Boost your Twitter Engagement to Kickstart Holiday Sales. Ready to turn-up your Twitter engagement? Discover new and creative ways to improve your Tweets and up your social media engagement. View original post at: https://blog.dlvrit.com/2014/11/boost-your-twitter-engagement/

1. Up Your Twitter Engagement to Kickstart Holiday Sales
blog.dlvrit.com/2014/11/boost-your-twitter-engagement/
Debra Garber
Summary: With the holidays fast approaching, this week’s Social Media Minute is
dedicated to sharing great tips and tools on how your business can use Twitter to
drive holiday sales by improving your Tweets and upping your social media
engagement.
Total reading time: 5 minutes
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(#MarketingMonday) Question: How do you define social media
“engagement”?
Is it getting Retweets or social mentions?
People responding to questions or comments to your content?
Increasing your likes, favorites and followers?
Having someone call your store or office after reading a social media post?

2. Having a customer print out a coupon or make a purchase?
Twitter engagement contains all of the above and is exactly what it sounds like:
you are engaging with users of Twitter. However, engagement shouldn’t be a
passive experience. When done properly, engagement can be one of the best
ways to demonstrate success and brand activity.
In it’s simplest form, think of Twitter engagement as the sum of these four
components:
1. People will retweet you.
2. People will @Mention you.
3. People will favorite your tweets.
4. People will follow you.
Engagement on Twitter accounts for every way your fans and followers can
interact with you and your business. Here are helpful tips, tactics and tools to
boost Retweets, @Mentions, Favorite Tweets and Followers to increase holiday
sales:
How to Boost # of Retweets
Twitter analyzed the content of over 2 million Tweets to help them identify which
features within a Tweet have the greatest impact on average Retweets. The
results confirmed that adding video, links and photos all resulted in an
impressive boost in the number of Retweets.
Twitter segmented the results by sectors including TV, news, government and
politics, sports and music. Not every sector showed the same results. Overall, the
most effective Tweet features across all verified accounts looked at were:

3. Photos average a 35% boost in Retweets
Videos get a 28% boost
Quotes get a 19% boost in Retweets
Including a number receives a 17% bump in Retweets
Hashtags receive a 16% boost
How to Increase @Mentions on Twitter

4. Social media mentions of your business help you increase brand awareness,
social credibility and the likelihood that someone will follow you, allowing you to
drive even more traffic to your site. A mention is any Twitter update that contains
“@username” anywhere in the body of the Tweet. (Yes, this means that @replies
are also considered mentions.)
An easy way to increase mentions and social engagement is by adding #Hashtags
to your Twitter post.
According to the Daily Telegraph, Tweets with #hashtags receive
twice as much engagement as those without.
What are the benefits of hashtags?
1. Increase viewership: Similar to keywords used for search optimization,
hashtags help people discover your content in social. You can instantly
become more visible and become part of a trending conversation.
2. Build Social Followers: Hashtags help build social followers. If you are an
authority on barbequing, hashtags will help people find you within a room of
disparate conversations.
3. Create new customers: Find new prospects and customers. Monitor
important hashtags in social to be able to jump on relevant opportunities.
You could find a prospect in need of your service or discover a prospect
unhappy with a competitor. Hashtags discover conversations that are
happening ‘right now’ vs. keywords that will last a long time. It is important
to set-up an alert within your favorite social media-monitoring tool on the
conversations (hashtags) you want to follow.
4. Branding: Hashtags can help brand your business. You can set-up a
branded hashtag specific to your business. For example, if you are running
a sale, you could create the hashtag #Bobs_barbeque_blowout. If you add
the hashtag to your customer communications (email, twitter), your
customers can follow the hashtag to stay current on your latest promotions.
5. Revenue: Hashtags help you quickly determine what people are talking
about. This will help guide new content decisions and create new product
ideas to boost sales.
6. Competition: Track your competition. See what conversations they are a

5. part of or what people are saying about them.
Alexandra Skey’s post on 6 Creative (+5 Boring) Ways To Increase Social Media
Mentions On Twitter, add these following four creative ways to increase mentions:
1. Offer to Retweet. Send a message to your followers asking if there’s something
you can share for them this week. Focus on people who create content that your
followers will love.
Tweets that ask followers to “RT” increases the rate of retweets by
10 times; asking followers to “retweet” increases said rate by 23
times
2. Comment on Links. Don’t just share links, comment on them. Your followers
don’t want to see the resources you’re sharing – they also want to know why
you’re sharing them. And what you thought about them.
3. Include a “Click to Tweet”. Do you have something you want to promote on
Twitter? Try sending an email to your fans or colleagues with a simple Click To
Tweet. Click to Tweet allows you to compose a tweet for someone to send when
they click on a link. The easier it is for people to share, the better.
4. Always Credit Sources. When you share something, credit the person or
business that created it. A simple “via @Twitterhandle” is fine. Not only is it good
practice to credit the sources you use, it’s a good way to get on people’s radar so
you can start a relationship with them. (They may even thank you publicly or
retweet your tweet, which will help increase your online reach.) And if you’re
feeling extra social, send them a message thanking them for creating their content.
You may be surprised at the response you get!
Twitter discovered that organizations that tweet 100% more
@mentions grew their following 17% more than they expected.
How to Use Twitter Favorites
Favoriting tweets is quickly becoming a “thing” on Twitter – and some swear it’s
more effective than ads when it comes to growing your Twitter following. Favorites,

6. represented by a small star icon in a Tweet, are most commonly used when users
like a Tweet. Favoriting a Tweet can let the original poster know that you liked their
Tweet, or you can save the Tweet for later.
One way to use your Twitter favorites is to convert them into a “Twitter Favorite”
feed of your customer testimonials. Use this ‘Testimonial Favorite’ feed as way to
acknowledge what your customers have written and say “thank you” for the
feedback. As an added benefit, the testimonial feed transfers the “selling” of your
service to a credible, unbiased recommendation written by a third party.
Testimonials are one of the easiest way to improve your website, social media and
creditability. A good one can convince a prospect to buy.
Increase Engagement by Turning Twitter Followers into
Customers
The best way to gain friends and fans on Twitter is to engage with people, follow
others whose Tweets are interesting or meaningful to you, and be an active part of
the Twitter community by reading and posting high-quality information. Followers
are people who receive your Tweets. If someone follows you, they’ll show up in
your followers list and they’ll see your Tweets in their home timeline whenever they
log in to Twitter.
This quote taken from Quicksprout’s infographic on How to Increase Your Twitter
Engagement by 324%, is almost as good as the saying “an image speaks a 1000
words”:
Get real followers. It’s better to have 100 real followers who
engage than 1000 random followers who do you no good.
Why?
Followers are 30% more likely to recommend you
Followers are 72% more likely to buy from you
73% of followers want updates on future products
61% of followers want to offer ideas and feedback (so start engaging with
them!)
Offering you followers a special promotional offer increases the likelihood of
them purchasing by 349%

7. Recap on Ways to Booster Twitter Engagement
How to boost Retweets: Add video, links and photos to your Tweet
How to increase @Mentions: Add hashtags and offer to Retweet
How to highlight your favorited customer tweets: Convert them into a “Twitter
Favorite Feed” and always say Thank You!
How to turn your followers into customer: Engage with your customers!
What do you think? How have you improved your Twitter engagement? Please
add additional tips or tactics to add to this list.
Feature photo by: Perry