7 Ways to Set Your Twitter Feed on Fire

Twitter has become an essential tool for entrepreneurs. A 2010 study done by Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate Research Technologies showed that 67 percent of some 1,000 adults surveyed were more likely to buy from a company whose brand they followed on Twitter. Plus 79 percent of the respondents were more likely to recommend a brand whose handle they followed on Twitter.

Most entrepreneurs aren’t experts on Twitter, but all entrepreneurs can improve their engagement with a few minor adjustments. The following are seven ways to set your Twitter feed on fire:

1. Grow your following.

Increasing your follower count is the most effective way to boost your influence on Twitter. Look at the followers of your competitors. If their followers are ideal clients for you, begin by following these handles. Many of these users will follow you back.

To keep track of the Twitter accounts you follow and figure out which ones don't follow you back, use free tool like Manageflitter to identify those who don’t follow you back. Manageflitter gives you the ability to unfollow the Twitter users who have not followed you back right.

Using a strategy of following a few hundred targeted followers a week will result in your adding scores of new and ideal followers within a month. Continuing this strategy consistently could result your gain of thousands of new followers in a relatively short time period.

2. Be clear about your message.

The main question potential Twitter followers want answered is "How do I benefit from following this person?” To have ideal clients follow you, answer this question immediately.

The first place customers look is your descriptive bio. They don’t care if you're a father of two and a husband. Your favorite quote won't prompt them to follow you. Telling them what’s in it for them is all they care about.

Author Brendon Burchard offers the best way to communicate this concisely. At his live Experts Academy event, he suggested saying, "I help [blank] do [blank] so they can [blank]."  

3. Ask for retweets.

The ability to have your followers share your tweets is imperative to the growth of your social-media presence. Salesforce.com found that when followers are specifically asked to “retweet” with the shortcut reference “RT,” they are 10 times as likely to retweet a message.

The research also showed that asking followers to “retweet” (using the whole word spelled out), boosted the retweet rate 23 times more than average.

4. Share during the best times.

You can have the best and most engaging content in the world, but if it's not tweeted at the correct time, then it likely won't be seen. According to Bitly, the best time to reach people on Twitter is Monday to Thursday from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. The worst times are after 3 p.m. on Fridays and any evening after 8 p.m.

5. Schedule tweets.

Set uptweets ahead of time. Free sites like Buffer and HootSuite grant you the ability to schedule tweets. This helps you be present on Twitter when your followers are more likely to be online. One hour of scheduling work might deliver a month’s worth of prescheduled Twitter content for your feed.

6. Use hashtags to boost retweets.

According to a study by Buddy Media/Salesforce at the end of 2011 and early 2012, tweets with hashtags receive twice the engagement as those without. The same study found that tweets incorporating more than two hashtags experienced a 17 percent decline in engagement. So be careful not to overuse hashtags.

Using hashtag websites like Hashtagifyme or Ritetag can assist you in identifying the most engaging hashtags for posts.

7. Use the @ properly.

Never start a tweet with @whoever. When you do, the only people who will see the tweet are your followers and @whoever.

Start the tweet with words and then insert @whoever later in the phrase like this: "Thanks @whoever for your great review about our service at ABC Company." This will ensure that all your followers will see this tweet in their feeds. And @whoever will be notified as well.

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Customers Want Answers on Social Media — Don't Leave Them Hanging

If you think you're seeing more and more brand interactions on your social feeds, it's not your imagination. According to a recent report by social media management tool Sprout Social, the number of social media messages customers send to brands has increased by 77 percent since 2013.

"The general volume of social [messages] increased, and that's not surprising," said Andrew Caravella, vice president of marketing at Sprout Social. "What is surprising is how many of those messages are inbound toward brands and how many require a response."

The 2014 Sprout Social Index found that the number of customer messages that need a response or issue resolution (i.e., questions about products or complaints about services) has doubled in the last year. The problem is, the rate at which brands respond to these messages has actually gone down: Five in six messages that need an answer from a brand never receive one. [For a side-by-side comparison of the best social media marketing services, visit our sister site Top Ten Reviews]

So why do businesses fail at giving customers the responses they need on social media? Caravella said that it's partly due to the overwhelming volume of responses, which may indicate that businesses simply don't have the right tools and resources in place to manage their social media activity. But he also noted that social networks weren't originally created with businesses in mind: Instead of just using social media for branding and marketing, companies now have to adapt and learn to use it for a number of other purposes.

"Social networks were built for personal use," Caravella said. "It's a relatively nascent channel [for businesses, and] it's changing and expanding into other areas of business — talent recruitment, customer care and service, etc. It's a big undertaking, [and] people want to get it right."

Based on the Sprout Social Index, Caravella offered the following tips for small businesses that want to boost their social media presence and keep up with the tidal wave of messages and mentions they receive.

Know your capabilities. Based on both your bandwidth and your available staff and time, conduct an internal social audit and understand what you're capable of, as well as your limitations. That way, you can determine how to best allocate your resources. It's better to have a very strong presence on two networks than a mediocre presence on four.

Focus on response rate and time. The companies that do social media best are the ones that make a concerted effort to engage with and address customer comments and questions that come through on their feeds. Depending on how many social interactions your business receives per day, it may be impossible to respond to each and every customer. But it's a good idea to get to as many as you can in a timely manner, whether the sentiment is positive or negative.

"People are on social media for recognition, [to know] that what they say matters," Caravella told Business News Daily. "People love when businesses acknowledge and recognize them, [whether with] a favorite, retweet or actual response."

Understand your customers. Pay close attention to the way your customers talk about your brand, whether it's directly to you or indirectly to their friends and followers. Knowing how your customers feel about you can help you better understand your strengths and weaknesses as a business — and better serve customers' needs on social media.

Don't get hung up on the numbers. Engagement rates, rather than follower count or number of "likes," are the hallmark of true social media success for today's brands. Caravella noted that businesses should focus more on improving engagement than upping the raw numbers.

"Growth comes organically, by having conversations, responding and being participatory," he said. "If you have a million followers and don't talk to them, [it's not effective]. If you have a thousand but build relationships with them, that's more useful."

Originally published on Business News Daily.

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