BRANDING YOUR TWITTER PROFILE THE STEPS TO OPTIMIZING TWITTER FOR SEARCH THE GUIDE TO TWITTER ETIQUETTE FOR BUSINESS

Transcription

1

2 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION Chapter One: Chapter Two: Chapter Three: Chapter Four: Chapter Five: Chapter Six: BRANDING YOUR TWITTER PROFILE THE STEPS TO OPTIMIZING TWITTER FOR SEARCH THE GUIDE TO TWITTER ETIQUETTE FOR BUSINESS HOW TO AVOID GETTING LOST IN THE TWITTER SHUFFLE 6 WAYS TO BOOST YOUR TWITTER STRATEGY MEASURING THE ROI OF TWITTER CONCLUSION

3 INTRODUCTION If it don t make dollars, it don t make sense. 100 million. That s the number of active Twitter users in any given day. It s also the number of sales prospects available for the company willing to take the plunge into Twitter prospecting. While the benefits are of Twitter are endless, it s not going to be a fast and easy road, so don t expect everything to happen at once. The fact that Twitter can help improve your brand image is pretty much a given, since over 1 million businesses are already using the social media network to their advantage. The real challenge comes in using the site so that it has a direct impact on your sales strategy. In this ebook, you ll learn how to turn your followers into leads, who can then be qualified and sent to your sales team. In this marketing world of 100 million Tweeters, if it don t make dollars, it don t make sense. (1) (1) Dan Zarrella, HubSpot Social Media Scientist, paraphrasing DJ Quik

4 CHAPTER 1 BRANDING YOUR TWITTER PROFILE Since you re only limited to 140 characters, it s not difficult to go unnoticed. Take any chance presented to you to set yourself apart, make yourself unique, and boost your company s visibility. Fortunately, branding yourself on Twitter has become easier than ever. Call-to-Action Banners Like all Twitter users, businesses have the option to add headers to their profile. Use this image to add a bit more personality to your profile, but more importantly, use it to include a call-to-action (CTA). To decide what your business should include in the banner section, you have to do a bit of research. Read your audience s tweets and view their profiles to learn what interests them and how it relates to your product. Then, tailor your CTA to what will attract them

5 For example, if a majority of your customers are interested in a particular project you ve been working on, when you re finished, post it as your banner photo and direct people to your profile to learn more. Featured Tweets Your Tweets are short. 140 characters or less to be exact, and reading Tweets takes only seconds. Your ultimate goal is to present content that is worthy of being favorited. You can also use the Feature Tweet function to keep a particular tweet at the top of your Twitter feed. You can use this tool to highlight specific campaigns and offers and give them more visibility over a long period of time. It s also a great idea to use videos and images in your featured tweets. Tweets with links are over 81 times more likely to get retweets, favorites, or interaction. Custom Background Create a custom designed background for your Twitter using any design or word editing software and upload it directly to your page. It s guaranteed to make a lasting impression if it s well designed and appropriate to what you re trying to accomplish. Read the step-by-step instructions below and follow along during this video tutorial ( so you can create a terrific Twitter background.

6 I. Set The Right Measurements Once you open up your design software, the first thing you want to do is create a new background with the right measurements, which are: Width: 2048 pixels Height: 1900 pixels Resolution: 72 pixels/inch Also remember that Twitter backgrounds are static, meaning they don t scroll down as users scroll down a profile page. II. Define Your Design Space Since your Twitter feed will always appear in the center of the page, you certainly don t want to design a background with important company information in the center. Avoid making this mistake by using a marker for about 300 pixels on the horizontal ruler. This is now your safe spot. (For most design software, this marker won t appear in your final product. It s just an indicator. If you re working off of a design software that doesn t have a marker, simply draw a line, and delete it later.)

7 III. Choose A Background Color/Image You can either make the entire canvas one color or you can insert an image that takes up the entire background. If it is an image, here are two things to think about. First, you should own the rights to the image you want to use. Second, the majority of that image is going to be covered by the Twitter feed. For beginners, we usually recommend a solid color. It s safe and easy on the eyes. IV. Add Your Text Next, focus on the safe spot, the 300-pixel wide, left-hand column space. What you choose to place there should reflect your company s brand identity. Elements to consider are your logo, company name, brief bio, website or social media URLs. As for your company description, it s best if it s simple and brief. After all, your audience likes 140-character updates for a reason. V. Save Your File Correctly Twitter accepts three file types: JPG, PNG, or GIF. Make sure that the image size does not exceed 800K. Twitter will not accept anything larger.

