Fundamental to any Inbound Marketing strategy is the ability to get your message out there to your ideal personas. One of the most effective routes to amplifying your message is to use social media, of which Twitter is one of the main players when it comes to engagement and overal volume of users.
To effectively use Twitter, you need a Twitter marketing strategy. Whatever your strategy, the very first step is to completely fill out your user profile. The main goal of having a Twitter account is to make connections and gain followers. Few people will follow an account that doesn't look legitimate and an incomplete profile without a photo just doesn't seem real to most people.
The Twitter platform is very noisy and has 'experts' on every topic known to man. So, how do you stand out? Let's look at 5 simple tactics to use when using Twitter to get more website traffic.
1. Online branding must be consistent
Take a good look at your website and other profiles and craft a Twitter bio to match the rest of your online branding. This is how people will find you and recognize you now and in the future. Customers quickly develop mistrust when they spot inconsistent messaging across multiple platforms. You must choose words and visuals to mirror the tone of your brand.
2. You are building a community
You must always remember that people are what makes Twitter successful. If you really want to achieve your goal of driving traffic to your website, interact with people online the same way you would communicate with them offline. Share a variety of insights about who you are and what you know to help others learn more about you as a real person. Forget about the "hard sell" and focus your posts on building a culture, brand and community voice around your website content.
3. Promote yourself
You must promote yourself and your website on Twitter. Some people think that if they promote themselves on Twitter that makes them a spammer. It's perfectly fine to promote yourself if you do it the right way. One of the key parts of your Twitter profile is your bio. You only have a very limited number of characters to use, so make them count. Write a bio that clearly states what your website is about and add a link to it. If people don't understand what you are about, they won't stick around.
4. Twitter is more than a text-only platform
Accompanying your tweet with an image is more important than ever. Studies show that tweets with image links get twice as much engagement as those without images. The internet has become a visual environment and stunning visuals will go a long way to help your tweets stand out in the text-dominated Twitter streams. When creating a new tweet, just press the camera icon at the bottom and it will add a link to the photo, as well as a preview of the photo in your Twitter timeline.
When tweeting a link to your latest blog post, use an image from the post to help drive traffic to the shared link. The image should be relevant to the subject of the blog post, which will give your audience an incentive to click.
5. Don't give away the ending
If visitors can guess your entire story by just reading your tweet, why would they click on a link to read more on your website? In plain English highlight a benefit of the content and say just enough to generate curiosity. According to research, tweets that are between 120 and 130 characters receive the highest click through rates, so don't use all of your 140-character limit. An excellent way to tease your audience is to ask a question that begs for an answer.
You may be worried that your Twitter strategy isn't sophisticated enough, but don't stress over that. If you can get the right balance and learn to promote your site in the best way, then you will begin to see results. If you will just focus on these simple tactics, you will tap into a community that will support your work and drive a lot of traffic to your website.
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