With 230 million active users and 5,000 tweets hitting feeds every second, it’s easy to see how Twitter takes second place for the most popular social network in the world. A quick and easy means to send out information, the platform is used for social, business and awareness purposes, enabling users to share images, videos and links, to reach out to audiences and raise discussion. Yet, many businesses face the challenge of drumming up engagement on the channel, an element of social media marketing that is absolutely key to the success of any campaign. Users interact socially with friends on the channel at ease but for brands to stimulate a reaction, it takes much more thought and effort. As with every social media channel or indeed any channel for your brand’s content, there is no guarantee that engagement will follow. Yet, there are methods that will improve your chances of attracting interest from your Twitter followers. Check out these 6 strategies that will help boost your Twitter marketing recipe and set you up with more of that special ingredient: engagement.

Improve Twitter Engagement

1. Give to Receive Marketing through your Twitter channel is not simply a case of throwing out up to 140 characters of cheesy copy at consistent intervals. Audiences don’t want to hear about what you’re selling and why you’re so ‘brilliant’ unless it is interesting and beneficial to them. Just remember the golden rule about social media marketing: share valuable content. Never mind engagement, you won’t be able to build an audience base unless you share content that takes your audience’s interests into consideration and provides either information or entertainment.

2. Vary Content Again, throwing out 140 characters every now and then is not enough. Audiences like to see more than text in their feeds so give them something to click and engage with by posting videos, images, infographics, links and whatever else you can think of that will mix up the content you share.

3. Ask Questions When posting any type of content, an effective way to stimulate some conversation is to ask a question. Keep questions simple: tailor so they require one-word answers or offer choice answers, and carefully consider which types of questions would stimulate audience interest. Audiences like to share their opinions across the network so give an opportunity for free speech or encourage users to get involved with a competition.

4. Give your Brand a Human Edge Marketing on Twitter isn’t the same as marketing on your website. Your website is for selling and promoting a professional, reliable image of your products and services whereas social media is your opportunity to show off your brand’s personality and appear more approachable to your audience. Nobody wants to see repetitive sales speak or cold calls to action in their feed. Don’t use the network to advertise but instead to interact. Be friendly, incorporate some humour, get involved with recent trends or discussions and most importantly, be consistent with your tone of voice. Pull this off and your brand values will shine through to be recognised and respected by your audience.

5. News and Trends are Valuable While your Twitter presence represents your brand as proactive, incorporate ideas from recent trends and news into your content and you won’t only appear as right on top of things but you’ll be more likely to create common ground with your audience. If everybody’s talking about something then you want to be part of the discussion, so get involved with conversations, encourage communication and get on board with trending hashtags. Essentially, never miss out on the opportunity to create engagement from a ‘hot topic’, whether it is relevant or irrelevant to your brand.

6. Get on the Hashtag Bandwagon Research has shown that tweets with hashtags can drum up double the engagement as those without. Make use of trending or popular hashtags, use hashtags relevant to you business and content and even make up your own hashtags for campaigns or ongoing features. Just remember, don’t bombard your tweets with more than two hashtags and don’t use them in every tweet. Hashtags can help you show up in searches for those keywords so not only do they put your brand in front of a wider audience but they improve your odds of engagement.

7. Create Discussion Don’t be afraid to start conversations with your audience – it is not frowned upon and there is no harm in reaching out, as long as you implement your engagement well. You can search for users talking about specific topics in your feed or across the Twitter network and you can filter results per location. Forget spammy sales messages or links to your website, a nice way of starting a discussion is to show your interest in content and ask a further question. As you create discussions across Twitter, you are showcasing your brand’s personality and gaining a wider audience reach.

8. Get Retweets Asking users to retweet your posts out of the kindness of their own heart or in return for entry into a competition, is a great way to push your content further. When a user retweets, they are engaging with a request from your brand and should that persons friends or followers see that they found the content worth a retweet, then they are in turn more likely to engage and respond. As such, retweets broaden your brand’s reach and drive for more audience interaction. Check out this infographic for some interesting stats about Twitter engagement. Or, if you have any other top tips about how to improve Twitter engagement, we’d love to hear from you. Please leave us a comment…