We all know the value of having a strong social media community. Not only is a community an indication of a brand’s credibility, but it also gives the brand a purpose and keeps it accountable to its audiences. This week on the chat, we asked Tweepsmap’s Director of Marketing, Jon Wesselink, how brands can leverage their Twitter community. Here’s a summary of our chat.
Guest: Jon Wesselink
Topic: Leveraging your Twitter community
Format: Eight questions directed at the guest. Everyone’s welcome to share.
To establish long-term relationships with your community, use your analytics and social media monitoring tools to identify distinct interests that your community members share. Then, use those insights to engage with them. This results in genuine conversations that lead to trust and longer-term friendships.
A1: The best marketers build real relationships not numbers. Your data becomes a story that draws you closer to the people behind your data when you use proper tools that reveal how different subgroups with different interests engage differently with your content. #TwitterSmarter
— Jon Wesselink (@JonWesselink) February 23, 2023
As our friends from VirtuDesk added, you should also be present and constantly engaging with your audience. Offer valuable content, and support community members.
A1: If you want to establish long-term relationships, you have to be consistently engaging and show support to every member. You can do this by sharing tweets, commenting, cheering everyone, helping them, etc. #TwitterSmarter
— VirtuDesk (@virtudeskcom) February 23, 2023
Our guest works for Tweepsmap, a tool that helps you analyze your Twitter activity extensively. As a regular user, our guest told us how he compares strategies that have worked for him over the years. He filters his data by link clicks, topics, and keywords, and also categorizes his audience by demography and interests.
A2: In my analytics dashboard, I can compare what works years ago, filter metrics like link-clicks etc, topics or keywords. Plus, I measure content for different categories or audience segments like UK vs US, demographics, or if certain topics get better results. #TwitterSmarter pic.twitter.com/0alN1fy6vc
— Jon Wesselink (@JonWesselink) February 23, 2023
Madalyn also pointed out the importance of having clear goals for your analytics. When it comes to data, there’s always an abundance of metrics you can track and obsess over. However, if you don’t have clearly defined goals, you may be tracking the wrong type of data, and missing the important stuff.
A2b: Know what your goals are when it comes to engagement and track the data on a monthly basis. This way, you can see if your engagement is increasing or dwindling. Then, you can adapt your strategy accordingly. #TwitterSmarter
— Madalyn Sklar Digital Marketing since 1996 (@MadalynSklar) February 23, 2023
Tweepsmap’s targeted followers functionality allows you to search prospects based on topics, follower counts, keywords in their bio, language, activity, and so much more. This is a good way to find people who may be interested in connecting with you.
A3a: I search for targeted followers that I want to connect with and who would find my content valuable – and it only takes a minute!
With @Tweepsmap, just define what they talk about, their following size, words in bio, language, activity and more. #TwitterSmarter pic.twitter.com/O8XQZeAPUe
— Jon Wesselink (@JonWesselink) February 23, 2023
Lance also suggested participating in other people’s conversations actively as a way to identify new prospects. For instance, if you’re in a Twitter chat or a Space, join in on what others are saying. Respond to their discussion with an intention to contribute genuinely. This way, you’ll meet a lot of new people who’ll be more agreeable to hearing from you and building a relationship.
#TwitterSmarter A3: Begin building relationships on Twitter (any social network) by engaging in other's conversations. Be sure you're adding valuable, relevant context to those other conversation. Piggyback on those topics with your own original, unique content. Tag a FEW people. pic.twitter.com/dpVAuQlOmP
— Lance A Schart 🇺🇦 (@LanceASchart) February 23, 2023
To create customized content, you should first know what types of content each group in your audience prefers. As our guest explained, for the Tweepsmap account, he segments his audience into subgroups based on interests, geography, topics, and demography to identify unique subgroups. Once he does that, he can easily create separate content for each segment—whether to test new products or to improve advertising targeting. Have a look at this video that Jon shared to learn how you can also segment your audience.
A4: I segment our audience to target subgroups to test products, improve ROI in ads or see our whole community differently. I stack demographic, location, interest, & other filters to explore what unique groups are in our following! #TwitterSmarterhttps://t.co/EUmJuC9ne1
— Jon Wesselink (@JonWesselink) February 23, 2023
As our friends from GiveWP pointed out, understanding what your audience wants from you is critical for creating well-performing custom content. Use your website and social media analytics tools to understand your ideal customer journey and create content for every stage in that journey.
A4: This is a matter of understanding what your target audience needs and wants from you – from the type of content, to the actual content. You need to understand the journey people take, where there's friction, etc. #TwitterSmarter
— GiveWP 💚 (@GiveWP) February 23, 2023
A good way to improve exposure to your threads is to schedule them in advance so they go out at prime times. As our guest suggested, you can also post threads that span across days, weeks, or months so you get constant exposure to every tweet in a thread. Here’s more on how you can schedule threads on Tweepsmap.
A5b: We’ve always built tools that unlock unique platform functions that aren’t possible anywhere else.
