The Ultimate Twitter Marketing Guide For Businesses

Feb 6, 2019 13 min read

[This Twitter marketing guide is directed towards people who are looking forward to finding ways on how to market on Twitter, be it small business owners, solopreneurs or the digital marketers like me.]


Twitter is a great social media marketing platform to grow your business with over 300 million monthly active users and a young demographic to target.

Top marketers have now understood that Twitter marketing is an incredible way to engage with customers, increase reach, grow brand, and generate qualified leads. But how does it all work? How to form an effective Twitter marketing strategy? How to market on Twitter?

Marketing on Twitter can be mysterious, and leave you with more questions than answers. This Twitter marketing guide gives you answers to all your questions.

In case you're simply beginning with Twitter, this Twitter marketing guide will show you how to craft a winning Twitter marketing strategy. If you’ve already been using the platform to grow your business, jump to our section on smart Twitter marketing tips for businesses.

The Twitter marketing guide is broken down into four parts:

Introduction To Twitter Marketing

Before proceeding ahead with marketing your business on Twitter, you must know that you are about to enter a new phase of social media marketing where your customer is in power. Twitter has disrupted the traditional marketing process and has placed the customer on the top.

However, there is nothing to fret! Always remember,

When the customer comes first, the customer will last
-Robert Half

The future of marketing on Twitter is bright. You can use Twitter as a valuable marketing tool for your small, medium-sized or large business; it empowers you to discover potential customers quickly and lets you communicate with them with only a few keystrokes.

Now let’s plunge into how to use Twitter for marketing your business.

Building A Twitter Marketing Road Map

Twitter can prove to be a powerful marketing tool if you plan your roadmap to success beforehand.

Roadmaps keeps everyone on the same page by offering ongoing visibility.

To begin creating a Twitter marketing roadmap, you'll have to, first, determine the product’s vision. Then settle on a high-level Twitter marketing strategy to make that product vision a reality. Lastly, you can begin creating a roadmap to capture and communicate that vision and strategy.

1. Planning Twitter marketing strategy

Your strategy for Twitter marketing tells you where to focus, and helps you say “no” in the face of other potential options that might distract you. And it further saves you from the struggle to prove what you’ve achieved when there comes an opportunity to audit your performance.

The more time you spend on research and strategy, the better will be the results. Here’s what you need to do to form an effective Twitter strategy:

Create Twitter goals that directly affect your most significant needs

There is no one-size-fits-all Twitter marketing strategy. Defining goals is the means by which you ensure your Twitter strategy is catered to your specific needs.

So where do you begin? It doesn't have to take a great deal of time to find an answer to this question. When you are trying to set up business goals for success on social media, it’s a great idea to make use of the S.M.A.R.T goal framework - setting goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

Twitter Marketing Guide - SMART goals

Example of a SMART goal: Answer all Twitter queries within 24 hours.

  • Specific: Address all Twitter queries asap
  • Measurable: Measure goal achievement by monitoring the number of tweets that go unanswered for more than 24 hours
  • Achievable: Successfully revert to all mentions/tweets using tools that are available to monitor conversations and make social engagement efficient
  • Relevant: Answering all users' questions on-point will help the brand earn trust and loyalty of its users
  • Timely: Check every day if every query was resolved within 24 hours of its creation


Setting SMART goals could save you from making the mistakes that so many businesses often commit when it comes to social media marketing.

Identifying your target audience

Having a well-defined target market is more important than ever especially on a platform like Twitter where you have over 300 million individuals looking through their feeds each day. After all, no one can afford to target everyone of them!

You can begin with asking the right set of questions to find the people that might be interested in your product or service:

  • What is your target demographic?
  • What industry do they work in?
  • Where do they live?
  • What are their biggest challenges?
  • Can you, your service or your product help them with these challenges?
  • How do they search for vendors or sellers online?
  • What different brands do they adore on social?
  • How do they prefer to interact with online products?
  • What pushes them to make purchasing decisions?


This sort of analysis could enable you to know who is your audience and how to engage with them on Twitter, bringing about more conversions. When you've identified your target audience, you will want to focus on the following areas to generate leads:

  • People
  • Places
  • Dates
  • Other


There are many ways for you to search for the right people using these fields, but Twitter's Advanced Search feature is the best way to generate leads.

Twitter Marketing Guide - Twitter's Advanced Search

Analyze your competitors

Knowing about the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors on social is critical. It is not simply a way to get one up on a competitor; however, it is a way to grow and evolve.

The continuous focused research comes up with various benefits. It helps you,

  • Grasp new ways to serve your customers
  • Use data to spot new opportunities
  • Seize opportunities to gain customers
  • Spot mentions of your brand for relationship building
  • Design your communications plan to maximize your advantages
  • Comprehend the specifics of the marketplace where you hold that advantage


The key to consistent competitive research is to equip yourself with a routine for conducting it. It is not a difficult task to follow this routine if you have a fair idea of what things to look at while analyzing competitor’s Twitter account. Not sure where to start?

