Twitter is about being social. And being social is all about being spontaneous, right? Well, not exactly. When it comes to social media management, it’s important to be consistent and abreast of what’s happening in your industry. That’s why you need a solid content strategy.
And so, we invited business advisor and founder of GrowthSuite, Todd Giannattasio, to talk to us about developing and using a content strategy effectively.
Here’s a summary of our chat.
Guest: Todd Giannattasio
Topic: Getting the most out of your content strategy
Format: Eight questions directed at the guest. Everyone’s welcome to share.
In the simplest terms, a content strategy is a plan. It’s a plan that outlines your ideal message and how you’ll communicate that to your ideal audience at the perfect time. It includes your main messaging stance, tone, and policies. The purpose of having a content strategy is to help the audience understand your offerings better in their journey towards becoming a paying customer.
A1 Your strategy should have clear intentions for each stage of the customer journey to move people through Awareness, Engagement, Permission, and Conversion. #TwitterSmarter
— Todd @ Growth Suite (@GrowthSuite) September 10, 2020
As our guest explained, there are various stages before someone becomes your customer. At each stage of this funnel—awareness, engagement, permission, and conversion—you need to have content with clearly defined goals.
That exercise—defining your goals and designing content for each stage—is the best and easiest way to build up trust in the market. Not only will you know what exactly to say and when, but by doing so, you’ll become a known brand amongst your audience.
A1 Remember that people don’t buy from strangers. They buy from people and brands they Know Like & Trust. So don’t try to sell to strangers. Build a relationship with your audience #TwitterSmarter
— Todd @ Growth Suite (@GrowthSuite) September 10, 2020
And of course, if they know and trust you, they’re more likely to buy from you.
The most important thing about using Twitter to reach the right audience is listening to conversations around you.
A good place to start is hashtag research. Look up words and phrases that your target audience is likely using. Then use those hashtags in your own tweets to propel your content to the right people. To help you keep track of these conversations, set up tools like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck so that you can monitor the action in real time. You can also configure alerts for specific hashtags or mentions.
A2 #TwitterSmarter
1️⃣Do some hashtag research for what your target audience uses2️⃣Use them in your tweets
3️⃣Setup a listening stream in @Hootsuite for those hashtags so you can easily join in the conversation— Todd @ Growth Suite (@GrowthSuite) September 10, 2020
Once you’ve managed to find relevant conversations, observe what people are saying. This is a big part of your audience analysis. Understand their wants and needs, and then publish content that caters to their requirements. Always remember, though, on social media, your tone shouldn’t be salesy. You’re there to help people and make genuine relationships.
A2 #TwitterSmarter
4️⃣Reply to their Tweets to open a conversation and get their attention. Remember that when talking to a new person, you are not trying to "drive traffic" or "close a sale." You are opening a conversation and beginning a relationship— Todd @ Growth Suite (@GrowthSuite) September 10, 2020
Yet another way to find your audience is to share content from your website or blog. If you combine it with right hashtags and share them in relevant conversations, you can redirect all those eyeballs to your website. Nothing’s more effective than word of mouth marketing on social media.
A2 Other people can also be a source to create awareness and attention to your brand on Twitter. If you are publishing blog content that is worth sharing, then Twitter can be a great Word Of Mouth and “referral” channel #TwitterSmarter
— Todd @ Growth Suite (@GrowthSuite) September 10, 2020
Our chat regular Jignesh shared a bunch of great ways to use Twitter to reach a larger audience. As he mentioned, it’s crucial to be consistent on Twitter. People prefer the person sharing helpful links every day over the person who shares one lengthy piece of original content before disappearing for a month.
A2.
