The social media boom has changed the world of marketing and business, and every single company should be using social media in one way or another. Your reasons for doing so could be to aid brand reach, enhance customer service or even generate sales.
All too often however, a business has set up their accounts but don’t quite know how to use it to its full potential. It’s not a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach either, so remember to gather information relevant to your industry or business, and create your own strategy.

Here are some interesting statistics for Twitter, and some advice on how you and your business can get the most out of your account.

A great benefit of Twitter is that it’s very fast paced, so it’s fine to post two or three times a day. The window for your content to be seen at any one time is up to 30 minutes, and once that time has been and gone, newer content has replaced it.

The first thing to note however, is that having a Twitter page that has little or no activity puts people off your page, and can also mean that your current followers will unfollow. You need to be consistent in your approach and ensure you post regular, interesting, relevant content.

Tweet on the weekends
Recent studies have shown that brand engagement is 17% higher on the weekends. Tools such as Sprout Social and Buffer are programmes that you can use to schedule your tweets, so you don’t have to sit online at the weekends. Click-through rates are also higher on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays too, so bear that in mind when scheduling.

Include an image or links
Tweets with images and links get double the engagement rate of those without. And it’s worth being aware that over 50% of Twitter users are using their smart phones or tablets, so make sure you are linking to mobile friendly or responsive websites.

The only snag is that Twitter only allows 140 characters per tweet. Posts with fewer characters get more engagement than longer ones, as can allow people, who are sharing it, to include a comment and their Twitter handles if they wish.

#HASHTAG
Tweets using relevant hashtags (#) reach a broader audience than those without. Hashtags also increase the likelihood of being retweeted and shared. It’s good Twitter practise to use just a few though, as using too many may make the tweet difficult to read. Just using one or two hashtags gain more engagement than from those with more.

Timing and strategy
Think about where your audience is in relation to the time you are posting. For professionals, mornings, lunch times and evenings are good times to post as it coincides with before work, lunchtime and after work. But people often check Twitter during work too, so don’t completely write off these times and not post anything. If your audience are parents for example, the most suitable times could be after the morning school run or early afternoon. Try posting over a range of times and days and then analyse the results to see which posts got the most reaction.

Interact
Ensuring you interact with other users on a personal level is so important as it shows you’re interested and can increase your influence within the social platform. And after all, they may end up being future customers, so it’s nice to keep in contact!