I've listed a few things here:

  • Analyze their followers and followings
  • Track when and how often they tweet
  • Keep tabs on what type of content they post - link, image, infographic, GIF or video
  • See what the engagement rate on their tweets is


It’s always an incredible idea to have an overview of your competitor’s performance. Now when you know how to spy on your competitors, you can certainly use this information for the overall success of your Twitter strategy.

Develop a unique Twitter content strategy

Once you have identified your goals and target audience, it’s time to begin drafting content to post on Twitter.

Everyone says it’s safe—and easy—to post the same content to various social networks, but I'd recommend you to avoid cross-posting on Twitter. Twitter has its own unique characteristics and userbase - one of the biggest reasons why use Twitter for business. Thus, to nail your overall Twitter strategy, you need to produce content that is unique and fresh.

Different types of content you can share on Twitter are:

  • Infographics
  • Blog posts
  • Whitepapers
  • Training guides
  • Ebooks
  • Case studies
  • Slides/Powerpoints
  • Visual content
  • FAQs
  • Video tutorials
  • Webinars
  • Podcasts and interviews
  • How-to checklists
  • Inspiring or image-based quotes
  • Interactive content - contests, quizzes, polls
  • Behind the scene posts


Plan ahead and save time! I'd suggest you plan your Twitter content about a month in advance; you can use a content calendar for the same.

Doing this could let you diversify the topics you post about, plan for any upcoming occasions, and keep your posting consistent. You can ensure you’re publishing high-quality content by planning content in advance.

Once you have decided what you want to post, the last thing you'd want to do is publish all the content at once! This is where the concept of social media scheduling comes in.

Schedule content on Twitter

Scheduling your Twitter content could be of significant advantage to you and your business. A few ways scheduling could help you out are:

  • It keeps your social media presence organized
  • It maximizes your contents’ reach
  • It lets you post outside of business hours
  • It helps you stay active without being physically available
  • Social media scheduling in bulk gives you the knowledge of best times to post


Tools like Statusbrew and Sprout Social can help you stay on track with content. You can utilize these tools to quickly view, monitor and maintain your Twitter publishing with the social media calendar view.

Twitter Marketing Guide Statusbrew Publishing

Not only this, but these tools further permits you to schedule your posts across all networks and build your Twitter content ahead of time so you won’t have to worry about posting it manually.

Related: 10 Social Media Publishing Tips Every Business Should Follow

2. Staying fast with your Twitter marketing strategy

Lately, I’ve been swimming in a sea of Twitter. Not surprising that it is an incredible platform to market your business. But it got me thinking: How to stay fast while using Twitter's native app? How to remain quick with a Twitter marketing strategy?

Unlike other social networks, Twitter is a platform where everything happens in the blink of an eye. There are chances of your tweets getting lost even before you have expected. A single tweet is never going to be sufficient for you to let your audience know that you still exist. Thus, you need to have an active Twitter profile and have to be quick.

Twitter's keyboard shortcuts will definitely help you save time and grow your followers quickly. These Twitter shortcuts are just a click away! All that you need to do is press Shift + ? and you will see all the shortcuts right next to your eyes.

Twitter Marketing Guide - Twitter Keyboard Shortcuts

You can save yourself loads of time every day with these lightning-fast hidden keyboard shortcuts for Twitter.

3. Measuring the success of your marketing strategy on Twitter

Measuring the success of your Twitter marketing strategy is the key to optimizing your plan. Establishing and measuring the (KPIs) key performance indicators for your marketing plan could let you have a better idea of whether your marketing efforts are on track or there is a need to reconsider them.

Tracking right metrics can help you stay focused and stick to your business goals throughout the process. You can then plan your marketing budget accordingly for the most effective marketing campaigns.

Use analytics tools from Statusbrew to measure the success of your marketing strategy on Twitter

Use a social media management tool like Statusbrew that empower you to monitor performance, and track engagement across various social media channels including Twitter. It lets you tag tweets of different campaigns, then tracks, analyze, and report on their performance.

Twitter Marketing Guide Statusbrew Reports

Related: We've come up with a complete guide to measuring your Social Media Metrics and Social Media ROI.

Other Strategies For Twitter Marketing Domination

In this section, you'll learn how to find people and what to do to engage them.

1. Building your personal Twitter tribe

Twitter remains on top of all marketing platforms with regards to building your personal tribe.

A tribe is a community of like-minded people who support each other and you!

When building your own Twitter tribe, ask yourself, “Whom you can help?” instead of asking "Who could help you?".

What I've learned being in the landscape of Twitter is that stop thinking about yourself and start thinking about other people first! You'll be stunned how this will boost your influence on Twitter!

2. Finding the right people for your tribe

Find the right people to build the right community

In case you're experiencing difficulty while making connections or building the desired community on Twitter, opt for follow-first strategy. Find the people you want to connect with and follow them first! But, how do you find the people you'll want to follow?

Take advantage of Twitter’s search feature, and you’ll find all the right users in the right niche. You can search keywords or phrases, hashtags, or Twitter handles. You can likewise search for tweets or Twitter accounts with those words in their bio.

I'd suggest you search for tweets rather than bios, even though bios might be more descriptive. The main reason behind this is when you search for bios, the accounts appearing at the top of those search results may not even be active on Twitter now. Whereas by searching for tweets, you know without a doubt that the outcomes show active users.

