Key 2015 Twitter Trends Every Marketer Needs

Do You Still Need Twitter In Your Social Media Strategy?

Twitter has been getting a lot of bad press since its earnings report.

Is this a sign that you should stop your Twitter marketing?

The short answer: No

First understand that you must create your marketing plan for the long term. It should be reviewed and updated at least on an annual basis.

Chasing daily numbers or stories is NOT a business plan. Instead, select the core topics around which you will create and curate quality content for your business and on Twitter.

Twitter remains a Top 5 social media platform globally according to Global Web Index. 

Need a Twitter boost? Here are 27 super easy Twitter tactics.

Key 2015 Twitter trends

To appreciate why you need to include Twitter in your social media strategy and more broadly your marketing plans, let’s look at the key 2015 Twitter trends based on 2014 year-end data.

• 288 million monthly active Twitter users, about 10 million users less than than analysts expected.
• 77% of Twitter accounts are outside of the US.
• Twitter ad revenues are heavily weighted from the US.

Twitter provides 140 character communications globally according to Simply Measured. It’s important to note that in addition to a short message size, the lifespan of a tweet is very short.

• 80% of active Twitter users are mobile.
• 500 million tweets sent per day.

Brands as represented by the Interbrand 100 continue to get more adept at using Twitter to extend their marketing.

• 11% year-over-year increase in brand posting.
• 38% year-over-year audience growth.
• 85% year-over-year increase in per-post engagement.

Brand activity on Twitter becomes an integrated element of on-going marketing.

• 95% of brands tweet.
• 82% of brands tweet 1-6 time per day.
• 48% of brands replied to at least one tweet per day. 
• 68% of brand Tweets are @replies.

Actionable Twitter Marketing Tips:

• Be present on Twitter to remain visible and top of mind. But, it’s not enough to just have Twitter presence. You must actively participate. Why? Chances are that your competitors are there.
• Tweet at least as frequently as your peers. The data shows that 80+% of brands tweet a minimum of once a day. Create a content plan to actively share and curate content.

BTW, here’s how Twitter stacks up in the US in 2015.

Twitter goes visual

Face it—images are much easier to consume than text. On Twitter, visuals are even more important since they increase the size of your content in a person’s Twitter stream. Therefore, don’t leave Twitter out of your visual content plans.

• 55% of tweets sent contained a photo and accounted for 57% of all engagement.
• 31% of tweets sent contained a link yet were responsible for 26% of @replies, retweets and favorites from brands.
• 5 billion Vine loops per day according to Twitter.

Actionable Twitter Marketing Tips:

• Include at least 1 image in your tweets. The eyes have it! Show them what you’ve got. One of my followers used the image from my article and got 9 retweets.

Twitter hashtags

Hashtags have become an accepted form of shorthand to identify and aggregate information on social media. On Twitter the use of hashtags increases interactions. This makes sense since your content reaches a broader audience of people seeking the information on that topic even if they’re not following you.

Actionable Twitter Marketing Tips:

• Add at least one relevant hashtag to your tweets. Hashtags extend your content reach.

Twitter customer service

Many customers turn to Twitter more than other social media networks to get answers to their customer service questions. When they do, customers expect a response from a brand within an hour, according to Lithium research. That’s not the reality they experience, however.

Airlines like @JetBlue are good at being present and active on Twitter. Twitter provides an additional platform to get out time sensitive messages like flight delays and gate changes.

Social media monitoring firm Brandwatch ran a test to determine how well brands responded on Twitter. Using their community management team’s accounts, they tweeted 300+ times to about 100 brands. They used a neutral comment with an @ sign, a direct question which included an @ sign and a complant about a brand without an @ sign.

• Top brand responses on Twitter according to Brandwatch were BestBuy and Nordstrom both of which answered in 1 minute!!
• 6% of brands engaged with any tagged @mention overall.
• 6% of retail brands tweeted with targeted @questions managed to respond within the study’s 5 day period.

 

Actionable Twitter Marketing Tips:

• Make sure someone is home on Twitter. Don’t let the Twitter conversation go on without you. At a minimum respond to people who include your Twitter handle.
• Train customer service employees to respond via Twitter. Stand out from the pack by being prepared to respond to prospects on Twitter. Also, be available on customers’ timetables, not just your work hours.

Understand that not everyone is a Twitter believer. Derek Thompson of The Atlantic found that Twitter was good at propagating traffic on Twitter.

The bottom line: Include Twitter in your social media strategy to ensure that your firm and brand remain visible and part of the social media conversation.

How do you use Twitter to improve your business?

Happy Marketing,
Heidi Cohen

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Photo Credit: Davide Ragusa via https://unsplash.imgix.net/29/blue-bird.JPG?q=75&fm=jpg&s=630481b4d268a17585be9effb609df7b