Marketing 10 min read

How to Improve Your User Engagement Status on Twitter

Sattalat phukkum / Shutterstock.com

Sattalat phukkum / Shutterstock.com

How can you benefit from the full value of Twitter as a marketing tool? 

Twitter has 330 million active monthly users. This means, technically, you have the opportunity to reach out to millions of people across the globe.

Tweets offer businesses the chance to not only amplify their message but also actively interact with their audience.

Understanding how Twitter algorithm works are essential to being able to tweet more efficiently and improve the user engagement status of your posts.

Step 1: How to Play Twitter’s Algorithm at its own Game

Bashutskyy | Shutterstock
Bashutskyy | Shutterstock

The first thing to keep in mind is that Twitter sees itself as a news site rather than a social media platform.

Twitter prides itself on being the best place to find out what is happening right now. It favors current events rather than what has happened last week, which is the realm of the Facebook news feed.

This means that the Twitter algorithm will show you newer tweets and forget about older ones unless they get attention early on.

However, you must also understand that the main Twitter timeline is not chronological. Although it is always timely, it decides what to show you based on your interests.

The other section of Twitter is called “In case you missed it.” This is a collection of tweets posted by the people you follow while you’re inactive. Twitter categorizes these tweets as “important.”

Twitter may also include tweets from an account you don’t follow if it thinks they will interest you.

If you want to use Twitter in your social media marketing campaign, you need your tweets to appear in the most recent part of the feed. As most people aren’t going to scroll down too far, this is the key to getting the Twitter algorithm’s attention via user engagement.

This will make your tweet appear popular and thus open you up to the opportunity of appearing in the news feeds of people who don’t even follow you, yet.

Twitter favors engaging tweets as they are aimed at making users spend as much time as possible on the platform. The longer you stay, the more ads you get exposed to sand, the more money Twitter makes.

The most engaging Tweets are the ones that offer entertaining and enjoyable content that users comment on, like, and retweet. The more user engagement a tweet receives, the more power it gains to reach a broad audience.

Step 2: Keep Tweets Short and Sweet

That means under 110 Characters.

Twitters’ infamous character restriction seems short, but it is there for a reason. It is no accident that tweets must be kept to a 280 character minimum.

Along they have conceded in lengthening their limit slightly, the creators of Twitter formulated the platform to keep users hooked. Short snippets of information stimulate the human brain to release dopamine and keep us wanting more.

Also, shorter tweets with around 110 characters get 17% more engagement than longer tweets.

This leaves room for your followers to retweet you and easily add their commentary. People are busy, and people are lazy, if they have to go to the effort of editing your original tweet, they are less likely to bother retweeting it.

If you’re reaching the character limit, your tweets are too long. Ideally, you should aim to keep your tweets between 80 to 110 characters.

Step 3: Augmenting a Brand’s Engagement Status Through Proper Timing

Users must engage with your tweet as soon as possible. Every comment and like will increase the tweet’s lifetime.

If the tweet doesn’t receive much attention in its first few hours, it won’t be shown to more people.

In a nutshell, there is absolutely no point tweeting if no one is awake to see it.

According to Buffer, in general, tweets receive the most clicks in the early morning hours. It makes sense, checking social media is part of most peoples’ morning routine.

However, evenings and late at night are the times when tweets receive the most favorites and retweets.

So, a basic guideline you could follow is that you should tweet in the morning to get people’s attention, provide news, updates, and important information.

However, for an improvement in your posts’ engagement status, you should save your more thought proking tweets for the evening. The evening is the ideal time for making statements or asking questions.

In the U.S, the peak tweeting hours are 8-9 am for Pacific Time Zone, and 12-1 pm Central, Mountain Time and Eastern Time. Maximum exposure will amount to maximum active engagement.

Don’t forget that you need to figure out when your unique audience is online to optimize your tweets and make sure they are reaching the most people possible.

The most effective time to tweet for optimal user engagement differs across time zones and demographics. You should experiment and monitor reactions to your tweets to figure out the times when your audience is most engaged.

Engagement status
Buffer Data

Step 3: Don’t Be Afraid to #usehashtags

Using hashtags can speak to your audience and spark conversation around your brand. Hashtags can double your user engagement rate as they are an implicit call to action. Also, they create higher visibility on Twitter.

