This week’s education article was authored by Stephen Slappey, the CO and Marketing Director for Creative Consulting in Summerville, SC.
They always say if you have to explain the joke, it is no longer funny. So, to anyone that doesn’t see the humor in the title of this education moment in relation to Twitter, it’s your fault not my odd sense of humor.
This week we will be talking about the wild and volatile world of Twitter. Twitter is an interesting beast when it comes to marketing. It is simplistic in its execution, yet difficult to master. Hopefully, in the next few minutes, you will have a better understanding of how Twitter works and a few do’s and don’ts to help you get the most out of the time you spend on Twitter.
First, let’s start with the basics. Twitter is a short post content site. This means that everything that is posted has to be less the 140 characters. So, what does that mean for you? You have to use every single word to your advantage. Don’t try and get too wordy. Focus on getting straight to the point of your content.
As an example, on Facebook you may try to say something like this:
“Creative Consulting is looking forward to seeing everyone at our cookout on January 1st, 2027 at 11:00 PM until, you guessed it, TBD. There will be Dixie cups and water for everyone that comes. Come visit with everyone from the ever-elusive Bradley to the quiet and reserved Meg. So, get ready for a fantastic night to remember.”
On Twitter you would word it more like this:
“Creative Consulting Cookout
January 1st, 2027 at 11:00
Dixie cups and water provided,
Come out and be ready to party!”
So how often should you be posting? Every target audience is different and, like with everything in marketing, it is a trial and error system. Start with 2 – 3 posts per day spread out throughout the day. Then over time test different amounts of posting and at different times.
As I have said in other education moments, the easiest way to streamline this process is to communicate with your clients. Consistently getting feedback from them about your posts and whether they are enjoying the content or not. “Stephen,” I hear you saying, “I don’t have time to spend posting throughout the day like that.” Yes, it is important to be active on social media every day (we recommend one to two hours daily across all platforms) but we understand that that is not always possible for most business owners. It will benefit you to find yourself a good third-party post-program. There are many out there, both paid and free. One that is a good starting point is a program called HootSuite. What HootSuite allows is for you to create all of your posts in advance and schedule them to go out throughout the week. There are many great third-party post programs so find one that works best for you!
Next, let’s talk about content. Don’t just post about your business. There has to be a healthy mix between content about you, your town, your client’s interests, trending topics, and your business. Market research that we perform shows that businesses that post content relevant to their clients’ interests, as well as focus on their towns and community have over a 300% better engagement rate then pages that only post about their most recent sales and discounts. Provide someone information that pertains to their life and show how connected you are, and people will want to know what your business is all about. That is when you post about your company and link them to your site! Now your audience will be clicking that link in no time!
Now that you know when and what to post, let’s talk a little bit about a few more important notes that are necessary to running a good Twitter.
Once you have your content, it’s time to add in your hashtags and at-signs. Hashtags (#) are used on Twitter to link your post to a database filled with other posts that are related to the same content. If I wrote a post about Summerville, I would look on Twitter for relevant and heavily used hashtags to add at the end of my post. You can find these at any time by typing your hashtag into the search bar and seeing the most widely used verbiage. As I write this the most heavily used # for Summerville is #svillelife but tomorrow that may be different, so don’t assume you know what the current best # is to use.
Don’t go too crazy. Use no more than five # per post. Let’s look back at our example twitter post but now let’s add #s.
“Creative Consulting Cookout
January 1st, 2027 at 11:00 PM
Dixie cups and water provided
Come out and be ready to party
#Summervillelife #Summervilleevents #networking #businessnetworking “
Finally, let’s talk about at-signs. At-signs (@) are used like # but are used to link to other Twitter users. Doing this will let all of their followers see your post as well. Let’s say that our example, the cookout, was actually being put on by Creative Consulting and Hell Camp by AJ Hickey. We would want to change it to sounds something like this:
“Creative Consulting Cookout
January 1st, 2027 at 11:00 PM
Dixie cups and water provided by CC
Filet Mignon provided by @survivehc
Come out and be ready to party
#Summervillelife #Summervilleevents #networking #businessnetworking”
Call to Action
This week I challenge everyone to find a third-party poster/scheduler as well as start building yourself up a good list of posts. Your audience is out there, you just have to know how to reach them!
Social Media and You: “Ten Reasons Twitter will Make You Cry. Number Five will Leave you Speechless.”
