A Checklist for Managing an Effective Twitter Campaign

by TECHNOLOGY INFORMATION 4/19/2015 04:46:00 am 0 comments Advice Alexa Rank Backlink Blogger Google Pagerank Pingblog SEO SEO Blog SEO Book SEO News Template Blog Template SEO Tips Online Tutorial SEO Tutorials Web SEO Widget SEO Wordpress

Managing thousands of followers is often more difficult than acquiring them. When you’re cluttering your timeline with hundreds of tweets each and every minute, it can seem impossible to cut through all of the noise and identify your target audience while maintaining meaningful interaction, which is the foundation of any successful Twitter campaign.

Many marketers agree that launching and maintaining an effective Twitter campaign is more difficult than it seems, especially for those who are unprepared. If you’d like to maintain a huge Twitter following in no time at all, this checklist will have you set up and ready to become the next successful Twitter sensation.

Understanding the Basics

• Hashtags – A hashtag, such as #ILUVNY, is simply a word or phrase that is preceded with a pound or hash symbol, allowing people to search for a variety of tweets about a specific subject. By using hashtags with your tweets, you gain exposure to thousands of people who would have previously never seen your tweets.

Best of all, these people are already interested in what you’re tweeting about. This is one of the most effective and simplest ways of growing a massive targeted audience, building relationships with the audience, and selling to the audience time and time again.

• Lists – Another terrific way of tracking Twitter users is by organizing your followers into categories and placing them into segmented lists. A Twitter list is nothing more than a group or grouping of followers and leads.

Creating a Twitter list is easy. In fact, all you have to do is open the drop box located on the right sidebar, click on “Create New List,” select a name for the list, and choose whether to make the list public or private.

You are allowed to create up to 20 lists, with up to 500 people on each list. The most effective lists are organized according to the types of Twitter followers marketers encounter, which can range from individuals to large organizations.

Unfortunately, most people fail because they neglect to vet their followers before adding them to their lists. Lists should only include followers who provide value for your Twitter stream. It is these people you want to re-tweet and rely on to re-tweet your messages as well, which is necessary for a successful Twitter campaign.

Organize Lists and Searches with Hootsuite

When you have identified some useful hashtags and begun populating some lists, it’s time to begin organizing them. This is where the power of Hootsuite begins to come into play. Hootsuite is a social media interface that publishes to Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, LinkedIn, and other social sites. Hootsuite also allows you to manage multiple profiles, shorten URLs, schedule messages, and monitor the effectiveness of your Twitter campaigns.

With Hootsuite, you can also create columns related to keyword searches or certain hashtags, which can be viewed right next to your home feed, making it extremely easy to identify target audiences and optimize campaigns. You’re also able to effortlessly move between hundreds of social media profiles that can each have their own lists and search columns. This allows you to easily monitor a massive amount of information in only a couple of clicks.

Hootsuite is tremendously valuable for managing keyword streams. To set up a Hootsuite keyword stream, simply click on “Add Stream” near the top of the screen, select “Keyword” from the options tab, and choose your keywords. After doing so, a column will appear showing all of the tweets including your selected keywords. You can use these keyword streams to find new followers already interested in the products or type of content you provide.

List streams are extremely valuable as well, and the set up process is rather similar to the set up process for keyword streams. Simply select “Add Stream” again, then select “List” instead of “Keyword” from the options, and finally select a list already existing on your Twitter account. These search columns and lists will become a valuable resource for identifying and targeting new followers as well as discovering interesting content to re-tweet.

Have Plenty of Images Ready to Use

In a recent study on Twitter activity, 92 percent of all brand engagement consisted of tweets that included links. In the same study, tweets with image links were found to have double the engagement rates of tweets not containing image links. Thus, it’s important to consistently tweet high quality images that may gain the interest of Twitter followers. To hit the ground running and remain armed with useful images, you should subscribe to photo sharing sites and begin stockpiling an array of potential images.

Funnel Followers to Blog Posts

Twitter is a terrific place to discover interesting blog posts and articles. In fact, “How To” guides and “Top 10” articles are often quite popular on Twitter. Therefore, you should write engaging and helpful articles for your particular field and find attractive titles to post on Twitter along with your blog’s URL. You’ll not only attract more followers by providing helpful and interesting information, but you’ll increase your site traffic as well.

Needless to say, you should have a blog set up with adequate content and a nice theme prior to launching a Twitter campaign. Luckily, there are dozens of fairly nice, free WordPress themes available, making it possible to get a blog off the ground in only one or two days.

Create Useful Messages

It’s important to tweet as often as possible and provide your followers with quality tips and messages. Since it’s impossible to be on Twitter day and night or always have something creative and useful to say, you should create a list of interesting tips, articles, and references to be ready to use whenever you want. Ideally, the list of messages should contain useful tips, industry-specific information, and references or links to your blog.

Services like TwitterFeed can be useful for allowing you to connect your Twitter account to your blog or create a schedule for future tweets. However, even if you do opt for one of these services, nothing replaces a human presence on social media.

Have Twitter Buttons on Your Website

If you have a blog or website already, which you should, you must make it easy for visitors to share it with others. Thus, you should have social bookmark buttons strategically placed on your website or blog to make it easier to share and begin spreading virally. When selecting buttons, just stick with the default buttons, since people understand what they do and tend to trust them more.

Create Special Offers

If you already have a sizable target audience, it may be a wise idea to develop special offers specific to Twitter users. This will help create a buzz and allow you to reward your followers while attracting new followers as well. Therefore, it’s a good idea to brainstorm and have some special offers or contest ideas prior to launching a Twitter campaign.

Develop Landing Pages Specifically for Twitter Users

When you have a special offer for Twitter users or are holding a contest, you should consider developing landing pages for the event that are optimized specifically for Twitter. This will allow you to manipulate your site’s average visiting time, improve the effectiveness of your campaign, and ultimately increase your revenue. Thus, it may be helpful to have a landing page or two up and ready to go, or at least be comfortable with creating landing pages before going live with a campaign.

With this checklist in hand, you’ll be managing successful Twitter campaigns in no time at all.