We tend to write about Twitter a lot on this blog. We’ve reviewed promoted Tweets and trends with online advertising, walked through step-by-step case studies and example campaigns and have discussed how to set up a Twitter strategy, among many other topics. When the agency first started running social media campaigns a few years back, Twitter was one of our most successful avenues for message distribution. We measured our early successes through increases in Twitter followers though.
Today, Twitter still remains one of our more popular social media services, but our measurements have shifted to measuring engagement with top influencers. We now look to capture Twitter metrics like influential @replies or retweets, traffic or clicks to marketing collateral like white papers, videos or specific pages on the client’s website, downloads of free trials or products and positive comments about our clients. In order to increase these metrics we make sure our follower base is made up of influencers and then run a series of campaigns or activities that are designed to encourage interaction with these followers.
Below I outline three techniques we have been using recently to help increase engagement on the VMware vCloud and SAP Crystal Reports Twitter feeds we are managing:
1. Twitter Polls. For both feeds we have recently run a series of Twitter polls aimed at increasing engagement with our followers. You can use a free service like TwtPoll to easily set up the poll and then promote it on your Twitter feed to collect responses from your following. Usually your followers will take the poll and also help you promote by retweeting it to their followers or @replying their responses. Not only do these polls help you interact with your followers, but you can also select questions that provide valuable research data. For example, on @crystalreports we polled our following to see which Crystal Reports products they would like to try out. Based on the results of this poll we now have a better idea of the type of products we should give away on the feed when we run a product giveaway contest in the future.
2. Twitter Contests. Another great technique, although a little more work to pull off than a Twitter Poll, is to execute a Twitter-specific contest on the feed. There are many different types of Twitter contests and frankly I could write an entire blog post about this topic alone, but in general the best Twitter contests are ones that are easy and fun to participate in. The whole goal is to run an activity on the feed that entices your followers and gets them involved in some type of game or giveaway, ultimately achieving some pre-identified marketing goal. Most Twitter contests are designed to require the Twitter user to retweet a specific phrase that includes a unique hashtag or bit.ly link or requires the Twitter user to follow the feed and then be direct messaged an instruction or prize code. For VMware we wanted to collect use cases so designed a Twitter contest that asked vCloud users to submit their use cases on a contest microsite, follow @vcloud and then tweet the phrase: “Hey, @vCloud I just submitted to @Bluelock’s developer contest to win an iPad! http://bit.ly/dsXfI1 #cloudmonkeys” to be entered to win a prize. Contests like this help promote the feed and specific marketing content, but also provide a means to interact with the following.
3. Twitter Q&As. This is a relatively new technique we are trying out, but the preliminary results look interesting. For SAP Crystal Reports we have identified a long list of business intelligence and Crystal Reports influencers, some of which have rather large social networks. In order to tap into those networks we have selected a few of the top influencers and will be facilitating Q&As with them on our Twitter feed. We are currently running our debut Q&A with a prominent author of a top rated book on Crystal Reports and are asking the community to submit questions via Twitter or Facebook to be responded to by the author. We are hoping to execute a series of these influencer Q&As with members of Crystal User Groups and other technical communities in the future. A series like this can provide our Twitter following with access to Crystal Reports “superusers”, which will serve as a valuable resource and make our Twitter feed a go-to site for Crystal users.
These are just a couple of the ideas we have been using recently on the feeds we manage. Since social media is in a constant state of evolution, I’m sure we will be using different techniques in the near future. What’s important to keep in mind though is that a good Twitter feed will provide both valuable content and engage with it’s following, either through conversation or techniques like those outlined above. Let us know what techniques you are using to stimulate engagement on your Twitter feeds!
Gotta love this title: "Android Is As Open As The Clenched Fist I’d Like To Punch The Carriers With" -