How To Increase Twitter Engagement [2021]

1. Optimizing and keeping the basics in mind

A lot of your links will lead to your website. The state of your website should be ideal for those potential visitors. More than 75% of Twitter users access the platform through their mobile, so keeping everything mobile friendly is imperative. If your website doesn’t work on a mobile, it’s likely that potential visitors will be closing the window and forgetting about you.

The average internet user is very impatient, with any loading time over three seconds being much too long a wait. Ensure that your web pages load quickly. The ease of use and convenience of a website has a huge impact on how your website performs in terms of visitors, which leads us on to our next point.

Accessibility on your website must be considered. No visitor likes a website that’s difficult to navigate. Try having an outsider navigate your website and take notes on its usability as a lesson in its strengths and weaknesses, from there you can work on any changes that might need to be made.

2. Be click-worthy

It is obvious that increasing Twitter engagement means your content has to be “click-worthy”, whether that’s on a link, on a video or a retweet, you want people to interact with your content. Each tweet gives you 280 characters to play with and that isn’t an awful lot. To achieve what you want on Twitter you have to be creative. Don’t overfill your content with things that distract from the actual objective of your tweet. If you have a link that you want people to click on, don’t include other links in the tweet. One tweet = one link. Include relevant calls to action (CTA’s), if there’s something, in particular, you want your followers to do, ask them to do it. Use words that call for action to encourage people to do more with your content.

Fortunately, Twitter allows you to retweet and quote a tweet with your own content. This means you can reshare significant things, without overwhelming your followers with the same content over and over again. Although it is good to repurpose content, repeatedly sharing the exact same content is likely to result in lethargy or, worse, an unfollow. Instead, use the retweet and quote tweet function to remind people about the content. If you do want to use the same link several times, ensure that there are some alterations each time, like the copy, the hashtags used or the imagery.

3. Use Hashtags

On the note of hashtags, remember these are a great tool for reaching more people out with your following. From trending hashtags to weekly staples, Twitter really does monopolize on hash tagging. There are several options available when it comes to prospering hashtags. Keep an eye on trending hashtags, these are shown on the side of your newsfeed and can vary from place to place. You can change the location to suit the place you’re targeting and if you’re a global company, you can keep track of what’s happening in all your locations. For notable days like #MothersDay or #IWD (International Women’s Day), make sure the content you are creating has a purpose and will stand out amongst the countless other posts. It’s easy to jump on a hashtag and include in your tweet, but it’s harder to make that hashtag yours.

Remember, you can invent your own hashtags if you want to as well. If you’re hosting an event or a talk, remember you can create new hashtags. This is an effective way to get the audience more involved, raise awareness of your event and your brand. It also allows everyone involved in the event to communicate and collaborate with one another in one feed. So, next time you’re hosting something of note, come up with a hashtag and distribute it around the attendees, get everyone online and shout about your event.

4. Images perform better than videos

Users on Twitter tweet images more than they tweet videos.

Even more interesting is to look at the number of favorites and retweets. Images tend to get more than 120% retweets than videos, but videos get 49% more than images.

From a branding standpoint, it’s easier and quicker to make images, so we recommend that you focus your time on image creation over videos.

If you want to maximize your branding efforts, you’ll have to come up with creative ways to imbue your corporate brand with humor.

5. Follow relevant people

Twitter isn’t very useful unless you are following other people. You could go and start following everyone out there, or you could follow people who interest you.

Having tried both routes, we can tell you first-hand that following thousands of users is very difficult because you won’t be able to keep up with all the tweets.

That’s why we recommend you only follow people sharing their knowledge.

6. Create interesting conversations

After you follow a few people, you’ll notice that some of those people will naturally follow you back. But if you really want to gain followers, you need to start twittering.

You could tweet about your day, people you are hanging out with it, or any random thing that comes to your mind. The problem with doing this is you will gain followers who won’t care about your tweets.

Instead, I recommend sharing your knowledge on Twitter.

The best part about creating a conversation is that it allows you to get to know other users and lets them get to know you.

7. Join the conversation

Not only should you be creating interesting conversations, but you should also be joining other people’s conversations. If people are talking about something you are familiar with, don’t be shy to give your input.

When joining conversations, you don’t have to agree with other people. There is nothing wrong with debating others on Twitter. Controversy is a great way to gain some followers as long as you don’t abuse it by doing it only for attention.

8. Leverage your followers

Once you have built a loyal following on Twitter, you need to start leveraging it.

You can do this by tweeting about your blog, company, or anything else you are involved in. What you’ll notice is that your followers will start retweeting your tweets, which will help drive more traffic to your business and maybe even increase your sales.

9. Acquire customers

You could use Twitter for fun, but why not make money while using it? Through its search feature, you can find out if people are talking about:

• your company (hopefully people are saying good things)
• your competition (hopefully people are saying bad things)
• your industry (track general terms related to your industry)

Tracking these three things will aid you to create a conversation with your current customer base and potential customers. Although this may seem like a hard thing to believe, a lot of companies use Twitter as their main source of customer acquisition.

For instance, if someone tweeted about a bad experience they had with your competitor, you could message them, telling them about your company.

10. Build relationships

If you do all the things we talked about above, you are already building relationships with people.

The one thing you are not doing, however, is you are not building relationships with the major influencers.

Here is how to do that:

• Look for popular users on Twitter interested in the same things you are interested in, and start messaging them. Not everyone will respond, but like most things in life, it is a numbers game.
• There should be other members on Twitter that live near you. Search for local users, and get to know them.
• Many Twitter users also blog, get to know them. This can open doors, and they might even write about your business.

Conclusion

Marketing your business on Twitter is something that you can easily master, but it will take time.

Typically, you won’t see great results from Twitter in the first few months of being on it, but after six months to a year, the results should be great.

If you only have time to follow one piece of advice from this post, make sure you tweet on Saturday and Sunday at either 9am, 12pm, 3pm or 6pm as that is when you’ll end up getting a lot of engagement.

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