Top 3 Social Media Marketing Goals for Twitter

Twitter, the highly popular 140 characters microblogging platform, currently has over half a billion active users. Twitter’s CEO, Dick Costolo, has the ambitions to make the social network the “world’s first global town square”. The social network has great potential to drive traffic to your site and turn potential leads into actual customers. However, it’s often difficult to set realistic goals to help grow your social presence on Twitter.

Before you start setting measurable goals, implement mobile usage first in your social strategy. With most users only turning to Twitter’s mobile app to keep them updated, any brand should leverage mobile into its Twitter strategy. For example, it’s important to insert links to mobile-friendly sites. Adding enough relevant hashtags is another way to find out more about a topic without having to browse a new window.

But, what are some Twitter goals that you should prioritize for social media marketing?

1. Boost Engagement

Most brands still use Twitter for broadcasting or blunt marketing messaging instead of engaging with their audience. Many marketers say boosting your engagement is actually the most important goal of all. Address your Twitter following in a personalized manner with your own great content rather than just sending out meaningless tweets.

Have you ever considered tweeting over the weekend? Many brands haven’t yet, and it’s said to increase engagement more than on weekdays. Through automation, it’s easy to schedule these tweets without having to put in extra time.

So, how can you measure how well you’re engaging on Twitter?

• Replies

Keep a close eye on the frequency in which people send tweets to your own corporate Twitter handle. This will give you a great view of how many people are willing to interact with your brand on Twitter.

Note: although your Twitter account should incorporate a certain degree of automation whenever you reply to tweets, be sure to limit the amount of automated, scheduled interactions.

• Retweets

Retweets are the best possible way for a tweet to drum up an audience and get more people to visit your links (which is one step closer to visiting your website). To help promote retweeting, oddly enough, you actually have to ask for a retweet and spiff up your language with clean wording and a catchy headline. Add links to your tweets, keep it short and simple, and don’t be afraid to ask for a retweet.

• Mentions

The number of mentions can be seen by everyone, and, unlike replies, they’re actually very valuable because everyone in your following can see them. Investigate how often tweets include your company’s Twitter handle inside the tweet. Mentions are a great means to help increase brand awareness and social credibility.

2. Increase Your Follower Growth

“How do I get more organic growth of followers on Twitter?” is a question many marketers regularly struggle with because the more people you can reach, the more traffic you’ll be able to drive to your site. Everyone obviously wants to grow their audience, and in order to do so, it’s important to know who comprises your current audience in order to target the right people.

Promoting company related hashtags can be a great way to drive more awareness to a particular campaign or product. You can also design specific Twitter buttons to control what type of content your audience will tweet. Tweet in the right time zone so you know when the biggest part of your audience is ready to engage with you.

3.  Adjust Your Frequency of Tweeting

If you keep track of how often you tweet and compare this to the increase in following growth, you’ll gradually find your best social media fit. Adapting your frequency of tweets is actually a trial-and-error process. Stimulate your social media team to experiment with it, and make the appropriate changes along the way.

While in social media, there are a lot of statistics to fall back on, but there is never a single rule that will cover every industry ground. However, don’t consider it a game of wild guessing. Like in the graph below, make sure you base your strategy on actual parameters like tweeting inside/outside business hours.