8 Most design programs give you ways to reduce your file size if you need to. For example, Photoshop allows you to adjust image quality when saving a file, which brings down the size while still maintaining proper design quality. VI. Upload Your Background To Twitter With your image files ready to go, click on Settings on your company s Twitter profile. You can find it on the drop-down menu under your Twitter username on the upper right-hand side. From Settings, click the Design tab and select Change background. Upload your background, save changes, and in an instant your awesome background will appear.

9 CHAPTER 2 THE STEPS TO OPTIMIZING TWITTER FOR SEARCH Make sure your Twitter handle and updates are optimized for search. Now that your Twitter page is all made up and ready for the big reveal, be sure people can find you in search engine results. After all, you want your Twitter handle and updates impact your entire marketing program by helping your business rank in search for industry keywords. Using these keywords is a great way to dominate the first one or two pages of search engines. I. Make Twitter Handles Spam-Free Google s algorithms are always on the lookout for spammers and disreputable sites. When Google sees Twitter handles that include sets of numbers name546789) it often disregards them since there is no way to differentiate between who is real and who isn t.

10 It s generally a good idea to choose your company name, and if that s taken, use a unique and professional username. If you want to change your handle name, it s easy to do, and can be done at any time with any name that s available. To make this edit, go to Settings, click the Account tab, and type in your new username. II. Include Keywords In Bio When it comes to your bio, Twitter is pretty generous in that it gives you an additional 20 characters. That s right a whole 160 characters! That s still not a lot, however, and it has to be readable, so don t stuff your About section full with industry keywords. Do use keywords that are important to your business and will help you improve search visibility. Write your bio in a way that is attention-grabbing, because when someone is searching through profiles, you ll want to make sure yours makes them click Follow. III. Build Your Reach Sure, you want to build a following, and increasing your numbers is good. But what s even better from a search perspective is gaining quality followers over quantity followers. The algorithms for both Google and Bing check the authority of every user tweeting content. We do compute and use author quality, said one Google representative. We don t know who anyone is in real life :-) There s no excuse for businesses buying followers. It doesn t make you look good, so

11 don t even go down that road. Instead, post quality content. The followers will flock in and stay for a while. IV. Create A Special Subset Of Keywords The biggest problem with using keywords to gain rankings and generate leads is that you re limited to 140 characters. For this reason, you should consider picking a smaller subset of keywords to use specifically for your company s Twitter. To improve your ranking, use these phrases throughout the day in your tweets. V. Keep Tweet Lengths In The RT-Safe Zone So you think Twitter is all about 140 characters? Well, actually, in the world of re-tweets, you should be thinking about tweets that are 120 characters. The reason for this is that when someone shares your tweet via username, they eat up about 20 characters, and if your SEO-friendly keywords are at the end of your tweet, they might get lost in the re-tweet. Another reason to keep it shorter is that data shows that character tweets also have the highest click-through rates (CTRs). ( VI. Create Your Own Inbound Links Remember how Step III was gaining quality followers? Well, the only way you can get them is by making sure your content is remarkable. A bland tweet will not gain you much traction. In fact, it can do quite a bit of harm.

12 Google and Bing have said they register the value of Twitter authority figures and correlate it with the value of the link posted. This means that if your tweet is retweeted by someone who has a large following, the search engines will give your retweeted link its proper value of importance, which is the Twitter equivalent of an inbound link. So if you want to boost your optimization efforts, post something that appeals to influencers.

13 CHAPTER 3. THE GUIDE TO TWITTER ETIQUETTE FOR BUSINESS QUOTE: 64% of users are more likely to purchase from businesses that answer their questions on Twitter. Time is a valuable commodity for all marketers, and social media monitoring can quickly become a huge task. Luckily, we ve provided you with some tips that will help you monitor your Twitter feed in a way that optimizes your results without having to reply to every tweet. I. Reply When Necessary You don t have to reply to every tweet with a Thank you. A better use of your time is to reply to two types of tweets: questions and negative comments. There s a difference between being polite, and being useful. Your social media manager can handle most questions, but when they don t know the answer, or when the negative comments require more thought, make sure they know to ask those before responding. Over time, you will get a sense of how to use your resources to give your Twitter followers the responses they deserve.

