Twitter is an important resource for promoting a blog or other websites but just like all social media platforms, it’s not a place for endless sales pitches, particularly if you’re seeking to build up organic traffic. Obviously, the more followers you have, the better, but it’s the quality of these followers that really matters. After all, your goal should be to increase the number of engaged followers who pay attention and, preferably, interact, with your tweets. If you find yourself losing engaged followers, it’s probably time to make some drastic changes to your Twitter marketing strategy.
#1. You’re Shouting, Not Sharing
A major function of Twitter is the retweet, which basically means sharing a tweet from one account on another one. Just like all social networks, Twitter is very much about community-building, and sharing is an important part of that. If all you’re doing is publishing your own tweets, particularly if they’re of a salesy tone, your followers will quickly become disassociated from you.
Twitter marketers who automate their campaigns are at a particularly high risk of being seen as spammers, so it’s always important to retain the human element by sharing and conversing.
#2. You’re Using Hashtags Excessively
Hashtags have long been a powerful and important function on Twitter to such an extent that other major social networks are also using them. Unfortunately, however, hashtags are often abused by unscrupulous marketers desperately vying for attention by using irrelevant hashtags. It also looks bad and becomes difficult to read if there are loads of hashtags in a single tweet. It is especially important to only use hashtags that are completely relevant to the content of your tweet and to any link you might be sharing.
#3. You’re Not Tweeting Enough
Twitter is a particularly noisy platform where the average lifespan of a tweet has been found to be around 18 minutes before it gets buried and rarely seen again. As such, it’s important to be regularly active to remain visible, and this is precisely why many marketers automate their tweets. Automation can help a lot, provided you don’t lose your voice to it and, consequently, the human element. Of course, you can also tweet too frequently, but neglecting your profile for weeks or even days can take you right back to square one. After all, many users regularly unfollow inactive accounts.
#4. You’re Being Too Salesy
This point is closely related to the first one, but it’s extremely important nonetheless, and it’s one of the most common mistakes of all among inexperienced digital marketers. People use Twitter to find interesting content, not to be bombarded with cringeworthy sales-speak like that of a typical estate agent or used-car salesman.
Of course, your goal will be to promote your business, but it’s important to do so in such a way that you have something interesting and/or entertaining to offer. Ideally, you should keep self-promotion down to no more than 10% of your tweets.
#5. You’re Not Diversifying Your Content
An endless stream of boringly similar tweets is a common sign of a fully automated account of the type that most Twitter users just hate. Diversifying your content will help you reach out to a wider audience, though it is important not to deviate too much from your niche to the extent that you’ll annoy your following.
Most importantly, you should remember to share other people’s content and curate other online content to keep your Twitter feed fresh and full of new perspectives. Oftentimes, people will return the favour by sharing your content. Be sure to share different content formats too, particularly those of the visual kind like infographics.
Final Words
There are more than 300-million active users on Twitter, and while the figure might not be nearly as close to that of Facebook, it’s important to remember that it’s a very different type of platform. For a start, it’s generally much easier to build up an audience on Twitter without paying for advertising. It’s also easier to stand out, provided you make every effort to share and publish interesting content and reach out to the right people. Building an audience, however, is just one side of the story. Retaining valuable followers, by contrast, requires a consistent and long-term effort.
Vairo is an online entrepreneur and founder of WPWarfare.com. His passion is content marketing, blogging and WordPress in general, which is why he dedicates every spare minute he has to writing, hoping to share an arsenal of practical and useful information with others.