This post originally appeared on the iStrategy blog where I contribute regularly articles about leveraging social media and technology for small businesses. Subscribe to their blog for more great articles.
Can you imagine that just a few years ago Twitter didn’t exist (I won’t “exist” too)? Today the phrase “follow us” or “follow me” is commonly used everywhere – on the news, radio, on ads and more. And let’s not forget #hashtags that appear on TV shows like X-Factor so that viewers can easily follow the conversations.
Today Twitter is not only used by individuals but is also adopted by brands and businesses to both promote their business on this network and also to be a part of a wider conversation (as McDonald’s did recently).
Buddy Media recently analysed over 320 Twitter handles of the world’s biggest brands to determine what works and what doesn’t; here are some of the key insights from it.
5 Strategies for Using Twitter Effectively
1. Keep Tweets Short
According to their insights, tweets that contained less than 100 characters received 17% higher engagement compared to tweets that were longer. <tweet this>
2. Use one or two hashtags
The study also found that many brands are underutilising hashtags – only 24% of brands’ tweets constains hashtags. Brands that uses hashtags received two times more engagement than those without them. However, the engagement levels drop if brands use more than three hashtags. Remember: Less is MORE!
Brands and businesses should limit usage to one or two hashtags per tweet.
3. Use Images in your Tweets
A picture is not only worth a thousand words; it also counts for replies, retweets and views on twitter. According to the Buddy Media research, tweets that contained pictures or links to images received twice the engagement.
4. Add a call to action
You might think this is common sense, but asking users to retweet really does work on Twitter. In fact, according to Buddy Media, tweets that contains the word “RT” or “Retweet” receive 12x higher retweet shares compared to those that don’t include a call to action.
5. Spell out the word “Retweet”
This is something new for me: according to their data, by spelling the word “RETWEET” the average retweet rate is 23 times higher. <tweet this>
That is not all the data found. Buddy Media has also included a cheat sheet that you can print out to put in front of your desk to help you tweet effectively in the future. I recommend you read their research for a deeper understanding about how to get the most out of Twitter for your brand.
There are some great insights and tips here. I believe that we shouldn’t leave out one of the most important element in social media – INTERACTION – as that is one of the most important elements in making a brand or business successful on twitter.
INTERACTION is one of the most important elements in making a brand or business successful on twitter. <tweet this>
What do you think? love to hear your thoughts.
photo by by Mr & Mrs Apteryx australis
These are all super helpful tips Aaron. Thanks for putting this together.
I like the ‘cheat sheet’ idea. Just to get all of your thoughts in order. It’s so damn easy to get distracted day in and day out.
Cheers!
Great ideas and so helpful! as you’ve just noted it, “Tweeting” is a very recent action: such reminders are greatly valuable for most of us! thanks!
Love this – thanks a bunch for sharing this! Especially the spelling out of the word Retweet. I’ll definitely use that in the future.
The beauty of data today is that we can look through all the Tweets and determine what is most shareable. I wonder if we keep perfecting this knowledge until one day we start using software to write out Tweets that share links, and be more “shareable” than people-written ones? But that’s a discussion for another day lol.
I never would have thought to type “Retweet” out in my tweets…I will definitely try it out!
Thanks Drew! So glad you like the cheat sheet. Let me know how it works out
Its crazy how most of us won’t be able to live without it 😀
Let me know how they work out. I do see some results from them
That would be crazy! Its partially happening with great tools such as buffer. Next is a “recommend tool” to help us tweet.
lets continue this in the future.
Will do @askaaronlee:disqus
Thanks again!
Maybe automatic headline writing software that ultimate make the whole thing easier to tweet by having a good title? I am excited by the progress we are having. Most important thing is to not fall behind, particularly as growth becomes exponential.
I think we have a good business idea here.
A software that takes a look at the keywords you’re trying to get ranked for, searches it on google, look at the blogs which has the most viral shares and recommends you a couple of title that it think is viral? 😀
All we need now is a programmer. We can do the marketing.
Hi Aaron…..
Thanks for Great Tips about Twitter…
I have around 400 follower on twitter but not getting any significant traffic from twitter…..I’ll try to follow your tips and then lets see what happen
Let me know how they work out, otherwise you could try to grow your tribe too 😉
I love all of these suggestions but the image one I think can be HUGE.
Recently I read something that suggested the same is true for Facebook – by adding an image, you get way more attention than if you just wrote out some text.
For me, I love connecting images to insights I make on my blog post topics so this comes naturally to me and makes the idea of posting more fun for me but as this evidences, for my audience.
Thanks Aaron for sharing this list. They’re all easy to do and easy not to do but it will be interesting to see what kind of impact they have.
I love these Twitter and Facebook best practices … keep them coming please.
Great article. short specific and some new info about the word “retweet.” It’ll be interesting to observe the longevitiy of that little tip. Sometimes sharing dulls their panache. But then there will be something and I’ll be sure to check your blog to read the latest. I retweeted it. 🙂
Great article – especially insights on RETWEET vs RT!
Ya. This is something interesting. i’d like to try my hand on this point 🙂
Some good insights, I went on to get a lot of followers today, and my account get closed, for agressive/spam attitude, I just got bored because i broke my ankle and can’t do much at the moment. What is a good/accepted rate for increasing my crowd? I don’t do spam technics, I hate it, I just open dialog, and promote, on the basis of common interest and share. That’s not spam attitude, isit?
love it 😉 been practicing some of these tips and yes it works.
Interesting article. I’m fairly new to Twitter, however, I already tend to mentally block out people I follow when they ask for RT’s too often. I think it’s good advice, if not done too frequently and a retweet request is actually spreading potential value to other followers and not just someone trolling for attention.
Also, when you say 4 tweets per day, do you mean 4 clean slated tweets that you start yourself, or does that include replying to other peoples tweets?
These are great tips and great instruction on hashtags as we find it definitly helps narrow the tweet to the correct audiance.