14 II. Follow Back To Allow Direct Messaging There are reasons to follow anyone who follows you, and one is to hear what they have to say, but more importantly you want to allow them to send you direct messages. Twitter will only let people send you a direct message if you are following them. Hopefully, if they have a real issue that might not put your company in the best light, they ll send you a direct message rather than putting it out there for the world to see. If a person does decide to tweet a complaint to you specifically, know that everyone will be watching to see how you handle it. Don t delete the tweet and don t lose your cool. Simply reply and offer ways to make the situation better. If you can do this, you ll gain more respect from followers. III. In Front Of Tweet If you want to make sure your reply tweet is registered as a reply, you ll need to place the Twitter handle at the beginning of your update I read your... ). Placing the Twitter handle anywhere else would make it a mention, meaning your reply would only appear on your profile page and the feeds of people who follow both you and the person tweeting at you. You may notice users dodging this by including a period in front of their tweet (.@twitterhandle) so that the tweet is visible to everyone. Before you respond, decide whether you want that tweet to be seen by everyone or not. If you are just saying thanks, no need to make your reply visible. On the other hand, if you want others who are following you to see a positive comment about your company, you can use the tactic with the period mentioned above or simply post a tweet saying

15 IV. Schedule, Then Monitor It s always good to know what you want to tweet for the day, and we have found that allocating time in the morning to compose your batch of tweets for the day helps you in a number of ways. First, it lets you see how you want to schedule your tweets as some may play better in the midday and others later. Second, it actually minimizes the time you spend writing your tweets. Third, not all of your customers are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. tweeters. Scheduling tweets for 2 a.m. are great to reach that insomniac who happens to be reading your feed, or the corporate traveler on a business trip on the other side of the world who reads it during their workday. By scheduling multiple tweets at one time you can think of clever ways to promote your content. Also, it gives you more time to follow where that content is going, how it s being discussed, and what leads it is generating for you. You should look at social media publishing software like HubSpot, Hootsuite, or TweetDeck that allows you to schedule multiple tweets at once. This automation will allow you to check in occasionally and respond when necessary, which is much easier than worrying, or forgetting that you have to tweet.

16 CHAPTER FOUR. HOW TO AVOID GETTING LOST IN THE TWITTER SHUFFLE Don t get lost in the Twitterverse as it can lead to using Twitter in a way that doesn t promote customer growth. This chapter will disprove some rumors about what makes for a great Twitter page. I. Longer Membership vs. Shorter Membership Were you tweeting before Twitter was cool? The quality of your Twitter presence is not measured by the time you ve been on the site; it s measured by value. It doesn t matter if your company has been tweeting since day one. You don t have the right to spam about products or services. People are more interested in interesting content than your weight-loss pills that probably don t work. People are also interested in content that makes them laugh or teaches them something. Throw in some jokes and interesting articles that aren t always written by your company, and your followers will turn into loyal listeners. Value is more important than longevity. II. Tweeting Every Second vs Tweets Per Day No one is disputing the short shelf life of a tweet, but that does not give you license to tweet constantly. Not only will tweeting too often cause your other tweets to move down a user s feed faster, but it will also ramp up the odds of you annoying your followers.

17 Data shows that the best way to increase followers is to tweet between times a day. Keep in mind that this is an average. You can fluctuate above and below. III. Following Industry Leaders vs. Following Customers It is great if you follow industry leaders to learn from their insights and keep track of your competitors messages, but don t forget your customers and evangelists. Make sure you give love to those who are willing to publicly show they follow your company and talk about you. After all, social media is about two-way communication, and it s also fast moving. Ignore your customers and watch how fast they unfollow you.

18 CHAPTER 5 6 WAYS TO BOOST YOUR TWITTER STRATEGY The biggest mistake marketers make with Twitter is not realizing it can make you money. Why would you invest a lot of time and energy on marketing that does not have a return on investment (ROI)? Many who market with Twitter don t realize that it can help you make money. Not only is Twitter an effective communication channel, it s also a great place to generate leads. How can you make Twitter work for lead generation? It really depends on the kind of business you are in. Below are examples of processes that have lead to success. Give them a shot and see if you can replicate that success in a way that benefits you. I. Tweets That Link to Landing Pages First and foremost, promote your offers. Depending on your business and the amount of other tweets you do in a day, make sure you control the number of offers so you don t appear as spam. For example, it s okay for a recruiter to

