Reading Time: 4 minutesModern social media users know that Twitter offers unmatched speed when it comes to discovering news, interesting stories, and interacting with their favorite brands. With hundreds of millions of Tweets published every day, no other social media platform offers the simplicity, ease, and engagement potential of Twitter. Marketing professionals know that Twitter is a great tool for engaging with audiences, but they must know how to audit and adjust their Twitter profiles over time for the best results.
Start With a Content Review
The main goal of any brand using Twitter should be to drive Twitter followers toward the brand’s content, products, and services, hopefully increasing conversions and cultivating strong relationships with those users. The Twitter Analytics tool offers a fantastic toolkit for any brand trying to capitalize on the speed and reach of the Twitter platform. Start your 2019 Twitter audit by using this tool to judge whether your Twitter presence is connecting your content with your desired audience. Some of the metrics you should monitor include:
- Click-through rate for your linked content. When you link to your content in a tweet, the number of users who actually click the link and visit the content is a great way to measure the success of your Twitter presence.
- Number of shares. Most Twitter users only share content or Retweet Tweets if they deem them high quality. If a Twitter user is sharing the content you publish, this is a great sign that you’re making a positive impression with your Twitter presence.
- Number of replies. The content you publish on Twitter will likely draw different kinds of attention. While it might seem natural to assume that a high reply count is a positive sign of engagement, this is not always the case. It’s essential to gauge the sentiment behind the replies to your tweets, not just the quantity of replies you receive. For example, bad tweets tend to become “ratioed,” or wind up with more replies than likes.
- Tweet visibility, or your number of “impressions.” Your tweets won’t only appear in your followers’ timelines; they will also show up on the timelines of users who follow the accounts that share your content and Retweet your Tweets. Twitter Analytics will allow you to see the number of impressions your tweets make, or the number of timelines in which your tweets appear.
These four metrics are crucial to track for any social media content strategy. If you notice engagement dwindling, or you’re having trouble driving engagement on your Twitter profile, this may be an indication that you need to revisit your content strategy or your approach to using your Twitter profile. Remember, the goal of leveraging your Twitter account as a marketing tool is not to increase your performance on Twitter itself, but to drive traffic toward your brand’s website, content, products, and services. Audience engagement is a benefit to your brand, but the endgame is generating more business by leveraging Twitter effectively.
Take Time to Understand Your Audience
Just like you would segment your emailing list into different categories for different types of recipients, it’s essential to divide your Twitter followers into different categories as well. Develop categories that reflect your business goals and marketing priorities. Research the types of accounts that follow you and find out what type of content they enjoy and share. A few metrics to consider when it comes to gauging your Twitter following include:
- The number of accounts following your account.
- The follower counts of your followers’ accounts.
- Your followers’ peak activity times.
- Potential influencers and high-profile accounts that follow your account.
- The demographics of your Twitter followers.
Cultivate a strong understanding of these metrics for a more holistic view of your Twitter presence. Once you know who follows you, what interests them, and what drives them to engage further with your brand beyond Twitter, you can begin adjusting your content strategy to suit them better. Of course, you also need to know how to clear out fake and undesirable followers that drag down your brand’s image.
Clear Out Fake Followers
Like any other social media platform, Twitter has a problem with fake accounts. Since the earliest days of the internet, scammers have taken advantage of the unwary by misrepresenting themselves and creating “bot” accounts is one of the newest tactics. Having a high follower count inherently lends authority to any brand using Twitter, but only when those followers are actual users. Many tools exist to audit a Twitter account, and if users notice you have a very high ratio of fake followers to real ones, this bogs down your brand credibility and may turn legitimate users away from engaging with your social media profiles.
The only way to rid your account of fake followers is to identify those accounts and manually block them from following you. This may be a tedious process, but too many bots and fake accounts following you diminishes your brand credibility. Legitimate users will wonder why your Tweet engagement is so low compared to your follower count, ultimately leading many of them to believe you have artificially inflated your following with fake accounts intentionally.
Twitter is not a place for static content; it’s a platform for engaging with your followers in a natural way. Managing your Twitter account and performing an audit in 2019 may seem daunting at first, but the effort you put into your account will pay off tremendously in the long run when your Twitter presence becomes a conduit that drives sales and increases your brand’s credibility before a vast audience.
