TWITTER MARKETING STRATEGY

 “The more you invest in having meaningful conversations with your audience on X, the more they’ll feel like they are part of your brand and part of a larger community,” says Chelsea Evans-Flower, owner of Scott Social.

 Before you can effectively engage with your community, though, you need to understand exactly who your community is. Fortunately, X is a very effective platform for social listening. Hootsuite Listening in particular can give you deep insights into who your audience is and what they expect from you.

 You can use Quick Search to discover trending hashtags, brands, and events anywhere in the world. You can also track conversations about your brand—including social sentiment—to learn who your audience is and how X users feel about your brand right now.

 “Mimic how they speak (don’t be afraid to use their slang), find community tags they resonate with, and identify individuals or other brands they engage with. Use keywords related to topics of interest and show up in these communities with your audience.”

 “The brands that tend to be the most successful on X are the ones that truly take the time to understand their target audience,” says Qetsiyah Jacobson, a social media community manager.

 As you saw in the last point, your brand voice is not just about how you want to present yourself as a brand. It’s about how best to speak to your followers to ensure they feel like your content is created just for them.

 “The best, most follow-worthy brands have fun with their tweets. Use the network to raise brand awareness and keep your product at the top of your audience’s mind. Let your paid marketing efforts drive demand generation. Your organic efforts can drive brand interest and community growth.”

 We talked about using social listening to get a sense of what your audience expects. Once you put your X (Twitter) marketing strategy into action, you need to analyze your performance to improve your results over time.

 Using the 80-20 rule, you should limit promotional posts to just 20% of your content. The other 80% should inform, educate, or entertain your audience. Since the promotional content will likely link off-platform, focus on making the 80% Twitter-first so people don’t have to click away to get value.

 The rule of thirds is similar but a bit more specific. One-third of your content can promote your brand, one-third can share ideas and information from thought leaders in your industry, and one-third can be used for personal interactions with your audience.

 For the best results, make sure you’re posting the right type of content at the right time. Hootsuite’s data shows that in general, the best time to post on X is 7 a.m. PST on Mondays and 10 a.m. PST on Wednesdays.

 For customized posting time recommendations based on your specific X (Twitter) marketing goals, use the Best Time to Publish tool built into the Hootsuite social media management platform. It uses your own historical engagement data to find the best times to post for maximum awareness, engagement, or traffic.

 Combining detailed analytics monitoring with an in-depth social listening program allows you to fill your content calendar with bold bets. You know what to expect from your audience, and you have the tools to understand their reactions in real time. This gives the freedom to experiment in ways that build true brand loyalty.

 “There have been so many times where the posts we almost didn’t hit publish on were the ones that popped off and drove brand love,” says Gabe Gomez, social strategy lead at Verizon. “Have the courage to try new formats or a new tone—you might be surprised at the results.”

 To make the most of your ads budget, apply the lessons learned from your organic Twitter marketing plan to your ads strategy. Consider putting some budget behind your best-performing X posts to extend the audience.

 It’s also a good idea to look at both paid and organic posts that are performing well on other platforms and think about ways to turn that content into an X ad. OwlyWriter AI can help here by rewriting existing social content into an X-appropriate format.

 To manage your budget effectively and make changes on the fly based on your results, track your paid and organic content in the same dashboard using Hootsuite Social Ads. You can analyze more than 100 metrics for your X ad campaigns.

 It’s always helpful to know how your marketing on Twitter stacks up against the competition. We’ve pulled these Twitter marketing benchmarks for every industry from the industry benchmarking tool built into the Hootsuite dashboard.

 You’ll notice the benchmarks vary significantly by industry, so make sure you’re comparing yourself to the right field. For instance, other industries will never match the click-throughs of an entertainment and media account, the audience growth rate of a technology account, or the engagement rate of a nonprofit. That’s okay! Aim to align with your own industry, not Twitter’s top accounts.

Cold Dm

 The jury is still out, but some brands are seeing early success on Threads. The key seems to be a follower-focused approach to engagement. People expect a response on Threads and they will only stick around if they get it.

 For now, Threads is still experimental territory. The app has 175 million monthly active users as of Q2 2024. (Compare that to 611 MAUs on X.) But the Threads audience is still growing, and the app bumped TikTok from its three-year reign as the most downloaded app in 2023.

 When planning your Threads strategy, remember that the top reasons people downloaded Threads are because it looked fun and they wanted to try a new social media platform. Embrace that spirit of playful experimentation as you adapt your X (Twitter) content marketing for this new platform — and follower growth will come.

 Use Hootsuite to execute your Twitter marketing plan alongside all your other social media activity. From a single dashboard you can monitor your competitors, grow your followers, schedule tweets, and analyze your performance.

 Christina Newberry has been writing about digital marketing since the prehistoric days of 2002, when email opt-ins were every marketer's biggest goal. With a deep understanding of how to connect to online audiences, she shifted her focus to social media and has been contributing to the Hootsuite blog since 2016.

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 Keep your names consistent across all social media profiles. If you use a name that’s different from your brand or company name, you might confuse followers or make your page hard to find.

 The cleaner and simpler the logo, the better. Stick with a version of the image that can be seen even when compressed, since people will be viewing your profile on different-sized devices.

 You may even be running a promotional deal where followers can get discounts. Use a tool like Canva to create a simple graphic (they have dozens of free templates!) and add it to your tweet.

 It’s now easier than ever to pitch your ideas to someone with a large following. If they like what you bring to the table, they can change your brand’s world with one simple post.

 There are tons of tools—both free and paid—available to support your Twitter marketing strategy. From tools that integrate Twitter with your website, to those that schedule posts, track hashtags, and more, here are just a few:

 Buffer: Buffer is used by many professionals to schedule tweets (and posts for other social networks) throughout the month. Rather than sitting by your computer waiting to post at the best time for your audience, use Buffer to schedule tweets for maximum impact.

 Hootsuite: Whereas Buffer is a comprehensive social media scheduling tool, Hootsuite was designed as a one-stop-shop for social media management. Not only can you schedule posts, but you can also track in-depth analytics for all social networks in one place.

 SocialOomph: SocialOomph is a popular freemium service that lets you schedule tweets, track keywords, extend your profiles, and more. You can also tweet via email, manage DMs, purge tweets, and more for up to five Twitter accounts.

 Paper.li: Paper.li is a unique application that lets you curate tweets and other social media posts into a newspaper-like format. It’s a great way to keep followers updated on content or feature follower’s content for even more engagement.

 These professionals can assist with any account-related questions and treat Twitter like a phone call, email, or web chat. And since 64% of customers on Twitter say they’d rather message a dedicated support handle than make a phone call, it’s a must for your business.