There’s no doubt that Twitter can be an effective way to engage with your audience and spread the word about your mission. If you commit to tweeting (and/or retweeting) at least twice a day and really learn to enjoy it, then your efforts will likely pay off in increased brand recognition, referral traffic, new donors or customers and event attendees.
But before you compose that next message, know this: Not all tweets are created equally. There’s actually a right and wrong way to use Twitter. You may unknowingly be making a handful of easily correctable mistakes that could limit your influence and reach as well as hurt your brand.
No need to worry. Most Twitter faux pas are easy to fix. Here is how to fix five common Twitter missteps.
1. Use hashtags properly.
You can fill any tweet with hashtags for any topics, but don’t tag just any old thing—be strategic. Pay attention to what’s trending on Twitter and use hashtags to get in on those conversations in a natural, authentic way. This gives you great exposure to new people and communities. But be warned: Using more than two hashtags in a tweet will decrease your retweet rate.
2. Tweet on the weekends.
The vast majority of brands do not tweet on the weekends, which is why it’s much easier to stand out if you do. Using social media tools, you can schedule tweets in advance without actually having to work on Saturday and Sunday. Schedule at least one tweet each weekend day to increase your reach and exposure.
3. Post pictures and videos.
Pictures are one of the most important things to include in tweets today. Why? Images are engaging. A picture can be great storytelling and it’s far more compelling than just a URL link to your blog or other content. The ideal image size for uploaded images on Twitter is 1024×512 pixels. This size ensures that there is no cropping of your uploaded images on both the desktop and mobile versions of Twitter.
Videos are impactful. Plus, they drive a ton of engagement. Did you know that video is the most shared media type on Twitter? Tweets with videos are 6x more likely to be retweeted than tweets with photos and 3x more than tweets with GIFs. Which means video is key to helping your organization achieve its goals.
4. Retweet sparingly.
Mass retweeting everything isn’t good—it can be annoying and feel spammy. Even if you want to share great content you’ve found, add a comment or enhance the tweet in some way other than sending a mass, sterile retweet. If you are never creative, you may become the organization that gets unfollowed.
5. Include links.
Tweets with links have an 86% higher retweet rate. This speaks to the fact that Twitter users rarely retweet informal conversation tweets (unless posted by celebrities) and that your organization should adopt a retweet strategy of posting quality content with links to content sources such as news articles, blog posts, landing pages, etc.
Great, now you’re ready to take your Twitter game up a notch. Still need a little guidance? Let’s work together and go beyond followers, likes and retweets to create brand awareness, loyalty and action. Take a look at Firespring’s social media services and let us know how we can help.