Digital Marketing

15 tips for X (Twitter) to successfully run your account

Jun 21, 2016

9 min read

This post was updated on October 17th, 2019.

Many people think that running social media accounts is a piece of cake. Those who gain popularity on Facebook assume it’s equally easy to build up your presence on Twitter or Instagram. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Although social networking platforms have many things in common, each of them has some unique features. The fact that we know how to use Facebook doesn’t mean that we know how to run a Twitter account.

There are, though, some common practices you can implement to run a successful Twitter account. There are also some interesting Twitter tricks that you might now know of.

Inside this article, you will find both Twitter tricks and fundamental principles of using Twitter that you cannot foget about. Let’s take a look at some practical tips on how to use Twitter well.

Here’s what’s ahead of us today:

Why do you need a Twitter account?

Twitter tips for hashtags

Twitter tips for content

Twitter tips for technical issues

Twitter tips for graphics

How to run a successful Twitter account?

Why do you need a Twitter account?

But first, let’s establish some ground rules. Ask yourself one very important question – do you need a Twitter account after all?

Running a successful Twitter account will bring many benefits to your brand, including:

increasing brand awareness;
promoting your blog posts, videos, photos, presentations, and other types of content;
driving traffic to your website;
providing customer care;
getting insights into what your customers are talking about and what the industry trends are;
implementing influencer marketing campaign and choosing the most suited influencers for your industry niche.

Sounds interesting? Implementing a robust Twitter strategy will add substantial value to your online presence.

Let’s focus on some practical tips and tricks on how to run your Twitter account!

To make it a bit easier to follow, I divided the tips for Twitter into different categories:

Twitter tips for hashtags
Twitter tips for content
Twitter tips for technical issues
Twitter tips for graphics

Twitter tips for hashtags

Can you imaging Twitter without the pound sign? I bet it’s hard!

Hashtags help to search for interesting and relevant content, as well as, help you measure the effects of your Twitter campaigns.

Here’s every Twitter tip about the use of hashtags we could think of!

1. Use hashtags and analyse their impact on your Twitter presence

Hashtags on Twitter help you find the most relevant mentions concerning your brand – whether there are about your brand, product, service, or an industry trend.

Hashtags are responsible for your social media reach. Properly used, they can spread your posts all over Twitter (and beyond!) and increase your reach. Pick them carefully.

Analyse how your hashtags spread across Twitter

Hashtags are also a very helpful tool to measure the performance of your Tweets. And measuring the results of your Twitter marketing campaign should be an essential part of every marketing campaign.

Monitoring hashtag performance will let you know whether your followers are appreciating and interacting with your content, how it spreads across different social media channels, and what was the estimated social media reach of your posts.

To get access to all the analytics data you have to set up a project in Brand24, a top social media monitoring tool (according to Buffer).

Set up your free monitoring project now.

In the project creation wizard enter the hashtag you’d like to monitor.

Then give Brand24 a couple of days to gather necessary data (social media listening tools, in general, don’t provide historical data).

All the interesting data will be waiting for you in the Analysis tab.

You’ll find the metrics about:

estimated social media reach;
the total number of social media interactions (combined number of Twitter likes, comments, and retweets);
a number of positive and negative mentions.

Twitter hashtag analytics will help you scale your Twitter marketing efforts and measure the performance of your marketing efforts.

Sounds interesting? Give Brand24 a spin! The tool offers a 14-day free trial (no credit card required).

2. Find trending hashtags

Using the right hashtags will help you reach your audience and accomplish your Twitter goals, for example, promoting your new products among your existing audience.

But you can use Twitter to reach brand new audiences that might be interested in your product.

a list of Twitter trending hashtags you can use to boost your Twitter account

To do that, take a look at the list of trending hashtags.

These are the hashtags used commonly with the terms monitored by you.

Analysing the list of trending hashtags will give you information about the topics your potential customer look for and discuss. This will give you a general idea which topics to join and what type of content to prepare to build a successful Twitter account.

Check: How to Find Trending Hashtags on Twitter

Twitter tips for content

Once you get hold on hashtags on Twitter, you should take a deeper look at the content you post.

Thoughtful content can make or break your Twitter presence. Put extra time and other resources (employees, digital marketing agency, etc.)

Providing high-quality content is the golden rule in social media. It’s key to your social media presence. Additionally, a Twitter account with a great content ranks higher in search engines.

3. Provide varied content your audience want to interact with

Interactions are the cornerstone of a successful Twitter presence. The more interactions you Tweets gather, the better your posts resonate with your audience.

Your Twitter should be a mixture of various content. You need to be flexible and creative. You ought to know your audience and find a common ground.

