Twitter basics for business: learn to craft winning tweets & make Twitter work for your business

1. Introduction to Twitter basics for business: Hi, welcome to Sookio school. This course is all about Twitter and it's gonna be perfect for you, maybe if you're a freelancer or one man band and you're just getting started on the platform. Or maybe you're part of a much larger organization and they've been using Twitter for quite a while and you just want to sharpen up your skills. So what we're gonna be looking at is things like how to write a brilliant tweet that engages your audience. How to use advertising on Twitter so you can reach the people that you want to reach. And we'll be looking at the tools that you can use to make you use your time a little bit more wisely so that Twitter is really effective for your business. And like all our Sookio school courses, we've broken up into lots of bite size, modules. So it's really easy for you to follow at your own pace. There's lots quizzes along the way, lots of activities, so these kinds of things will really help it sink in. And there's a worksheet for you to download as well, so you can scribble some notes as you go. Just before we start, you might want to sign up to the Facebook group. So have a look for Sookio school on Facebook and then, you can join all of these other people that are doing courses as well on chat about sort of social media and blogging, digital marketing activities they get up to on. Lastly, you want to just make sure that you have got a Twitter account set up. So if you haven't got one already, it might be a good point to break off for a minute and just set one up. Just the very basics so that you're good to go. 2. What can Twitter do for your business?: So let's kick off by thinking about what Twitter actually is. So it's one of the longest running social media platforms that he wanted most successful. And it's been going since 2006 and nowadays is upwards of 330 million users on it worldwide. So you can probably there's quite a lot of potential for businesses out there to connect with new audiences. And what you'll see in Twitter is a series of posts which we call tweets. And these are comprised of text. You can have links to blog, to your website or the products. You could have images up to four images, you can add video or giffs in them as well. And Twitter was famous for restricting the character count 240. So that meant that in the earlier days, well up until very recently then you could only write up to 140 characters, which is a bit of a strange thing to get your head around at first, because people were used to writing a much more length on message boards, on Facebook, knowledge sort of thing. But it had this particular angle on it that it had to be restricted. And even though it's increased now 280 characters, the idea is still that is a series of quite sort of short, interesting, varied messages that help you connect with your audience. And so what we're gonna do now is have a look at some big stats which will really tell you about the power of Twitter for businesses. So 93% of people who follow an SME or a medium-sized business on Twitter plan to purchase from them at some point. And 69 percent of people have bought from an SME after seeing something they have said on Twitter, 85 percent of small and medium businesses who are on Twitter themselves say that it's important for businesses to provide customer service on Twitter. And Twitter uses a really good at amplifying your message. So third of users who follows more business have retweeted, so shared to their network, they retweeted a business tweet, which is really effective. And then 83 percent of people who tweeted at an SME and got a response came away feeling better about that business. So you can really see how it's powerful for customer service and connecting you with people who might one day be buying from me. So let's think a little bit more detail about the benefits of Twitter for your business. And so the way I see it, there's three core benefits to using Twitter in your business. And the first of these is all about making a noise. And so Twitter allows you to make a noise and raise awareness of your business in a way that just wasn't possible before digital marketing came along. And so it means it can reach people locally. So this could be customers who didn't know that you there before. You're telling them about some in your frame which is new or maybe they have been around for awhile and they haven't heard about you before. And you can also make noise in terms of connecting with local businesses. So I see it quite a lot where you get these kind of pockets of businesses all in one town centre. And they are all tweeting each other, sharing each other's content, retweeting each other. And it means they're amplifying each other. So they're all supporting each other and kind of opening things up. So people who might follow one particular business will then hear about somebody else a couple of doors down, which is really nice. Which is really nice this kind of group approach to all your marketing together. And also means that you can reach whole new markets. So it, which is global. So you say if your business is in the UK, then your tweets might get picked up by someone in the US who could end up buying from you. And it also helps you share your original contents. So let's say that your business with really good blog, then you can talk about it and share a link to it on Twitter. Or maybe you've got some new products coming out. Then again, you can talk about this on Twitter, making a noise about it, raising awareness. And it's really effective way which you can manage in real time. So yeah, raising awareness of your business is a real, real important element of, of using Twitter. And second core benefit to using Twitter and your business is that it allows you to make connections and build a community. And so what we're talking about here is the way it can allow you to get to know people. So it allows you to get to know your customers. These people are going to be giving you real-time