?Use more visual #content
?Post consistently (use #)
?Share articles more than once
?Personalize retweets
?Share other's content
?Start engaging with your community
?Join #TwitterChats
?Give more than you receive
?Welcome new members#TwitterSmarter
— Jignesh Thakkar (@socialjignesh) September 10, 2020
Consider Todd’s clever formula: R + N > P = 🙂
As he outs it, when your relationship (R) with customers and their needs (N) are stronger than their pains (P), you’ll have a winning process. So your goal should be to offer maximum value and alleviate any pains or losses your customers may be incurring. In other words, you want to be the better option for them to go to in times of uncertainty.
A3 Use Twitter to continuously (but not annoyingly) keep your convo going so that they become familiar with you and you cultivate a relationship. If they start following you and they see your posts regularly, that will help stack the deck in your favor more #TwitterSmarter
— Todd @ Growth Suite (@GrowthSuite) September 10, 2020
If you think about it, the secret to building successful relationships with your customers is to be around and available when they need you the most. This means being consistent—showing up onTwitter regularly to serve your audience. The more you show up, the more familiar your audience will become with you, which of course translates to better trust and increased sales over time.
A3 Great marketing is a dialogue, not a monologue #TwitterSmarter
— Todd @ Growth Suite (@GrowthSuite) September 10, 2020
An easy way to be consistent is to incorporate some regular content in your routine. (Hint: that’s a content strategy.) For instance, share educational material that helps customers use your product or serve more effectively and include thought leadership-style articles that can establish you as an industry leader. That way, you’ll be the first on their mind when a need arises.
A3 Find Twitter Chats to join, or even start one for your audience if it doesn’t exist yet #TwitterSmarter
— Todd @ Growth Suite (@GrowthSuite) September 10, 2020
Twitter is a great way to let your audience know what you offer. Over time, your snippets will help set up conversations and establish relationships. This can initiate your sales cycle and help gain momentum towards more sales.
A4 Now that you're building relationships with your audience, you can start to present them with Lead Magnet offers.
This'll grow your email list
Now you have direct distribution and a 2nd channel of communication.
And remember, that familiarity breeds trust #TwitterSmarter— Todd @ Growth Suite (@GrowthSuite) September 10, 2020
You can then give away offers and gated content to increase your email list. Or to take it a step further, as our guest explained, you can follow up free offers with some inexpensive, but paid offers. This is a good way to transition your customers from one stage to another.
And of course, when you make any offer on Twitter, see that you always have a landing page with a clear call to action and a form to collect customer details to contact them later.
A4 You present these offers on Twitter with a message or Tweet that has a compelling reason to sign up and a link to a landing page with a sign up form on it. Easy Peasy. #TwitterSmarter
— Todd @ Growth Suite (@GrowthSuite) September 10, 2020
Our friend from Visme gave us a few examples of how to generate permission-based leads. You can do ebooks white papers, on-demand webinars and courses, and, or crowdfunding projects.
A4
– Creating truly valuable ebooks and whitepapers
– Offering on-demand courses to help people improve their skills
– Membership platforms or Patreons to build a creative community#twittersmarter— Visme (@VismeApp) September 10, 2020
It’s important to remember and appreciate that you can’t really make entire sales on Twitter.
A5 You should spend 80% of your time and content giving value and building relationships, and 20% generating Leads and driving Sales #TwitterSmarter
— Todd @ Growth Suite (@GrowthSuite) September 10, 2020
Social media is where sales begin. It’s naturally suited for lead generation and awareness building. And that’s why you should try and spend a majority of your time developing relationships, and the rest on promotion and sales. This is commonly known as the 80 – 20 rule.
A5 Remember that you should never be selling to someone who isn’t going to get value from your products. Use this content strategy to ensure you don’t just spam the Twittersphere and that you are putting out value to the world #TwitterSmarter
— Todd @ Growth Suite (@GrowthSuite) September 10, 2020
Our friends from GiveWP mentioned another important aspect of using Twitter and selling on the platform: storytelling is the lifeblood of social media. When you prioritize that, everything else tends to fall into place quite well.
A5: It's all about storytelling, providing value, and asking warm leads at the right time.
For #Fundraisers, this goes back to our advice about donation asks. The first step is to create the story as a foundation.