However, I caution you not to go overboard. With hashtags, less is more, so keep them to a minimum of three. They are also an excellent opportunity to incorporate an element of humor into your tweets, make sure it’s relevant.

You can even go a step further and start your hashtag campaign. Before doing this, forge out a goal.

Custom hashtags are ideal to be used for promotional campaigns, events, to help people track, and to connect and spread your message quickly.

Also, ask yourself the question; is this hashtag relevant to my customers? Find out what your audience is talking about and use this information to come up with a hashtag that they will identify with.

Hashtags will also strengthen your SEO, mainly if you use them consistently across all of your social media campaigns and website. They let search engines quickly make the connections.

Step 4: Don’t be a Narcissist

If you’re a celebrity, then maybe your followers might be interested to see what you had for breakfast, but if you’re a brand, don’t.

Your company’s Twitter should not be used as your personal Twitter. Although adding a voice and face to a brand can be useful, you need to keep reminding yourself to use Twitter as a professional marketing platform, not your diary, or as a place to vent. I’m sorry, but no one wants to hear about how dull your day was.

However, there’s a fine line between being professional to the point of seeming automated and keeping it professional and engaging humanly. Find that line and don’t cross it.

Avoid being nauseatingly narcissistic at all costs, but don’t be afraid to add a personal touch here and there if it’s going to help showcase your brand or company in a positive light.

Step 5: Calls-to-Action to Improve Your Engagement Status

User engagement status
Be seen, and heard | Vasya Kobelev | Shutterstock

Calls to action are the most effective way to improve user engagement status.

Calls to action can range from asking followers to ‘retweet’ and ‘help’ to ‘follow.’

Using ‘How to’ or asking questions are also simple hacks to increase engagement on Twitter. You’ll notice that these shift the focus from the tweeter to the reader. When people feel like they are essential and could have valuable input, they are more likely to become invested in the cause.

Whether it’s raising awareness about your brand, sharing valuable information, or even just demonstrating what you have to offer; Reach out.

Encourage sharing of information, and make your audience feel not only that they can but like they should be getting involved.

Step 6: Improve User Engagement Status Through Interaction

Engagement can go beyond retweets. Holding contests will also enhance user engagement and make people want to keep following you.

Another critical element of user engagement is interacting via questions.

Ask your audience questions. This can range from how they would like to see your product improve, how they use it to improve their lives, or even what they would like to see your company do in the future.

If followers see you asking questions, they will see the conversation as open and feel like they can ask you questions too.

It is so essential to respond to followers when they initiate engagement. This will make them feel valued and demonstrate a high level of customer care on your company’s behalf. Ask questions and answer questions to keep the conversation flowing.

Questions can also prevent your tweets from coming across as automated or spammy. Be a human voice that your audience feels like they can talk to.

If you are lucky enough to see that users are mentioning your brand, re-tweet them. This will make them feel acknowledged. If you want to go one step further, a quick ‘thank you’ message to show you appreciate them mentioning you can work wonders.

Interaction is simple, but it works.

Step 7: A Picture Can Say a Thousand Words

Efired | Shutterstock
Efired | Shutterstock

Especially when Twitter only gives you 280 characters.

So, when words are limited, let pictures do the talking. Fully-featured images (440 x 220 px) are not only eye-catching but can effectively relay a lot of information at a glance.

“Tweets with visuals receive 150% more retweets,  18% more clicks and 89% more favorites”

Whether it’s graphs or GIFs, adding media is a great way to improve your user engagement status on Twitter.

Thanks to tools like GIPHY, you can even create your line of GIFs and access them whenever you need them. This will also forge an original and recognizable image for your brand or company.

Step 8: Make Your Account Look Credible

Of course, being credible is ideal, but it’s not enough. You need to show Twitter’s algorithm that you are credible.

This is as easy as taking a little bit of time to fill out all of the details of your profile and adding a bio, profile photo, location, and graphics.

Always steer clear of any tactics that will make you look spammy. That means avoid broken links and don’t send automated direct messages. Avoid doing anything that will cause users to report you for spam or abuse.

Using Twitter to your advantage is simple. You need to think like its algorithm and act accordingly. Although these simple hacks will help you to make the most of user engagement on Twitter, the main thing is that you make sure your page is user-friendly, engaging, and credible.

Read More: The No-BS Guide To Increasing Your Twitter Following

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