In order to make money and survive, Twitter needs to work on new ways for advertisers to use the platform to their advantage. And to make sure that happens, the company is keen to give marketers a helping hand. So, here are “9 ways to boost Tweet engagement”, according to Twitter itself.
In a recent study, Twitter looked at 9,000 direct response campaigns in the U.S. to identify recurring patterns that drive powerful campaigns. After analysing the data with its partner Adaptly, Twitter shared its takeaways to improve campaign performance and ROI – the metrics below are expressed in terms of click-through rate (CTR), cost per link click (CPLC) and cost per aquisition (CPA). Let’s have a look!
1) Urgency
Twitter is a great “on-the-fly” tool. Jack Dorsey himself, sees “brevity” as Twitter’s backbone. So, this should be used. Including words such as hurry, fast, quick, running out or limited time in your copy, can lower CPA by 10%, and boost CTR by 10%. Surprisingly, the study found that only 13% of Tweets used urgency, which means that 87% of marketers are missing out!
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2) Use Percentages For Promotions
If you want to give a discount for your products, use percentages. The survey found that Tweets that promote percentage discounts have 40% lower CPA compared to tweets with currency-based discounts. The next time you want to do a discount on your product, work out how much the discounted value is, as a percentage. This could be a game-changer!
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3) Fresh Content Is Exciting
Tweets that talk about new products or services, work very well. With a 10% lower CPA, a staggering 23% higher CTR, and 26% lower CPLC, promoting new content (whatever it is) is one of the best tactics that surfaced in the study.
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4) Less Is More
Previous studies already emphasized the importance of keeping tweets short. The new study is no different: Tweets that have between 40 and 60 characters have the lowest CPA, and that same metric goes up as tweets get longer.
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5) Involve Your Community: Ask A Question!
Asking a question is an invitation for your followers to interact with your account handle – and it works! Tweets featuring a question have a 9% lower CPLC and a higher 16% CTR, versus Tweets that do not.
6) Contests Do Work
Tweets that offer a prize have 40% lower CPA, yet only 4% of the Tweets that were examined featured a contest. Be sure to share your contests on Twitter if you don’t want to squander big opportunities!
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7) NO NEED TO YELL
Tweets with 20% or more of their characters in capital letters have a 9% lower CTR and a 2% higher CPA. Sure, using all caps is one way to stand out in the feed, but that can be to the detriment of engagement with users being put off by it.
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8) Mentioning Is @ Your Own Risk
Mentioning another handle is a smart tactic. It plays out as a bit of a nudge, and chances are the mentioned account will interact. A ‘Like’ is good, but a retweet is even better, as it secures extra exposure with the accounts’ followers, an audience your tweet may not be able to reach. Nevertheless, the survey found that tweets that mention one or several other handles have a 6% lower CTR and 3% higher CPLC.
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9) Easy On The Hashtags
The more hashtags, the more chances to be discovered, right? While this logic is correct on Instagram, it is hardly valid on Twitter. The study revealed that tweets with one or more hashtags had a 24% higher CPA and a 3% lower CTR than those without. Maybe hashtags are overrated after all.
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Even though the sample size used for this study is significant, the 9 tactics revealed here are just guidelines. Marketers should give them all a try, and see which ones work best for them. Results may differ from one community to the other.
Twitter even recommends to try several iterations of the tweet for the same campaign, varying the wording as well as the imagery. Bear in mind that what works for one campaign may not necessarily work in another one. That’s the beauty of marketing, isn’t it?
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