11 Be committed to a long-term engagement strategy Don’t expect results over night as with most social channels. Connect with your followers, your audience and encourage discussion to build a long-term relationship. It can take time to build relationships and measure the impact.

You may wish to simply engage with your customers, potential new clients or influencers who could impact your brand such as the media or advocates. Be clear about who you are engaging and building relationships with.

The profile of the Twitter user

It is important to remember that whilst aiming for direct interaction with your Twitter followers, there is also a growth in ‘active passive’ users. The WebGlobalIndex study showed that only 51% of active users claim to have posted a tweet in the past month, which means that half the active user base is just reading, reacting or using Twitter as a source of discovery. This means that whilst harder to test, your content strategy should incorporate levers to appeal to even the users that don’t demonstrate engagement.

To help illustrate this, Amia conducted a study into the 6 types of social media user, analysing the behavioural characteristics of different social media persona types and how best to elicit engagement. The types were defined as no shows, newcomers, onlookers, cliquers, mix-n-minglers and sparks.


http://www.aimia.com/English/Home/default.aspx

http://consultandcdigital.com/6-types-of-social-media-user/

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This section will highlight some rules of engagement, how to improve your Twitter strategy and demonstrate how companies have gained clear wins through successfully interacting with their audience in Twitter, and bought into it as a long-term plan to fully embed it across their organisation. There will be tips on how to measure your level of engagement on Twitter so you can measure return on investment (ROI) and improve your usage.

Keeping your audience engaged is also about defining your content strategy with clear calls to action, and ensuring that your business goals are being delivered. It’s also key to have a good content strategy (covered in Section 4 ‘Act’ and a follower strategy, part 2.

What are the rules of Twitter engagement?We’ve grouped our ideas on ongoing engagement here:

1. Long-term commitment. Manage your tweets and account on an ongoing basis and not as ad hoc postings. Commit to regular tweets with relevant content and conversation. It’s not about a one night stand but a long-term relationship!

2. Be personal. Even if you have a corporate account, rather than a personal account, still be ‘personable’ so your messages fit with your brand and values.

3. Be authentic. We’re all human so admit to your mistakes, but only if you are wrong!4. Interesting content. You will be followed if you have interesting or unique content.

Content strategy covered in Section 4 ‘Act’.5. Don’t just sell yourself. Don’t just sell yourself, your product or your expertise. Talk

about other subjects and share content from other sources that your followers will be interested in and show your personality. Strike the balance!. Don’t be too personal!

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6. Don’t over please. Everyone has different opinions so it’s fine to have your own but avoid being negative towards others. Be open-minded and accept you can’t always change people’s opinions.

7. Reply to your messages. It’s a two-way conversation – don’t push out tweets and ignore replies.

8. Ask questions. Engage by asking questions and start a dialogue.9. Be positive. ‘Make love not war!’ Positive messages are better received than negative

tweets. It works two ways so if you receive negative comments – be thick-skinned and don’t respond (or take it offline).

10. Provide recommendations and be helpful. Be proactive to find topics and customer issues where you can respond and offer free advice – feedback on products or experiences or useful resources.

11. Avoid jargon. Use plain language to reinforce your authenticity.12. Focus on interaction. Interact where you can create value. It’s not about the number of

followers you have to measure your success or influence.

Best Practice Tip 31 Keep it realFocus on being honest, authentic and open when engaging to stay creative and where possible to provide original thought-provoking content. We are all human and can make mistakes and simply own up to it!. Sometimes, it’s about experimenting!

Engaging using Twitter for B2B marketingIn our 7 Steps to Brilliant B2B Marketing book, René Power recommends these approaches based on content curation. He says that content curation is a safe, ‘resource light’ way to build profile and authority in a sector and there are a number of ways of ensuring you always have plenty of useful curated content to put before your trade/B2B audience.

KISSmetrics is a great example of a B2B site appealing to digital marketers whose growth has been largely based on curation, plus creation of in-depth blog posts.

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René recommends using an 80/20 rule for curating of content for B2B marketing, that’s 80 per cent tweets covering other content and 20 per cent yours.

Best Practice Tip 32 Use content curation as an engagement approachContent curation requires you to:

þ Decide on the types of content you think will be useful and interesting for your audience. þ Set up a ‘listening post’ to monitor this content from different sources, for example,

using Twitter lists, RSS feeds or Pinterest for rich content. þ Define how often you should share content through Twitter and then share posts as

they become available. You may not be first to report on new developments, but being a ‘fast follower’ can help sharing.

Consider applying the “80:20” rule of sharing other content against yours.

Content curation also works as an approach for consumer markets. René recommends these approaches.

þ Follow the right people. You will be amazed how rich the flow of information is from the leading players including industry giants, influential individuals, the media, government bodies, customers, prospects and suppliers.

þ Use the media and news to position as ‘up to date’. Sectors like packaging are well supported on Twitter with many publications and independent bloggers offering regular access to insightful news and comment. Even by just setting up an account and watching, you will be accessing useful information.

þ Share industry news. Taking this strategy early on in your Twitter experience ensures you are associated with content related to specific topics or sectors. This is important as it will drive interest in you and over time an expectation from those who follow you.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=social+media+marketing+site%3Atwitter.com

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sociable/

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þ Share research and ask questions. Twitter offers huge scope to run surveys. Asking for help, advice and opinion often solicits a response; it is after all human nature. And make your tweets unique by passing positive comment and name-checking the original source.

