This article first appeared on Marketo’s blog.
Are you struggling to build a strong community for your business on Twitter? It’s easier than you think. You can be successful by making a plan, delivering quality content, organizing with Twitter lists, participating in active Twitter chats, and knowing your Twitter analytics.
A company that successfully embraces Twitter and builds its community around it will move beyond likes and followers. Their activities work to inspire identification with their brand and empower social customers to act, which translates into a willingness to purchase and spend.
In my experience hosting the #TwitterSmarter and #SocialROI Twitter chats, I can tell you that when you take the time and effort and follow the steps I outline below, you’ll see real results.
1. Have a Clearly Defined Plan and Strategy
Besides embracing Twitter as a social channel designed for socializing, it’s important to define and map out how you can leverage it as a long-term interaction between a business and a community. Defining clear, trackable actions tied to business goals for building an engaged community will increase your reach and influence the bottom line. Remember: engaged, connected, responsive and empowered brand community members can help your business scale and it can work for you without spending a fortune.
2. Focus on a Content Creation Process
Consistently deliver high-quality content that is shareable and offers value. Content that connects your brand message and community spirit will help you stand out and position you as an authority in your field.
- Use storytelling tactics to create relatable and interactive content that drives engagement is key to building a community.
- Drive personalization through your content—be a curator and promote others, be helpful, offer advice and show you care.
- Be a connector and focus on gaining high-quality followers.
Ultimately, creating valuable, interesting content will move the needle for your business because your ROI is measured through interactions and engagement.
3. Embrace Twitter Lists
Twitter lists is a powerful, yet underutilized feature. It’s time to embrace this feature! Let lists be your highly tailored and curated rolodex of influencers, industry experts, thought leaders, businesses, communities, keywords, and hashtags that are relevant to your industry. Twitter Lists is your best tool to easily monitor conversations, segment and nurture engaged users, and follow customers and brands.
Check out my most popular Twitter lists:
- Social Media Smarties – who I dig in the world of social media
- #TwitterSmarter podcast – list of guests from my podcast
- #TwitterSmarter guests – list of guests from my Twitter chat
- My Fave Podcasts – podcasts I listen to regularly
4. Host and Participate in Twitter Chats
When you’re part of a Twitter chat, it’s the perfect opportunity to not only engage with customers and prospects, but you can create the perfect setting for peer-to-peer engagement. Imagine how your company can be the perfect host—facilitating the venue and opportunity for valuable conversations and discussions. It’s a great opportunity to connect your business with like-minded people, manage authentic, trustworthy conversations and help you generate usable content for your business.
Check out these popular Twitter chats:
5. Measure Your Impact to Get Optimal Results
It’s important to regularly track and measure your impact and results on Twitter. This will help you see what is working and what is not. You can track directly through your Twitter analytics or some other third party tool. I recommend developing a process to check your results weekly. Set up UTM tags and monitor tweets getting the most traction and biggest reach. This will show you how the traffic is coming to you using your Google Analytics. When you follow these tips it will help you align and improve your Twitter strategy which leads to your success.
Building a community takes time and effort. But the payoff can be huge. These tips will help you succeed as you build your engaging brand community on Twitter.
The benefits of a deeply engaged community on Twitter translates into the building and maintenance of your online reputation, successfully tracking online sales, obtaining valuable direct feedback for product development, and quality interactions that drive purchases and repeat sales.
So now you can go out and start planning your community growth. Create standout content, start using Twitter lists, join in several Twitter chats, and regularly review your Twitter metrics.