Do your tweets get noticed?

Are you getting enough engagement on Twitter?

Twitter’s true value is in its engagement. Unless people are engaging with you on Twitter, you’re wasting your time.

In this article I’ll share 10 tweeting techniques that lead to better engagement.

#1: Keep Tweets Under 110 Characters

Twitter’s legendary character restriction seems short, but if you’re maxing out your character count, your tweets are too long.

Shorter tweets with around 110 characters get 17% higher engagement, and there’s a reason for that. When you leave room in a tweet, it makes it easier for people to retweet you and add their own commentary.

Learn 10 tips for increasing engagement on Twitter.

Jerry Low says:

If you are using all 140 characters in your tweet, your followers will need to edit your tweets before they can add in theirs and retweet. And, that’s not cool. People are lazy. Tweets that need extensive editing work simply get fewer retweets. Ideally, you should limit your tweets to between 80–110 characters.

#2: Tweet During Daytime Hours

The Twittersphere is active during the 11-12 hours of daytime in your audience’s time zone. Between 8am and 7pm, your tweets will have 30% higher interaction. (To find out exactly when your audience is most active, you can use the free tool from Tweriod.)

Be mindful of where your audience lives.

That means you must keep your target audience in mind and adjust your timing as needed. If your company’s social media person is in Bangalore catering to a West Coast USA audience, she will need to adjust or schedule her tweets accordingly.

#3: Tweet on Saturday and Sunday

Weekends are not the time to take a break from Twitter. If you want engagement, schedule tweets for Saturday and Sunday. According to the data, engagement is 17% higher on the weekends than it is on weekdays.

Salesforce’s research determined that there is an inverse relationship between brands that tweet on the weekend and the engagement rates on the weekend.

Weekends aren’t the time to take a Twitter break.

But doesn’t this data conflict with the point above, regarding tweeting during working hours? Not exactly. As the data crunchers observed, the daytime tweet engagement is high even during weekends.

Salesforce reported,

When brands tweet during “busy hours” (8am–7pm), they receive 30% higher engagement than tweets that fall during “non-busy hours” (8pm–7am). This even includes tweets published on Saturday and Sunday.

#4: Share Images

Twitter’s rich Tweets give you higher levels of engagement for images and videos (e.g.,Vine videos). You can get a 150% increase in retweets just by including images.

Buffer conducted an A/B test of tweets with pictures (A) and tweets without pictures (B). In each test, tweets with pictures won by a huge margin.

Now sold on the idea of using images, Buffer is toying with the ratio of image to non-image tweets. They’ve settled on a ratio of 70/30 (pictures/text).

In-stream images aren’t anything new, but few users are making the most of the feature. It’s a lot easier to pop a few words into a tweet than to use images. However, if it’s engagement you want, you can’t afford to ignore the data.

#5: Ask for Retweets

People are understandably shy about asking for retweets. In fact, less than 1% of brands have asked for a retweet. This is a huge missed opportunity.

When you clearly ask your followers for a retweet, you have a good chance of getting one. Salesforce reports that asking results in 12 times more retweets.

Here’s a tip: Make sure to spell out the word retweet in its entirety, rather than using the abbreviation RT. The retweet rate for “retweet” requests is 23 times higher than the engagement rate for “RT” requests.

I would encourage caution, though. Don’t bombard your audience with constant requests to spread your message.

#6: Use Hashtags

Hashtags double your engagement rate—they are their own implicit call to action. Plus, they create higher visibility on Twitter.

What surprises me is that only 24% of tweets contain hashtags. I would caution you to limit yourself to two hashtags per tweet.

Tweets that use more than two hashtags have a 17% drop in engagement. You don’t want that to happen.

Stay in tune with trending or industry-specific hashtags to make sure you’re cashing in on a valuable source of engagement.

#7: Include Links

Using metrics from Buddy Media, Salesforce reports that 92% of all Twitter interaction (retweeting, replying, etc.) happens when readers click links. In fact, tweets with links get way more retweets—86% more, according to research!

Links and hashtags make it easy for others to interact with your tweets.

Since tweets with links have higher engagement metrics, you’d think sophisticated marketers would be using links a lot more. Surprisingly, the percentage of tweets with links is around 36% (compared with 25% in 2010). Clearly we need to tweet links more often.

How often? Twitter whiz Dan Zarrella’s analysis suggests you include links in 60-80% of your tweets as the “sweet spot for retweets.”

#8: Stay Away From Lifestyle Tweets

While celebrities can get away with tweeting about their personal life, brands cannot. Twitter is less of a personal-life journal and more of a professional marketing platform. Be real, but don’t be banal.

Dan Zarrella compiled a list of the top 20 least engaging words on Twitter. These words—such as work, home, watching, tired and tomorrow—are nauseatingly narcissistic.

Your followers aren’t interested in your personal actions. Few people are going to engage with a tweet that declares that you’re bored or are going to bed.