Here’s a trick you can use today to boost your impressions over 2000% by scheduling threads spread over days:
👇Check it out! #TwitterSmarterhttps://t.co/Myo4a4qrOI
— Jon Wesselink (@JonWesselink) February 23, 2023
Our friends from Advanced Digital Marketing offered a few more ideas, including adding relevant hashtags to every tweet in the thread, asking open-ended questions that encourage people to respond and engage, and pinning threads so they’re noticed every time someone visits your profile.
A5: of course, hashtags.
Other than that, encouraging people to comment and share with their thoughts is a great way to increase exposure. Also, you can pin them to the top of your page, so that any time someone views your profile, they see it!#TwitterSmarter
— Advance Digital Marketing (@Advance_Digitl) February 23, 2023
Polls are a great way to hear your audience’s preferences directly from them. Polls help you identify what type of content people want, which format they want it in, and when they’re most interested in engaging with you.
A6b: It saves me so much time when I can schedule and rework my polls in my content calendar, post them even in a thread, strategize beyond content constraints and create threads that are more interactive! #TwitterSmarter
Did you know you could do this?
— Jon Wesselink (@JonWesselink) February 23, 2023
If you’re using Tweepsmap, you can also schedule polls in advance, giving you enough time to mull over and rephrase them if necessary.
As Pavel pointed out, polls are also a good way to start an interaction with your audience. If you see that someone’s responded to a poll, share follow-up thoughts to get people to respond and share their own ideas.
A6: Twitter poll is an excellent tool to engage with your audience, collect feedback, and build relationships with your followers. It can provide useful information about your target audience's preferences, interests, and behavior. #TwitterSmarter
— Pavel Stepanov (@pavelStepanov77) February 23, 2023
For starters, our guest said he’d schedule optimized content based on what’s trending in each city or region. This way, not only does he address local topics and interests, but he also does it in local time zones. As our guest pointed out, filtering by geography is just as important to him as filtering by interest.
A7b: Like filtering your analytics by topic, I filter them by demographic or region, too! This way, I can pinpoint my messages to Australia vs. America, for example. Having this segmented calendar improves my content because I’m measuring a single segment in mind. #TwitterSmarter pic.twitter.com/RGvT9HPma1
— Jon Wesselink (@JonWesselink) February 23, 2023
When you’re speaking to a wider audience, along with local trends, it’s also important to know local habits and preferred hashtags, as Madalyn reminded us. Some social media management tools also suggest the best times to post based on previous engagement data. Do your own research, too—compare your tweets’ performance on various days of the week and times of the day to identify the sweet spot for your audience.
A7b: Many social media schedulers offer suggested posting times based on your analytics. However, you can also do research to find the best times to post, allowing you to reach your audience when they’re online. #TwitterSmarter
— Madalyn Sklar Digital Marketing since 1996 (@MadalynSklar) February 23, 2023
Our guest recommends using Tweepsmap, not only as its Director of Marketing but also as an active user. He pointed out that the tool offers features that almost no other social media management tool does.
A8a: I recommend @tweepsmap because it lets me do things that you can't do with other tools. I see through deep segmentation what content resonates with different audiences so time is well spent. #TwitterSmarter
— Jon Wesselink (@JonWesselink) February 23, 2023
Tweepsmap has allowed him to create customized content that his audience appreciates, and optimize the brand’s content calendar with comprehensive threads and well-timed polls.
A8c: When I can schedule threads and polls optimized in my calendar, group different kinds of content, experiment with tagging people in media, content becomes a lot easier to manage and engagement improves drastically. #TwitterSmarter
— Jon Wesselink (@JonWesselink) February 23, 2023
If you’re keen to leverage threads, have a look at Neil Parekh’s profile. His threads are known for being comprehensive and easy to consume. You can also check out this #TwitterSmarter chat summary from when Neil was our guest. We spoke about best practices for creating threads.
A8e: @Tweepsmap is a toolbox that gives you answers to unique questions that you can’t find anywhere else, & helps you discover the right questions to ask! Who likes what in Australia? Who’s verified, active, with 1m followers? Who’s engaging with what this month? #TwitterSmarter
— Jon Wesselink (@JonWesselink) February 23, 2023
Tweepsmap can be a handy tool in your back pocket that helps you go the extra mile in your social media management. Go on, give it a shot.
Other favorite tools our chat participants shared included Twitter’s own built-in analytics, spreadsheets, Microsoft Power BI for its graphical representations, Hootsuite, Hubspot, and Brand24.
Well folks, that’s all from me this week. Thanks for reading through and for more great insights from our chat with Jon, have a look at this Twitter thread. If you like this summary, you’ll love the real-time chat. Join us next Thursday at 1 pm ET for #TwitterSmarter. We also have an after-chat on Twitter Spaces at 5 pm ET. See you there!
About me, Narmadhaa:
I write all the things—marketing stuff to pay the bills; haiku and short stories so I feel wholesome. A social media enthusiast, I hang out with the #TwitterSmarter chat crew, and am always happy to take on writing gigs.
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