feedback, you know, so if they love your product, they might tweet you. They might tweet about it and mention you this tweet so you pick up on it too. And unfortunately, they don't like the product or something's wrong, then they might treat you as well. But of course, the upside of that is that you are getting this real-time feedback, which is really, really valuable because it means you can act on it. So whereas previously maybe if part of your service had gone down, it wasn't working, then you might not know about this. And the first you know about this is that people stop subscribing to your service and you'd never be able to work out why? Whereas now you'll have people tweeting you saying, hey, this thing is working, it's broken. Can you fix it, please? So it allows you to get this level of customer service and act when you see that there's a problem. And then it also allows you to get to know people also in the industry. So rather than, you know, you're going to a conference, you give someone a business card and then you took it away somewhere and you never look at it again. Then what I do nowadays, I connect with people on Twitter and I'm connected with people now that I met at conferences and events, maybe eight years ago, something and they still front of mind with me. I'm front of mind with them. And it means reforming this bond in a way that you can't really do just with a five minute meeting and swapping a card. And then also thinking about how it can help us make connections. It helps people get to know you as a business. So if you think how people buy from people, having this Twitter feed where you're talking every day, you talking about your business, your passions. Then it means that people get to understand you. And so they can see your real expert in a particular area. It means that they might go into your shop or into your section or phone you up rather than calling somebody else because you've front of mind for them. They know you that you are really passionate about this particular thing and that you will the people that can help. So that's really, really useful. And then you mustn't forget as well that people are quite often used in Twitter just for research. So don't expect anyone who follows you to be engaging with you in a lot of the time. They're just looking you up there, just having a little look around, see what you like as a business may be if someone's applying for university or college, then they're going to be looking at your Twitter feed to see what you like as a, as a place to study. Or maybe if they're thinking about coming to work for you, then they'll look you up on Twitter. And they'll try and get a feel for what you like as a company to work for. And so yes, so the second core benefit of using Twitter few business, It's definitely about making connections and building that community. And lastly, when we're thinking about the co-benefits of Twitter fuel business, Let's talk about sales. So sales calls is what we want from a marketing activity, whether it's our blogs are either marketing, Facebook or whatever. We will try to drive towards this point where we're generating more revenue for our business. And Twitter is really helpful in doing this. So maybe you want to tweet links to particular products that you want to sell. Or maybe you want to bring people with you while you're developing a new service. So they really get to feel, they get excited about what's coming next. Or we can promote an event and it will help you sell more tickets. And let me give you an example of how this works in practice. Sometimes it's not as overt as you click a link. Someone goes to your website from Twitter and they buy something straight away. There's a woman in Norfolk who sells pies, I'm not big a pie fan myself, because I don't eat meat, but for anyone I know who does go to Norfolk. And when we said, Oh yeah, there this woman who's on Twitter, you should go and try her pies, she looks amazing and I see her all the time out to fairs selling these pies, talking about the ingredients. Baking wedding pies, all these sorts of things and she has come into mine, she is on my radar now in a way that I never would've never known about her before or her products. Or I wouldn't really be suggesting someone to go and buy them. And that's the power of Twitter. Someone who is just a one man band is just happily tucked away somewhere making this product. They can amplify that and they can make sure that people know about them in a way that just wasn't possible before. So in summary, let's think about benefits of twitter for business again. So it helps us make a noise and connect with people who are in a way that we couldn't before. So they know about our products and our services. And these could be people locally or around the world. And it means we can make connections with people. So they get to know us and we get to know them a little bit more too. And then lastly, it's about making sales. You know, how we can generate a little bit more revenue for our business. So let's have them pause. You might want to jot down some notes on the worksheet about what your going to be using Twitter for in your business. And then we'll move on to the next module, which is all about the terms that you'll come across on Twitter. And I'll take you through the interface as well. So all becomes a bit more familiar to you. 3. Let's talk Twitter terms: Now we're going to look at the Twitter interface and I can walk you through so you become a bit more familiar with the terms that you're going to come across. And we can start by looking at your Twitter profile. And it's really important to spend a bit of time on this and making sure that it looks good and it's appealing. So if somebody looks, you can Twitter, then they see suddenly it's this interesting and engaging. And I think, yeah, you seem like a good business to follow. And so if you think of it like your section or your shop window, think about the time that you take making these attractive and welcoming places and your Twitter profile needs to be doing some similar sort of function. So I'm