? https://t.co/VMOkn9uq21#TwitterSmarter https://t.co/HwHuWRHEFz
— GiveWP (@GiveWP) September 10, 2020
Todd shared a big list of tips on what types of content to post, including stories, social proof and testimonials, behind the scenes content, thought leadership material, and Q&As.
A6 #TwitterSmarter
?Stories
?Practical Tips
?Statistics
?️♂️Social Proof
?Engaging Questions
?Thought Leadership
?Your Story
?Address Pain Points
?♂️Address Objections
??Paint Dream Scenarios
?️♀️Behind The Scene— Todd @ Growth Suite (@GrowthSuite) September 10, 2020
Gene also laid out some possible content types such as short and long form articles, retweets, external links, and videos. He also pointed out that having a variety of content keeps the audience entertained and engaged.
A6 A blend of different tweets. Some links, some photos, some video, short tweets, long tweets. I like threads in particular. A great way to string together a large piece of content (like an entire blog). Variety helps to keep things interesting for everyone. #TwitterSmarter https://t.co/XLM6obaT10
— Gene Petrov – LDRBRND (@LDRBRND) September 10, 2020
Twitter Lists are a great way to organize your followers and audience. They also make it easy to keep up with specific segments of your target demographic.
A7 Use Twitter Lists to organize your audience into the proper stages so you can easily monitor and communicate the right message to the right people at the right time #TwitterSmarter
— Todd @ Growth Suite (@GrowthSuite) September 10, 2020
Todd’s next couple of tips were based on Zapier, the integration tool that helps connect two separate software. You can connect Zapier to your website so that every time someone signs up to a piece of lead magnet content, they’re automatically added in to a corresponding Twitter list as well.
To set that up, you’ll have to create a separate field in your form to capture your audience’s Twitter handle.
A7 Make Twitter Handle a form field for your Lead Magnets and you can @Zapier a contact from @ActiveCampaign or @ConvertKit to a Twitter List #TwitterSmarter
— Todd @ Growth Suite (@GrowthSuite) September 10, 2020
An interesting and rather engaging technique is to tweet out any random ideas and concepts that you want to look into. Not only are these great conversation starters, but they also make you accountable later on.
A8 When someone asks you a question or for advice, record a short video on your phone giving that same tip and post it to Twitter so more people can get a taste of your expertise #TwitterSmarter
— Todd @ Growth Suite (@GrowthSuite) September 10, 2020
In our chats, we’ve spoken a lot about the value of video replies. Use this as a way to answer questions on social media—it’ll make you stand out in a busy feed.
Aside from everyday activities, use long-term strategies as well. This includes scheduling your content and repurposing older, evergreen content so that you have enough material to go around consistently.
A8 Repurpose snippets from your longer form content on other channels for Twitter #TwitterSmarter
— Todd @ Growth Suite (@GrowthSuite) September 10, 2020
Megan also pointed out the importance of not biting more than you can chew. Social media takes a lot of time and effort. Take a few highly-relevant people and start engaging with them regularly. Don’t stress yourself about building relationships with everyone at the same time. When you do it in batches, you can engage for longer periods of time without burning yourself out.
A8: Start simple pick a handful of people you want to engage with and focus on building relationships. Use twitter chats, polls, and fun easy to build content. You can do a lot to show value with just text. #TwitterSmarter https://t.co/gADI5kiQj5
— Megan┃Freelance Digital Strategist (@thedataoutlier) September 10, 2020
Well folks, that’s all from me this week. Thanks so much for reading, and for more insights on our chat with Todd, have a look at this Twitter Moment that Joana put together. And if you have some time to spare on Thursday, join us for the next #TwitterSmarter chat at 1pm ET.
About me, Narmadhaa:
I write all things—technical and marketing copy to fill the pocket; haiku and short stories to fill the soul. A social media enthusiast, I’m a member of the #TwitterSmarter chat crew, and always happy to take on writing gigs.
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