How Brands Can Boost Twitter Engagement and ROI

Twitter is a natural platform for brands to add to their social media marketing mix — and of course, maximizing Twitter engagement is top of mind for brands in order to increase followers, drive reach, and increase conversions. 

According to Twitter, 85% of users made an online purchase in the past month, compared to 75% of non-Twitter users — tapping into the types of tweets that provide the most engagement is the first step towards leveraging the purchasing power of Twitter. 

So, what can brands do to grow their engagement on Twitter and maximize the ROI of their social strategy? 

Twitter Engagement Tips: How to Get Engagement on Twitter

There are a few Twitter engagement tips brands can use to optimize their efforts and increase their chances to receive the best engagement possible on the platform. 

1. Optimize your Profile 

The Twitter algorithm is more likely to recommend your profile and content to others when your profile is optimized. This means adding a profile picture, adding a description, a website link, and a location if applicable.

2. Use Rich Media in your Posts 

Twitter themselves recommends using engaging media like videos, images, and GIFs to entice users to your tweets. 

3. Develop Your Brand Voice

Twitter also recommends that brands should try to ‘tweet like a real person’ — you should keep this in mind when you’re developing the voice and tone your brand will use on Twitter. They suggest the following questions for brands to gauge whether their content needs a more human voice: 

• Are your tweets coherent? 
• Does your brand voice sound robotic, or human?
• Can the user understand what your brand is about based on your tweets?

4. Interact with Users 

Do users tweet at your brand? Reply to them — users are more likely to reach out when they can expect a reply. As a bonus, replying to tweets and engaging in conversation gives more visibility to your tweet, as it visually lengthens the conversation and brings more attention to your conversation. 

5. Pay Attention to Trending Topics 

That ‘what’s happening’ tab that lives on your Twitter homepage is useful for more than just staying up to date on the latest news. This is also a great way for brands to discover trending topics and join relevant conversations that are gaining traction. 

6. Listen to Your Competitors

Not only can you monitor what users say about your competition, but brands can also monitor what users say about them with social listening on Twitter. Social marketers can develop a better understanding for how users feel about their brand and make appropriate changes to their Twitter strategy based on audience feedback. 

7. Join Twitter Communities 

Twitter Communities give brands an already captive audience —  Twitter Communities are created by independent moderators focused on giving users with a common interest a place to connect over common interests. For brands, this is a great opportunity to tap into a group of users who are engaged with your industry’s niche. 

8. Post When Users are Most Active 

Keep an eye on user analytics to see when your audience is most active on Twitter. If you’re a B2C brand, you might identify your audience is most active during business hours, but a retail brand might notice their followers are more active on weekends or weeknights. Consider when competitors share content, but don’t forget to monitor your own followers habits. 

9. Dive into Different Metrics 

Savvy marketers need comprehensive data and analytics to continuously hone their strategies — one essential tip to help increase engagement are to monitor KPIs like reach that impact engagement rate, but also to discover other data that can help inform your strategy. For example, photo and video Effectiveness Rate helps brands understand the total impact of their visual content on engagement.

10. Run an engagement campaign 

While most of these tips can be implemented in an organic strategy, brands that want to maximize their engagement should consider running a paid Engagement campaign. Twitter recommends using this campaign type to connect with influencers, for launches, and to generally spark a conversation among users. Engagement campaigns can be used in a variety of formats including text ads, image ads, image ads with website buttons, video ads, carousel ads, and moment ads. 

11. Visuals Drive Results 

The success of tweets with media attached is seen by brands themselves, and by Twitter’s own resources. Tweets with gifs receive 55% more engagement, and tweets with video receive 10X more engagement than tweets without. Brands can tap into their bank of photos and videos from Instagram and Pinterest to repurpose them for Twitter — Dash Hudson users can take this a step further and streamline this process with the Post Duplicator in our Social Media Scheduler to pick and choose which content to send to multiple social channels including Twitter.

Drive ROI on Twitter with Dash Hudson

While most brands have a Twitter presence, many are focused on the lower funnel, which tends to be the more reactionary portion of their Twitter audience. While Twitter does lend itself well to customer service, brands that use it solely for responding to requests are ignoring the many upper-funnel customer prospects that their Twitter audience has to offer.

Twitter engagement should be treated less like a text-only reply bot, and more like the visual channel it truly is — a place where opportunities abound to turn your followers into buyers.

Dash Hudson’s Competitive Insights allow you to surface competitor's trends, and see how your brand compares to industry standards.

What wins on Instagram may not perform the same on your Twitter feed. Digging into your top tweets (and just as important, your bottom tweets) will shed light on what kinds of content are the best to repurpose for Twitter, and what should be left on other channels.

Setting benchmarks and goals for your team is key to understanding where you are now, and where you want to be in the future. A regular reporting cadence will help track your progress and let you know whether you can stay the course with your current strategy or if you want to make some adjustments. You and your team can easily implement these techniques into your current workflow with Dash Hudson’s Twitter Insights. BrandsYou’ll have all the information you need, without the noise and clutter that comes along with other Twitter analytics tools.

Your brand is unique, and has a voice that your followers want to hear. It should be represented creatively on all channels including Twitter. It’s the perfect time to level up, and tap into the opportunities that are sitting right there. Your Twitter followers await.

FAQs

What are engagements on Twitter?

Engagements on Twitter are considered when people like, comment, and share with your content — in other words, the various ways they engage with your content.

How to increase Twitter engagement?

If brands are just starting on Twitter, they should look to optimize their profile, develop a strong content strategy, and join relevant Twitter Communities and lists to find relevant users and brands to start a conversation with. For brands that are already on Twitter, consider creating your own community for your brand’s niche, or starting conversations in other Communities.

What is a good engagement rate on Twitter?

A good engagement rate on Twitter will depend on your brand's goals. However, when you consider that 0.04% is the average engagement rate among brands, engagement rates above 0.04% can indicate success.

What is the Average Twitter Engagement Rate?

You might be surprised to learn the average Twitter engagement rate is 0.04% — sports teams had the highest Twitter engagement at 0.08%, with higher education clocking in second with 0.06% average engagement, and alcohol brands and non-profits tied for third highest engagement at 0.05%.