19 repeatedly share offers of job openings because users will naturally be invested in that opportunity. However, constantly offering the same whitepaper about improving heating systems might turn people off. II. Connect Your Blog To Your Twitter Feed This seems like a no-brainer, but you d be surprised how many businesses fail to tweet links to all their posts (which should themselves have a call-toaction featured in them) marketing-agents-blog/bid/255275/27-business-blogging-lessons-to- Explode-Your-ROI Make sure that your post gets tweeted the second it s published. Many software programs can do this automatically. III. Respond With Landing Pages There is absolutely nothing wrong with replying to a question on Twitter with a helpful landing page link. In fact, answering the question with a few words and pointing them to a solution often gives your company greater credibility and authority. IV. Hashtags Adding a hashtag to a tweet doesn t necessarily guarantee results. For hashtags to be effective, you ll need to integrate them into every aspect of your marketing campaign.

20 For example, when hosting an event, create a hashtag for it so users can contribute to the topic. The hashtag will allow you interact with commentary about the event and help you measure how many people are paying attention. If you see a trending hashtag that is relevant to your business, include it in your updates. Or if you see a user tweeting with that hashtag, retweet the post. The advantage of doing this is that your tweets can reach anyone who is looking at tweets for that particular hashtag. Add a link to IMA hashtag blog article. ( com/inbound-marketing-agents-blog/bid/245094/the-6-most-irritating- Ways-to-Use-Hashtags-on-Twitter) V. Build Reach For any of the above ideas to work, you need to build up your following. The more people who follow and read your tweets, the higher your chance of generating leads. One of the best blog posts on attracting more social media fans is 25 Social Media Tips for Twitter in inbound-marketing-agents-blog/bid/254411/25-social-media-tips-for- Twitter-in-2013 VI. Twitter Chat Have you ever been to a Twitter chat? This is where someone or a company hosts a discussion on Twitter. The host or expert gives followers a chance to ask questions in a half hour or hour period, and these questions are answered in real time.

21 These chats all have their own hashtags. The host retweets what users are saying and takes time to answer the follow-up questions that the expert was unable to get to. To maximize your lead generation efforts, each chat should come paired with a certain offer like an ebook or a free trial of software that supports the topic. Twitter chats may not work for every business, but if your company conducts webinars or wants to be known as an industry leader, you should at least give them a try. But don t just host one event and quit if it doesn t work. Test a few different topics and formats. To get a sense of how you can run yours, start by joining one of the 600 regularly scheduled Twitter chats on a huge variety of industry topics. Insert title and link to IMA Twitter Chat blog article. inboundmarketingagents.com/inbound-marketing-agents-blog/ bid/241246/4-1-2-compelling-reasons-to-start-using-twitter-chats

22 CHAPTER 6 MEASURING THE ROI OF TWITTER Everything stated in this ebook is absolutely useless unless you re measuring your efforts along the way. Unfortunately, Twitter doesn t offer a seamless way to check your analytics. To analyze your Twitter efforts, you need to have closed-loop marketing. This will help you track the path of a user from the time he or she clicks a link in a tweet, visits a landing page where he or she fills out a call-to-action form, and eventually converts into a customer. To measure the true ROI of Twitter, you need to know exactly how it s making you money. I. Start Using An Analytics Tool To find the number of visitors who come to your site from Twitter, you ll need an analytics tool, such as Google Analytics. Google Analytics is free, but other software like Hubspot does a lot of the closed-loop marketing for you. Its program will show you more specific information, like how many leads are generated through Twitter. The next step is to tie in your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution, like Salesforce and SugarCRM, to your marketing software. This will let you close the loop between your Twitter marketing efforts and sales.

23 CRM software establishes a two-way communication between your marketing activities and sales results. You ll be able to see the connection between your inbound marketing activities, the increase in the number of visitors to your site, and the level of conversions into leads and sales. With this closed-loop system in place you can take your Twitter marketing and compare it to your other marketing tactics. II. Tracking Tokens For Different Sources Beware of third-party Twitter clients, such as TweetDeck. If a follower shares a link to your blog post from such a client, it might not show up in your analytics as a visit from Twitter. This won t help the accuracy of your data. There is a way to get around this a tracking token. By adding a tracking token to the end of your link, you can help your analytics to pool your traffic into groups. There are tools that use different tokens, but a generic one looks like this: /?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter Here s how it works. Anyone who clicks that tracking link signals your analytics tool that that lead came from Twitter. Tracking tokens are a good thing for all channels, like , paid media, and referral traffic. Before using them make sure your marketing or analytics software has tracking tokens in place and your data gets assigned to the right categories.