#9: Use Strong Calls to Action

Zarrella also listed the most retweeted words, which have a high innate sense of engagement and most are calls to action. Words like please retweet, help, follow and how to are focused on the reader of the tweet rather than on the sender of the tweet.

Your followers are much more likely to interact if they are the focus on your tweet and you’re clearly asking for an action.

#10: Send One to Four Tweets a Day

There is a mistaken belief that the more you tweet, the more ROI you’ll get from Twitter.

Salesforce data shows you can get more engagement by tweeting less.

Actually, tweeting too often can result in very poor engagement. This is particularly true for brands, which need to be careful about coming on too strong with their marketing.
Conclusion

These 10 powerful Twitter tactics will help you regain momentum on Twitter. By implementing these data-backed actionable tips, you’ll be able to create a compelling presence on Twitter in a very short amount of time.

1. Include a clear, direct subject line.

Examples of a good subject line include “Meeting date changed,” “Quick question about your presentation,” or “Suggestions for the proposal.”

“People often decide whether to open an email based on the subject line,” Pachter says. “Choose one that lets readers know you are addressing their concerns or business issues.”

2. Use a professional email address.

If you work for a company, you should use your company email address. But if you use a personal email account — whether you are self-employed or just like using it occasionally for work-related correspondences — you should be careful when choosing that address, Pachter says.

You should always have an email address that conveys your name so that the recipient knows exactly who is sending the email. Never use email addresses (perhaps remnants of your grade-school days) that are not appropriate for use in the workplace, such as “babygirl@…” or “beerlover@…” — no matter how much you love a cold brew.

3. Think twice before hitting “reply all.”

No one wants to read emails from 20 people that have nothing to do with them. Ignoring the emails can be difficult, with many people getting notifications of new messages on their smartphones or distracting pop-up messages on their computer screens. Refrain from hitting “reply all” unless you really think everyone on the list needs to receive the email, Pachter says.

4. Use professional salutations.

Don’t use laid-back, colloquial expressions like, “Hey you guys,” “Yo,” or “Hi folks.”

“The relaxed nature of our writings should not affect the salutation in an email,” she says. “Hey is a very informal salutation and generally it should not be used in the workplace. And Yo is not okay either. Use Hello instead.”

She also advises against shortening anyone’s name. Say “Hi Michael,” unless you’re certain he prefers to be called “Mike.”

5. Use exclamation points sparingly.

If you choose to use an exclamation point, use only one to convey excitement, Pachter says.

“People sometimes get carried away and put a number of exclamation points at the end of their sentences. The result can appear too emotional or immature,” she writes. “Exclamation points should be used sparingly in writing.”

6. Be cautious with humor.

Humor can easily get lost in translation without the right tone or facial expressions. In a professional exchange, it’s better to leave humor out of emails unless you know the recipient well. Also, something that you think is funny might not be funny to someone else.

Pachter says: “Something perceived as funny when spoken may come across very differently when written. When in doubt, leave it out.”

7. Know that people from different cultures speak and write differently.

Miscommunication can easily occur because of cultural differences, especially in the writing form when we can’t see one another’s body language. Tailor your message depending on the receiver’s cultural background or how well you know them.

A good rule to keep in mind, Pachter says, is that high-context cultures (Japanese, Arab, or Chinese) want to get to know you before doing business with you. Therefore, it may be common for business associates from these countries to be more personal in their writings. On the other hand, people from low-context cultures (German, American, or Scandinavian) prefer to get to the point very quickly.

8. Reply to your emails — even if the email wasn’t intended for you.

It’s difficult to reply to every email message ever sent to you, but you should try to, Pachter says. This includes when the email was accidentally sent to you, especially if the sender is expecting a reply. A reply isn’t necessary but serves as good email etiquette, especially if this person works in the same company or industry as you.

Here’s an example reply: “I know you’re very busy, but I don’t think you meant to send this email to me. And I wanted to let you know so you can send it to the correct person.”

9. Proofread every message.

Your mistakes won’t go unnoticed by the recipients of your email. “And, depending upon the recipient, you may be judged for making them,” Pachter says.

Don’t rely on spell-checkers. Read and re-read your email a few times, preferably aloud, before sending it off.

“One supervisor intended to write ‘Sorry for the inconvenience.’ But he relied on his spell-check and ended up writing ‘Sorry for the incontinence."”

10. Add the email address last.

Kate Sumbler/flickr

“You don’t want to send an email accidentally before you have finished writing and proofing the message,” Pachter says. “Even when you are replying to a message, it’s a good precaution to delete the recipient’s address and insert it only when you are sure the message is ready to be sent.”

11. Double-check that you’ve selected the correct recipient.

Pachter says to pay careful attention when typing a name from your address book on the email’s “To” line. “It’s easy to select the wrong name, which can be embarrassing to you and to the person who receives the email by mistake.”

Gordo Web Design

Thursday, September 29, 2016

10 Ways to Increase Your Twitter Engagement