just going to walk you through the different terms you'll come across. And then in the next section, we'll talk a little bit more about how to actually make it as appealing as possible. But for now we're just going to focus on the terms of cells. So first of all, we've got your twitter name. It's also known as your atlas with a telltale sign. All your Twitter handle. And this can be up to 15 characters. And anytime someone is clearly recognizable as your business. So if you is quite short name, then fine, no problem, quite easy. Whereas if it's a little bit longer than you might want to have a little play around and make sure you come up with something that is still instantly recognizable to you. And then you've got your profile picture. And remember this is going to be shown in every single tweet. And a lot of people will be looking on mobile as well. And so it's going to come up very small. So make sure it's nice and very striking, very recognizable, and nothing too cluttered. But I've got a few more tests on that later. And then you've got your bio. So this bit of text here, and this is a short clip tax and it tells people he was business. And depending on what you do, then, you know, it's lots of different ways even write this. But you might want to say what you sell, what you offer, certain about the team, maybe something about your opening hours, or you might want to just sort of some news yourselves up in a nice, snappy, lighthearted phrase or two. So it's worth playing around with this and also have a look at your competitors and see what other people are doing as well. You really want is better to stand out. And then you've got your header image. So you go for something really striking and professional that really says something about your business. Again, I've got more tips on this in a second, but it's definitely worth remembering that the cover image is seen on desktop, on mobile and also on tablets as well. Going to resize. So don't spend hours and hours trying to line everything up. So it all looks perfect because it might look completely different on mobile. And you'll find that someone's head as being chopped off, flip it when it's either in a different resolution. So always have a look at the Trinity for business website and then that will give you the latest dimensions, the check. And then also your own profile you quite often see nowadays are pinned tweet. So you can take a particular tweet fuels and pin it to the top of your profile. And this is really good if you've got a particular event that you want to promote and a particular product, let's just launched or discount code, anything like that. Or maybe there's a problem with the service and you want to share phone number that people can ring so they can get get more information. So it's really handy, depends on my dark to the top of your profile. And again, if it's first thing people see when they visit your Twitter profile, then it's really great. All these things put together give them a really nice snapshot view as a business. So what have we gotten your profile and what are these component parts? You've got your app name or your put an a, or your Twitter handle. You've got your profile photo, you've got your bio, and you've got your lovely header image. And then lastly, you've got your pin tweet. Now, let's have a look at the Twitter interface itself. I'm not going to walk you around the profile to show you one by one all the different terms that you'll come across. So let's start at the top. And so we've got home, the home button. And so this is where I as a user, if I'm running a business account, this is where I'm going to see all the tweets are the people that we're following. So they're going to show up in my timeline. And so then we've got moments and does this a bit more involved? So what goes into it so much now, but this is a great way to pull together lots of tweets on a particular topic in a, in a handy format, nitrification. So this is somewhere that you're going to spend quite a lot of time hopefully, because this is where people weighing find messages from people who are engaging with you. So when you click on Notifications, you can see your replies. You can see people you've tagged you in a tweet, which means they've included your name in there tweet. And you can see all those interactions. So hopefully this is going to be noise and lively. Now messages, this is for private messages. The official name is direct messages and you might hear the phrase DMZ. So this is, these are the messages that are not seen by everybody else. So maybe if you are tweeting with someone publicly and then you arrange to meet or you're exchanging more personal private information, then you'll do over direct message. And personally, I don't use them. Masses, whatever you use them a lot because I'm always seeing people getting it wrong and accidentally tweeting something that should have been at a private message and they're tweeting it publicly. So the Twitter interface is a little bit either. It's not crystal clear that I think it's quite easy to click on the wrong thing. So of course it's up to you how you use them, of course. And they can be really great for customer service. If you've got somebody complaining online, you can save them. Oh, well, actually if you DM me your details, then I'll talk to you privately and I'll see what we can do to help. And then we've got the Search box. So as I say in the other module, Twitter is actually quite good to research. And so people will quite often use the search box to put some money in relating to your product or service are interested in. Let's move down interface a little bit more and we'll come to the following. And followers saying following, these were the people or businesses that your account is following. And this means that you'll see all of their tweets in your timeline and then follow us. These are the people that are doing the same to you. So they've click the follow button, and that means that all of your tweets will show up in their timeline. Obviously, you want to get lots and lots of followers. And then