All you need to do is search a hashtag in the search bar and switch to the “Latest” tab on the search results page. This will show all the people who've tweeted using that hashtag in reverse chronological order.

Twitter Marketing Guide

3. Leveraging your Twitter tribe

One thing that you can do to leverage your Twitter tribe is incorporating Twitter etiquettes while interacting with them. But if in case you don't know how to interact with your Tribe on Twitter in the best possible manner, it can turn out to be a real disadvantage.

A few rules are:

  • Include the person’s username when retweeting their tweet
  • Twitter is very spontaneous thus make sure to reply on time
  • Thanks others for retweeting your content
  • Include the name of the authors in the tweet, if you post articles on Twitter
Twitter Marketing Guide give credits

Doing this will help your tribe know that you genuinely care for what they've created.

Twitter Marketing Tips - Do's And Don'ts

In this section, I've included the additional Twitter marketing tips that will help you on your Twitter journey. Get the hang of the following Twitter marketing tips and never look back!

1. Do's of Twitter marketing

Be consistent - Posting on Twitter requires a significant commitment. To stay in front of your audience's eyes, you need to keep posting consistently - start with 3 posts a day and go up from there. Posting on Twitter doesn't necessarily mean that you have to create something new each time you share content. You can share content from other non-competing influencers and brands that you think your audience would love.

Note: Because a single post on Twitter can never target audience to the fullest, reposting a set of Tweets in a circle can be an effective way to reach a broader audience. Even Guy Kawasaki, a former chief evangelist of Apple recycles the Tweets of his blog posts almost four times each, to hit users in different time zones. This helps him in staying consistent on social media further resulting in - better engagement, greater response, and a significant reach.

Our guide to writing great unique tweets will prove to be useful here!

Use industry relevant hashtags - Using a hashtag is an incredible way of categorizing content on Twitter. This makes you discover your own content and allows you to find relevant content from other people and companies as well. The hashtag likewise enables you to connect and engage with other Twitter users based on a common theme or interest.

  • Twitter #hashtags = free advertising.
  • Twitter #hashtags = gaining potential clients.
  • Twitter #hashtags = a way to an astonishing community.

Pinning posts to your Twitter profile - the Pinned post is a valuable marketing feature that Twitter provides to help you attract followers, generate traffic and promote your content for free! Pinning posts to your Twitter profile great way to get more eyes on your content as they remain at the top of your Twitter profile until you wish to take them down.

Twitter Marketing Guide Twitter Pinned Post

Interact with others by contributing to conversations - There are several ways by using which you can engage with others on Twitter. Recently I attended a Twitter chat by Madalyn Sklar, and I found it to be a great way to engage with people outside your account. You can follow the complete event (Twitter chat) using the event hashtags; for instance, #TwitterSmarter in case of Madalyn's Twitter chat.

Twitter Marketing Guide Twitter Chat

Interacting with others, i.e., liking, retweeting and responding to posts from other people on Twitter will get your engagement going.

Use visuals to make your posts shareable - Tweets with visuals are more likely to be shared as compared to any other tweets. Be sure how you want to portray your account in front of others. By this, I mean choosing colors, specific filters and giving images and videos a consistent look.

Don'ts of Twitter marketing

Don't auto-DM - Generic auto DMs are often just plain irritating and are usually of little use to the recipient. Twitter Auto DMs are a significant social fail! Here are two reasons why an auto-DM is a social media fail: First, they are not personal and looks like a robot-generated message to the recipient. Second, they look like spam as they are contextually irrelevant most of the times.

The use of auto DMs is, therefore, a major fail that prevents people from following you.

Don't follow too fast - Do not aggressively follow hundreds of accounts on Twitter just to garner attention. Following aggressively is not going to help you anyway; instead, you might risk getting your account temporarily locked.

Don't forget those who help you - Don't hesitate to thank and return the favor to people who frequently retweets, shares your content, or says something extraordinary regarding your business. They are your biggest supporters; always make an effort to make them feel special and be sure to build loyalty.

Don't hard sell - You don't want to annoy your Twitter audience by only posting about you, your product or your brand. That's what we call hard selling! Mix up the content avoid sounding salesy - retweet content from others or share articles that your fans find useful.

Conclusion!

Twitter is a powerhouse of opportunities for your business. There’s a reason why such a large number of organizations and individuals invest their social resources there.

I am sure this marketing guide, will be an excellent resource for anyone of you planning to invest their social resources on Twitter or even the ones already struggling with the following questions:

Why is Twitter important for marketing?
How to use Twitter for marketing your business?
How to build an effective Twitter marketing strategy?
How to increase twitter engagement?

If in case you are still struggling with any other questions regarding Twitter marketing, let me know in the comments below.

Note: With little energy, time, creativity, and self-discipline, you can bolster your Twitter marketing efforts immensely.

Ritika Sharma

Ritika is a digital marketing specialist and a writer who works on putting together creative and useful content for Statusbrew. Other than this she's an adventure seeker and a photography enthusiast.

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