24 III. Use The Right Metrics We recommend that companies look at their analytics constantly. Data-driven marketers should follow their progress monthly, if not weekly. Here are the metrics we recommend you to keep track of: Twitter Follower Month-To-Month Growth Pull your total number of Twitter followers and account for new followers. This gives you a picture of your monthly Twitter growth. Here is a formula you can use: (March Twitter Followers - February Twitter Followers)/ February Twitter Followers=N 100xN=Growth Percent By tracking this percentage monthly, you learn which of your tweeting strategies and campaigns work best. Twitter Visitor-To-Lead Rate Pull the number of Twitter visitors and Twitter leads, and with following formula, you can determine your lead growth via Twitter. Twitter Visitors / Twitter Leads = Visitor-To-Lead Rate

25 Tracking your Twitter visitor-to-lead growth rate keeps you honest. The number will tell your how your social tactics are translating into leads for your sales team. To track this growth more closely, create daily goals. First determine the number of leads you want to generate monthly. Then divide that number by the number of business days in that month, and that will give you your daily goal. In order to determine realistic monthly goals, analyze your past history. That means don t set a goal for 2,000 leads when you only had 50 the month before. And you don t have to limit this analysis to Twitter. Do the same for all of your social media channels. Marketing software keeps track of that social media visitor-to-lead rate, so you don t have to maintain various excel spreadsheets to get these insights. IV. Further Qualify Leads There is an age-old question that always comes up when is the right time to pass the leads to sales? A Twitter lead, fresh off the tweet, is probably not qualified enough for a handoff to sales. But it is certainly ripe for lead nurturing. Your can nurture this new lead by offering them more resources and further education about your product or service. You can nurture these leads either through drip marketing or, if you have the software, more sophisticated behavior-based communication. Whatever you do, each step should try to get them further down the sales funnel.

26 What About The Other Engagement Metrics? Twitter has elements that are unique to its environment, such as hashtags, mentions for specific campaigns, and replies. So how do you measure their effectiveness? This section will cover a range of free tools that can help you measure Twitterspecific interactions. I. Twitter Counter We love TwitterCounter ( It gives you an easy way to track your follower growth over time. And, if you want, you can also see your net new number of followers per day. So if you launch a campaign, the counter will show you how many followers you gained as a result from the first day of its launch. This tool is also valuable because it lets you see if your following is growing or remaining constant. While we think quality is important, you certainly want to your follower numbers to grow growth will only help your funnel. II. Twitter Advanced Search Just because Twitter doesn t have a beautiful analytics tool, doesn t mean it can t have a beautiful advanced search tool. We like this search tool because it lets you break down your search terms very specifically: by content, users, location, etc.

27 III. Hashtags Revisited Using hashtags lets you track how well your campaigns perform. Using sites like Hootesuite and Hashtracking you can see how many times a hashtag has been used. IV. Bit.ly Most marketers know about bit.ly, the wonderful online software that lets you shorten links to be Twitter-friendly. What is also great about bit.ly is that it gives you the ability to analyze the number of clicks on that specific link.

28 CONCLUSION Be smart about the way you prioritize your marketing initiatives. In celebration of the 140-character limit, here are the lessons we hope you ve learned from this ebook (all 140 characters or less): Twitter is more than a network for engaging conversation and promoting positive brand image. Don t just update on-the-go tweets. Analyze your efforts to decide if it s in your company s best interest to invest time on Twitter. Only invest time and effort in marketing on Twitter if you can measure the results and ROI through a closed-loop marketing process. So be smart about the way you prioritize your marketing initiatives. Be ever watchful of how Twitter can truly help your business. And remember what we said in the beginning If it don t make dollars, it don t make sense.

29 Thanks for downloading. We love you! Inbound Marketing Agents is a full service inbound marketing agency well-versed in harnessing the power of Twitter for business and lots of other really cool stuff. If you want to see what Inbound Marketing can do for your business click the button above to get your free assessment. If you love us back, feel free to follow us on social media or share this awesome ebook with your friends. Our Team