If one of your New Year’s resolutions is to increase engagement on Twitter and for your Twitter account to work harder for you this year, you should try some of the following best Twitter tips to drive your success.

Just try one or two of these eighteen action areas if the full list is too much, then see what the impact is. If it’s still too much, I would love you to check out our final tip, and see how I can help you increase your Twitter engagement:

18 best Twitter tips for 2018

1. Planning

Avoid social media block by actively planning your content. Say something different on each platform and avoid any automatic cross-posting to stay relevant to each audience on different platforms.

By planning ahead and scheduling your content you will be able to ensure that a) you always have something to say and b) that you never get that feeling of falling behind with your social media plans because you are acting ad hoc rather than in a controlled and consistent manner.

If you can plan ahead a whole year then go for it – if not then quarterly, monthly or even weekly planning will all help you keep control of and maximise your social media time.

2. Scheduling

Use a tool to schedule your content so that you can make the best use of your time – social media is no fun if it takes too much time for the return you see.

Using a scheduling tool like buffer, hootsuite or meetedgar will allow you to plan a consistent approach to content and will allow you to be ‘present’ on Twitter without spending all of your time there when you could be running your business.

Although you may schedule your content, you will still need to check in for replies, responses and new connections, and to make sure you are getting the interactions you are looking for.

3. Measuring

Analyse and learn from your Twitter activity – using Twitter’s own analytics or those of third-party apps such as buffer and hootsuite.

Track followers, engagement rates, retweets, link clicks, impressions and likes.

Look at how your tweets are performing, and you will soon be able to provide more of the tweets that have higher engagement, will get a feel for the best times of day to post, and can pursue a deeper relationship with people who are particularly interested in your feed.

4. Profile

Give your profile a bit of attention. Update your photo, review your bio. Use as much of the 160-character limit as you can and make use of the main keywords you have for your business. If you have room, include a phone number – this gives direct access to prospects looking for your services.

5. Pin posts to your profile

If you are offering a new service or product, if you have a sale or a new freebie then you can pin this to the top of your profile, so that people checking your Twitter bio will see your most important message at the same time.

Remember to keep this current over time, so that people will see your most relevant message first. To do this simply go to the tweet you want to pin and click the right-hand arrow next to the tweet; this will give you an option to pin or unpin a particular tweet from your profile.

6. Media

Using visual prompts in your feed will increase your engagement, as tweets with images can get as much as 30% more engagement, while video included in tweets can multiply your retweet rate by 6 times or more.

With 80% of UK users accessing Twitter via mobile, it makes sense that visually compelling posts will catch the eye and stop the endlessly scrolling thumb. You can switch different images in and out to make your content re-use more interesting as well.

7.Content curation and creation

Provide real value to your followers. Offer your own content where it is of value and can help others Curate other people’s valuable content to share with your followers.

If you retweet other content that you think your followers will find interesting, preface the retweet with a comment as to why people should take note of it – what commentary can you make that will add value to the retweet?

By positioning yourself as a source of valuable information you will gain more interested followers and can pick up conversations with them from there.

If someone does reply or retweet you, do acknowledge them, and follow up with conversation – Twitter is all about connections rather than broadcasting after all.

8. Get personal

Allow your personality to come through, from your profile picture and biography through to your tweets.

While you might share content from your industry, from customers, resources that resonate with your audience, people are also looking for the story behind your business, your personality and what motivates you.
People love seeing the people behind a company, what the culture is, what your motivations are, what your interests are. You can include some of this while being informal, and if you are able to tie all this informality back to your brand that will resonate more with your audience.

And be nice, be kind – there is no place or need for abuse or insults or aggressive comments. As everyone’s mother (including mine) used to say, ‘if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.’

9. Hashtags

Good hashtags can really help to expand the audience for your tweets. Using one or two hashtags for each tweet will give you the best chance at engagement, as using any more than that has been found less effective.

Search Twitter for hashtags that are relevant to your business and to your customers to identify which ones will give you the most return. Click To TweetSearch Twitter for hashtags that are relevant to your business and to your customers to identify which ones will give you the most return.

Be cautious about how you use hashtags, always be clear about the meaning of a hashtag before you use it, and avoid getting inappropriately involved with hashtags that may be particularly sensitive – don’t try and sell your products using a hashtag that is being used to commiserate or discuss a particular piece of news.

Keep a list of relevant hashtags and make regular use of them, and keep an eye out for opportunities to interact with or showcase your knowledge in discussions using relevant hashtags.

