Ideas And Suggestions To Engage Your Followers On Twitter
Personally, I rarely use Twitter unless I am in the office. Once home I sincerely try my hardest not to log into my private account because I know that if I do I will waste literally hours looking through what my favorite comedians, brands, and even wrestlers (I’m a sucker for The Rocks tweets) have to say for themselves. So, as a personal caveat my time spent on the social networking website while not at work is kept to a minimum. This is mainly because where I am instilled at Jokers’ Masquerade, an online retailer of Halloween costumes in the UK, I am running our Twitter account and am already spending hours each and every day attempting to create various pieces of unique and original content to engage our followers. You could say that all my efforts go into making the Jokers page as good as it can be leaving little for me to share on my own page once at home.
If your goal, much like ours is to drive as much traffic to your website as you can, it’s a good idea to come up with content that is original and engaging. Below, you’ll find some suggestions for how you can do this.
My first tip, if you haven’t done this already, is to do a little research, check out what similar websites are doing on Twitter. Find three websites that you consider direct competition and scan through what they have tweeted over the last month. This will provide you with an idea on what similar websites are doing. Compare their content to yours if you are already tweeting. Ask yourself, “what am I tweeting to make my page stand-out?” If the answer is nothing, you need to work on a plan. Now, the easy thing to do would be to copy or do similar content, but, if you want to stand out and be different you will need to reach for your Don Draper hat and place it firmly on your head.
If you have a page that you want to tweet because you want it to be indexed on Google as soon as possible or because you feel your followers may find interest in it, rather than just linking to the page try asking a question about the content. Be creative. Rather than just a link and the page title in the tweet make your followers really want to click on the link. What if the answer to the question on Twitter is on your blog or on your site, make them click through and find the answer. As humans we are inquisitive creatures, feed into this fact by not giving everything away. Ask questions that will need to be answered on the page you’re linking to. Take a look at these examples of tweets, which would make you want to click on the link the most?
I’m hoping that you’re thinking the second tweet, because I know that I’d be more inclined to click that link and find the answer to the question.
So, ask questions about the content you are tweeting, not only will this engage your followers who are likely to ask questions in return, but, I guarantee that they will also be a lot more likely to retweet your link.
My second tip, and you should really give this a try, is to share information that is not all ‘business’ related. You’ll entice more followers if you have interesting content to share and not just shilling product and trying to sell things constantly. Do a simple Google search and find a few short jokes to tweet if you find them amusing or even inspirational quotes if you think that it has some relevance to your market. However, try and keep a loose connection if you do, your followers are following you for a reason, don’t deviate too far from what your blog, site or business is ultimately about.
So there you have it, a couple of suggestions for how to better engage your followers on Twitter. What do you think? Do you employ either of these tactics? Do they work for you? Do you disagree? I’d love to read your thoughts in the comments below.
This was a guest post from Ian Tomkins, a Digital Marketing Executive from Jokers’ Masquerade Halloween costumes in the UK. He has worked for Jokers for nine years and spent eight of those creating content for the website. Today, the website is one of the biggest costume retailers in the UK.