þ Deliver ongoing customer service. Offering tips and tricks from the industry to help customers improve their understanding of regulations, products and services is a surefire way of building credibility.

How to measure engagementIf you engage with your audience via Twitter then they will recommend your brand and products, and purchase more from you over time. Here are some metrics to consider to help measure this depending on your business to include measuring:

þ Number of retweets. þ Number of comments. þ Number of replies to your tweets. þ Ratings and reviews. þ Added you to lists and favourites through your email notifications. þ Number of links clicked from your tweet. þ Reply rate: number of replies as percentage of followers. þ Retweet rate: number of retweets as percentage of followers. þ Engagement rate: sum of replies and retweets in the number of your followers.

http://wefollow.com/twitter/digitalmarketing

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SEVENResources

Twitter resources þ Twitter Best Practices: https://business.twitter.com/basics/best-practices.

Twitter directories þ Wefollow: Directory of Twitter followers organised by product, service or industry. Great

for targeting influencers of your business. Search for Journalists for PR strategy. þ Twellow: Similar to Yellow Pages where you can search for Twitter users by categories. þ Twibes: Create and join Twitter groups.

Mashable: Twitter guide book: http://mashable.com/guidebook/twitter/

50 Power Twitter tips: http://www.chrisbrogan.com/50-power-twitter-tips/

The Telegraph: Twitter: a step-by-step guide to getting started: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technology/shanerichmond/8039797/Twitter_a_stepbystep_guide_to_getting_started/

CNET: Newbie’s guide to Twitter: http://news.cnet.com/newbies-guide-to-twitter/

Smashing Magazine: 99 Essential Twitter Tools And Applications: http://www.smash-ingmagazine.com/2009/03/17/99-essential-twitter-tools-and-applications/

Twitter toolsThese are our recommendations on the best timesaving tools for Twitter

þ Brandfluencers (www.brandluencers.com) shows you the influencers who drive the most visits by connecting to your Google Analytics

þ Commun.it (www.commun.it) helps manage your contacts within Twitter and finds others to follow

þ Hootsuite (www.hootsuite.com) our recommended platform for monitoring and posting updates on Twitter and other social networks.

þ Klout (www.klout.com) shows the most influential people and sites on a topic þ Manage Flitter (www.manageflitter.com) – use to manage your followers and find new

followers (Pro version) þ Monitter (www.monitter.com) Displays realtime updates to users or topics entered] þ Twitalyzer (www.twitalyzer.com) One of the best tools for reviewing the influence of a

Twitter account þ Xefer (www.xefer.com/twitter) reviews frequency of tweets of your company and

competitors. Tweriod (www.tweriod.com) is a more sophisticated tool that offers the same functionality.

þ 100 Twitter tools categorised (DailyTekk) A useful compilation

Twitter glossaryThis Section is a guide to understanding the Twitter vernacular, and is adapted from Twitter’s

Help Centre. See the link below for more details. https://support.twitter.com/articles/166337-

þ #. This is a hashtag. The # symbol is used to mark keywords or topics in a tweet.

https://business.twitter.com/basics/best-practices

http://wefollow.com/

http://www.twellow.com

http://mashable.com/guidebook/twitter/

http://www.chrisbrogan.com/50-power-twitter-tips/

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technology/shanerichmond/8039797/Twitter_a_stepbystep_guide_to_getting_started/

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technology/shanerichmond/8039797/Twitter_a_stepbystep_guide_to_getting_started/

http://news.cnet.com/newbies-guide-to-twitter/

http://brandfluencers.com/

http://www.commun.it


http://www.klout.com

http://manageflitter.com/

http://www.monitter.com

http://twitalyzer.com/

http://www.xefer.com/twitter/

http://xefer.com/twitter/

http://www.tweriod.com/

http://dailytekk.com/2012/03/19/the-top-100-twitter-tools-of-2012-categorized/

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þ @. The @ sign is used to call out usernames in tweet. When a username is preceded by an @ it links to the Twitter user’s profile.

þ API. Application Programming Interface. Contains all Twitter data and is used to build applications that access Twitter.

þ Application (third-party). A third-party application is a product created by a company other than Twitter and used to access tweets and other Twitter data.

þ Avatar. The profile picture uploaded to your Twitter profile in the ‘settings’ tab of your account.

þ Bio. A short personal description used to define who you are on Twitter. þ Blocking. To block someone on Twitter means they will be unable to follow you or add

you to their lists, and their mentions cannot be seen on your mentions tab. þ Connections. The third-party websites and applications to which you’ve granted access

to your public Twitter profile. You can revoke access at any time. þ Deactivation. A way to remove your profile from Twitter. Information from removed

profiles remains tied in Twitter’s system for 30 days. þ Direct Message. Also called a DM or a message. These are private tweets that only be

seen by the sender and the recipient. You can tweet DMs by preceding your message with ‘d’.

þ Email notifications. Personal preferences specifying which notifications are received by email, following a change to your account, such as new followers, a retweet, mention or direct message.

þ Fail whale. The Twitter whale that appears every time the Twitter site is experiencing downtime, or the site is having trouble keeping up with traffic.

þ Timeline is a real-time list of tweets on a Twitter account’s homepage. It shows their own tweets, retweets, lists and favourites.

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