Twitter is one of the most used social media channels for marketing. For businesses, Twitter is a place to humanize the brand, to establish relationships with their customers as well as deliver clear, targeted messages. When pushing products, services or ideas, Twitter is a tool that delivers messages in a fast and concise manner through compelling and targeted campaigns. These steps are for small business owners looking to run a campaign on Twitter.

Plan

Objective: what do you want to achieve?

Set a clear objective before you start a Twitter campaign. Your objective serves as the focal point of your strategy. Your campaign objectives can either be one of these:

• Increase number of followers
• Lead generations
• Content views
• Website clicks
• Event
• Promote products or services
• Content views

Audience: Who are you trying to reach?

Your audience is the most important part of your Twitter campaign. Your campaign efforts must be planned and executed with them in mind.

• Location- Establish the location of your target audience. They can be within your locality or extending to a global audience. Where your audience is located affects the language and time of your tweets.
• Twitter usage - Note when your target audience is active on Twitter. Tweets between 8AM and 7PM has been found to have a 30% higher interaction. Be mindful of this as you are scheduling tweets and adjust accordingly if your audience has a different timezone from you.
• Local events - Engage your audience through participating in events where your campaign can be promoted. It can be a local fair, a networking event or this promotion masterfully created by Coca-cola at the CopaAmerica.

Keyword: What words do you want to be associated with your campaign?

Determine the keywords that are essential to your campaign. Most of the time, these are keywords that you are already using within your industry. These keywords help define your campaign, identify what your brand is about and help your audience find you.

Hashtags

Hashtags first became popular on Twitter but are now already in use across other channels. Hashtags are important in each Twitter campaign that you will run. On Twitter, when you search for or click a hashtag, twitter generates all the tweets that has it. Hashtags help you and your audience monitor and respond conversations surrounding your campaign.

• Availability - Search your hashtags using the twitter search box or through hashtagify.org. To avoid confusion when monitoring conversations, use a hashtag that is unique to your campaign.
• Industry hashtags - Aside from a unique hashtag, get found on popular hashtags in your industry. Use hashtagify.me to search for most tweeted hashtags on popular keywords.

Build content

Identify the type of content that you want for your campaign. These are materials that helps your audience understand what the campaign is as well as convince them to become a part of it. Build content before your campaign is launched. These materials may be one of the following:

• Blogs links
• Squeeze pages on your website
• Sign up sheets and subscription forms
• Rich media such as posters, videos, and other promotional images

Implement

• Twitter queue/calendar - In order to implement your campaign, you need to see all your planned tweets all laid out. Prepare a calendar that details the time your tweets are coming out, links and other content that optimises your tweets.
• Automate - Use automation tools to make sure you are tweeting round the clock with emphasis on the times that your audiences are most active. you can use automation tools such as Tweetdeck (free), BufferApp (free and paid versions) and Sprout Social (paid).
• Promoted Tweets - Write a compelling tweet to your target audience. This can be an invitation to follow your account, an upcoming event or a product launch. Promoted tweets allows you to use targeting options so you are reaching the right audience. When your tweet is launched, the promoted tweet will appear in the timeline of your targeted users.
• Engagement plan - On Twitter, your followers expect instant replies. this means if a question or a comment that needs a response is required, it is expected that it happens within minutes.

Evaluate

• Reach - Use Twitter Analytics to see impressions and engagement that your campaign has generated. Evaluate how impressions (people who have seen or scrolled through your campaign) compared to the engagement (favorites, retweets, mentions and replies).
• Conversion - At the end of the day, your campaign is measured by how it answers to your objectives. Were you able to increase your followers, sell products, gather attendees to your event? Go back to your objective and see if your campaign measured up to your expected results. This is the true measure of efficacy. This also helps you identify strong points and areas for improvement that can be used for your next campaign.

Have you organised a Twitter campaign? Tell us your success or learning moments in the comments below.

About the Author

 

About Angelica Manlunas

Angelica lives off of coffee and pizza. She spends her time online tinkering on social media, watching short films and poetry slams. Her offline time is devoted to trips to the beach or spending lazy days indoors with a book in her hand. Also, she writes at least 1000 words every day. Email Angelica at angelica.manlunas@transeo.com.au and follow Angelica @ang_transeo.