we come to likes. This is the little heart symbol. And this is a way of showing the like something that someone has said. So you're showing that you liked this message, you like this tweet in some way. And it's also a good way of just technology. I say sometimes someone will tweet you, you haven't necessarily got nothing groundbreaking to say. But it is one Say yeah, yeah, I got that. Thank you. And so it's quite nice on, on that level 2. And when you're doing research on Twitter, you try to find out what a person or businesses like. It's quite good to look at their likes and see what kind of content, what kind of topics are interested in. And then we come to lists. So this is a really good way in together lots of accounts who will tweeting on a particular topic. So let's say a publisher for example, they might have a public list of all of their authors, or maybe all of them authors in a particular genre, fiction. And then that's a lovely way of saying to people on Twitter, hey, look, you know, 30 scholars follow all of our office as well. And it's also quite handy for you as a business to have a private list and you can put all your competitors on there. It's quite sneaky, but nobody goes that you're doing it because it's private. And lastly, we're going to look at how you write a tweet. So East have just a 140 characters to play with, but now it's been increased to 290, which is great, dizzy bit more flexibility. And so you've got the text and you can also add an image or a video from a file. And when you use the app, you can live stream and you can post videos from your phone as well, which is really handy. You can also add a GIF, which is a little animation just a few frames long, and it plays on a loop. We'll talk about that in more detail as well. And some people like to add a pole, and these are really fun and really great for engagement. So you can have the wave up to four different options. And here we're just demonstrating what has this got to. You can also add the location which is sometimes useful. And at the end of the text you can add an emoji if you like, or pepper them with emojis all the way through whatever you do, whatever it's going to work. And this is a small image which is going to express an idea or an emotion without any words. And then we come to tweets, which is the all important. But of course, so when you click on this, it shows a pool of your tweets that are seen by everybody before Lizzy. And then when you click on tweets and replies, this is slightly different. So they are public in everybody could see them if they want to, but they only show up by default if they're in the field. So on that follows you and the person that you're talking to. Otherwise, if you think about it, every single tweet by every single person that you follow, and it would just be unmanageable. So this is where you follow a person, a falling price, and B, they're having a conversation. And then you can see all of that waits. And then let's look at the tweet itself. So we've got different symbols, say reply, retweet, which is where you can share it with everybody who's following you. Retweet with comment, which is quite nice because then you can add your own little comment as well. And then of course like and then you'll see a hashtag as well. We're going to explain these a little bit more depth later. But this is where you get that little, little symbol, little m hash symbol, and then the word. And it's a really good way of grouping together lots and lots of tweets on a particular topic. So you can then click on a hashtag that will bring a polyA, the tweets that other people have posted that have included a hashtag. So let's have a quick summary of terms. So we've got a tweet which is opposed of up to 280 characters, which will contain text and maybe images of the four of those epidemic video hashtag links and maybe tacking somebody as well. And then you've got your Twitter feed, which is your stream of Twitter messages. You've got your followers, the people that are following you and all your messages. And then people who were following so that you can see all of their tweets and you'll feed retweeting. That's when you take a tweet and you share it with everybody that you're connected to. And then hashtag, which is a way of grouping together and lots of tweets on one particular topic. So that comes to the end of this module. And we've had lots of terms. Friday, Saturday, lot to take in. We're going to do a little quiz now just to make sure it's really forgotten and that you're really confident using these terms. And then we'll move on to the next module, which is all about making your profile reads sparkle. 4. Tending your Twitter garden: How to create an appealing profile: Now in this module we're going to think about tending our Twitter garden. So what do I mean by this phrase? It's about creating a really appealing profile that will make people want to follow you. So people will make a really snap judgment. They'll, they'll discover that you are on Twitter. Maybe they'll, they'll see someone else sharing one of your tweets. Now go look at your profile and there'll be forming a judgment about you and your business in a split second. So it's all about creating lovely images, interesting mixes of content. So you're presenting and appealing business persona on Twitter. So let's have a little look at some ways of doing this. So we'll start off by looking at the images that you're using and thinking about your cover image. So this is the big image that you've got at the top. And you've got lots of choices here for what you can put as your cover image, your header image. So some businesses is quite easy. It kind of Rights itself. You might want to have it lovely picture of your product and go through some really good quality that will really put it in the best light. Or some people want to, maybe you've got an event coming up. So if you're a museum or gallery, then it's quite, quite an easy one. Then you've got the next exhibition that's happening. And you can have some lovely branded visuals from the event. And you can put the