10. Lists

Lists are a really great and underused way of getting more organised and methodical about your Twitter engagement strategy. While tweets in a single timeline are easily missed, you will be more easily able to follow conversations and make targeted comments in areas if you are tracking activities through lists.

Lists can be either public or private, and you may set up one that tracks competitors or prospects, that tracks industry news or influencers, that follows local businesses that may be relevant to you and your customers.

Lists make keeping up in conversations easier and makes getting real engagement simpler as you can target people you really want to engage with and see and respond to their activity with more immediacy.

11. Active following

Review new followers often, and actively follow back the ones that are interesting and relevant to you. You will grow your following more quickly if you manage this as part of your Twitter activity, and you will see if you are attracting the followers you want as a result of how you are presenting yourself on Twitter.

Search for people who may be interested in the same things as you, target prospects and get to know them via Twitter, follow your customers and engage with them, follow people in your industry you admire and understand what it is that makes them so successful. There are plenty tools that can help you with this, you could check out ManageFlitter or Crowdfire as a starting point, both of which have free options.

By actively thinking about how and why you are growing your following you will be able to stay more focused and more targeted, meaning that you spend less time scrolling and more time engaging.

12. Targeted retweeting

While you might retweet and comment on information you think your followers will enjoy and find valuable, you can also use retweets as a way of engaging with people you want to get to know better or who you want to get to buy into your products or services.

People are generally interested in who is retweeting them and this can be a great way into a direct conversation and moving a conversation to a sale or a collaboration.

13. Chats and events

Getting involved in Twitter chats and events can help you find new interesting people to follow as well as learning about new ideas as part of the chat or event.

Make a list of regular Twitter chats where your prospects might hang out or where you can share your knowledge and increase your reputation as an expert.

Talking with many people on a Twitter chat can lead to further individual conversations, which again can lead to business opportunities where you may not have seen them previously.

14. Conversation

Talk to people. Address individuals directly by using their Twitter name and take the conversation from there.

Make connections, meet interesting people, enjoy the whole range of people and information that is out there. By just spending 10 minutes a day checking out people on your lists, searching out people who are discussing topics that interest you, or asking questions and seeing who responds, you will enjoy a richer experience of Twitter and will get a greater understanding of how you can make connections and enrich your experience.

Don’t use these conversations to sell, use them to see what connections you can make and where that might lead you.

15. Post consistency

Tweet often and tweet regularly, using the planning and scheduling approach I discussed above.

An average user may tweet up to 20 times a day, and with an average lifespan of between 15-20 minutes each of your tweets doesn’t have very long to make an impact.
By setting up your schedule to post consistently, and by determining the best times of day for your tweets, you have more chance of getting the audience your tweets deserve.

And don’t be afraid to tweet the same content more than once – this can be effective in catching people in different time zones, or who didn’t see your tweet the first time around.

16. Promote your account

Tell people about your Twitter account and activity – make sure you have Twitter buttons on your website, in your email signature, on your business card – ask people to follow you on Twitter and welcome them when they do.

Look for opportunities to share your Twitter feed when you are elsewhere online – maybe you answer someone’s query on Facebook or leave a comment on LinkedIn – there are many opportunities to tell more people about your account and encourage following (but not spamming).

17. Twitter cards, promotion, advertising

All of the tips I have given above you will have been able to implement with little or no cost or technical ability. There are more opportunities directly with Twitter to promote your account which include Twitter cards, promotion and advertising.
I would recommend trying other, free tactics before pursuing paid activities with Twitter, dependent on what your overall strategy is, where your audience is, and what your expectations are from paid activity.
Twitter advertising costs at present don’t compare favourably with Facebook, and new ideas that twitter are floating such as promotional accounts are yet to prove their worth. If you are tempted to experiment with paid options, then you will need to be crystal clear about what you want to achieve and how you will measure your success – then these options may be made to work well for you.

18. Too many best Twitter tips?

If this all is starting to seem overwhelming, and you want to see results but don’t know where to start, please do get in touch. We can talk for 30 minutes with no obligation or charge and have lots of ideas about how you can make Twitter work well for your business.

If this is something you would like to explore further, please call us on 01491 614404 and see how we can help you today.

You can never have too many best Twitter tips, as the platform continues to change and grow over time. Do you have a particular tip to share that has worked for you? I would love to hear about it in the comments below.