Both, the content your followers crave for and its representation are equally important. Don’t be afraid to experiment – if something doesn’t work well, you can always find another solution.

GIFs, images, quotes, and infographics are some examples you can offer your followers to enrich your content.

4. Follow mentions regarding your brand

People will talk about your brand outside your owned media. It’s up to you to find those mentions and react to them.

Tweets from other Twitter users are a great content source for your profile.

User-generated content, or UGC for short, will provide a social proof for your account.

It’s obvious that you’ll talk positively about your product or service. Opinions of your happy customers will give extra value to your Twitter account.

5. Don’t forget to say thank you

If someone decided to follow you on Twitter, you can thank him or her in a direct message or tweet. You can also start a conversation that will help you form a stronger bond with a follower. Moreover, you can post a separate tweet tagging your followers and showing your gratitude towards them.

Apply the same rule for the positive mentions about your company. Your customers will feel appreciated, you will build customer loyalty, and it doesn’t take much effort.

Boost your engagement on Twitter!

6. Provide entertainment

According to many studies, about 90% of tweets containing visual content are more popular. However, tweets containing quotes are almost similarly popular. You need to strike a balance between them.

Humour can break the first ice and grasp your audience’s attention. Naturally, you need to be careful and balanced. Be sure to check this article on humour in social media and marketing.

Check: How to Get Happy Customer Quotes?

7. Pay attention to timing

Due to the fact that your audience may come from different parts of the world and different time zones, you need to know when they check their Twitter. Find the peak time for posting. Tweriod may come useful here. It analyzes your followers’ tweets and picks the best time for you to tweet and reach them.

8. Don’t spam

Although the Twitter algorithm allows publishing more content that Instagram or Facebook, be careful not to spam your followers. If you oversaturate your Twitter feed with content, your followers will stop interacting with it and tweets won’t be seen by many of your followers.

Check the engagements rates in Brand24 on a regular basis. Every little drop in engagement rates doesn’t necessarily mean you’re spamming your audience (it can be due to seasonal fluctuations), but if it’s a persisting trend, you should examine the case closer.

9. Post frequently

This rule concerns every social network. Too frequent sharing posts can overwhelm our followers. To create a bond with your followers you need to post just a perfect amount of tweets. Schedule your tweets in advance so that you don’t neglect your followers. Make sure that they are served with new content every day.

Twitter tips for technical issues

To have a successful Twitter account you have to take a look at some technical issues.

Don’t worry, you don’t need any hard technical knowledge to boost your Twitter account!

10. Give a link to your Twitter profile in other social media

Hardly anyone has only one social media account. To increase your popularity advertise the link to your Twitter account on other social networking platforms. It will enable other people to follow you on Twitter.

11. Analyse your account and audience

Find out who belongs to our target group, what are their interests and passions, what do they crave for. To achieve the success you should know your target audience perfectly. Get to know them better what learn what content they enjoy.

12. Perform A/B tests

Such tests work well in many cases. Also on Twitter. Share various stuff and analyze what attracted the biggest attention. This way, you will learn what kind of content is the best, what it should contain and who should it reach.

There are a few golden rules when it comes to A/B testing.

Start with precisely determining what would you like to test. Never change more than one element.

If you test two or more changes at once, you won’t be able to tell which one exactly has an impact on your marketing activities.

The numerical results will tell you only half the story. Always try to discover what’s behind the numbers and find the context. After all, it’s about people, and human behaviour can’t be narrow down only to numbers.

Twitter tips for graphics

Twitter is not a visual platform. That doesn’t mean though, that you shouldn’t pay attention to the visual side of your Twitter account.

13. Create compelling graphics

Creating absorbing images connected with the content can be problematic, especially for those who are not familiar with graphic design. That’s why we have Canva. It’s a simple graphic design tool that allows creating decent images.

14. Take a look at your profile photo

An egg as a profile photo? Seriously? It’s totally unprofessional. Make sure that you have a great profile photo.

If you’re active on multiple social media channels, try to use the same profile photo on every one of them. People interested in your product will immediately know if they found the right social media user.

15. Take a look at your background photo

Both your profile and background photo should look great and be consistent with you or your brand.

How to run a successful Twitter account?

Hopefully, these Twitter tricks and tips will form a guide on how to run a successful Twitter account.

If I had to recommend two top Twitter tips to run your account well, I would say this:

Put extra effort in creating relevant content. Use and analyse the right Twitter hashtags to reach the right audience and achieve your Twitter goals.
Analyse your Twitter presence. You will make mistakes while building your Twitter account. You can learn from them and use them to your advantage. Analyse the results of your Twitter activities and spot the changes that are beneficial for your digital strategy.