date and the time. Some of the details about the event in the cover image. Limit that a little bit though you don't wanna have too much. And apart from anything else, when it's viewed on a tablet or people smart phone, that image is going to resize. So if you put way too much text in there, then some of it's not going to show up. So when you add these cover images, always test it on different devices so you can see how it looks. So further businesses, it's not quite so obvious what to put in that cover image. So maybe you're in professional services. And so really all day long people are satiate computers or something, or your office environment, isn't that fun when you look at it? So sometimes people go for something that's a little bit more abstract, that shows a bit more about the company's ambition or Lovely cityscape, represent the exciting city where you live. Or another option you've got. You could have a hashtag that goes with the campaign that you're running. And this is really nice, it's really simple and encourages people to use as well. And then last of all, a really nice idea is to have a picture of your team. So people buy from people. And it's a lovely way of helping people get to know you. Or you might want to show the place where you work. Maybe you work in quite an iconic building. And it's quite interesting excite inside. It could be a lovely barn or something with interesting architecture around, or it could be in a really exciting city. So all of these things make for good cover image. And then let's think about your profile image as well. So as one thing you need to remember is that it's going to show up quite small on the screen. So got my phone here. So people are scrolling through like this. And if your image is quite cluttered, quite small, then it's going to get a little bit lost in the mix. So you want some good quality photo. If, if you're using a photo, views a person, which is something that you can do. Say if you're a business coach, fitness trainer, something where your business is built around you. Then you want to make sure that that image is really well taken, well shot. It might be worth investing in a bit of photography so that you've got a really good image. So go for something. It's not very cluttered, and suddenly it's very striking. If you use some nice colors in there as well. So rent, so oranges or pinks or abode turquoise or something that's going to help it stand out as well. And of course, a lot of companies then say if you've got lots and lots of employees, then you can't really just pick one person. So you might want to go for your company logo. And the danger here sometimes for some companies it's, the logo can be quite, quite long and wide and narrow. If your company name is quite long and then in that square little thumbnail, then it looks very, very tiny. Might be worth getting a designer just a little version of that that you can use for social media thumbnails. So for Facebook or Twitter, for all the other platforms, you always going to need a square. And the other part of your Twitter profile that you really want to spend time focusing on is your bio. And so this is this little short section of text which explains to people who you are. And it's really, really important, spend a bit of time on this and play around with some different versions so you can really make sure that it sums the opposite business. You could be telling people who you are, what kind of products and services you offer, particularly if your company name is a little bit abstract, it doesn't, people can't tell immediately what you do. You might want to mention where you work, the sort of people that you work with, anything that's sums your business. And yeah, pretty play around there and come up with some different versions. You might want to make it really witty. You might want to use lots of small, sharp, pithy sentences. It's definitely worth looking at your competitors and seeing how they do it. And chances are they're doing it in a way that's a bit boring. And so this is your opportunity to make it kind of sparkle in a little bit more, make you stand out, make you sound a bit more bold and confident. Like the products and services that you offer. The best, the best out there. And sometimes people put hashtags in there as well. I see this a lot with people who are perhaps Entrepreneurs or business coaches, that kind of thing. I'm not really convinced that it actually does very much, but, but some people like doing it, so it might work for you. And so, yeah, really play around with this and never assume that people know who you are. So I see a lot where maybe in the section on location, people write something like here, there and everywhere. Which is great. All fine if you're just using Twitter personally. But as a business, I think, never assume that people know you never seen that they know what you do, where you are. And this kind of thing makes sure that people can read his bio and they really understand who you are. So just a few pointers on where people often go wrong with their Twitter profile for their business. It's things like having blurry cover images. So the original is quite small, but then when it's included on your header image is expanded, is enlarged and so it comes out quite blurry. So that's not good. Obviously, typos, spelling mistakes in your bio is not good. Keeping old out of date information up there as well. So a cover image about an event that is now passed. It's a day ago, a week ago, all of a sudden before you know it, your header image is promoting something that happened in the sovereign is our Christmas, equally with pin tweets. So you can pin a tweet to the top of your profile. And people quite often forget they've done it because they're not looking at their own process so much. So if you penetrate, don't forget it's there, make sure that you keep that updated quite regularly as well. Now, let's look at the content mix in your tweets. And when people come across your profile for the first time and they see a really rich, interesting mix of content. It's going to be a big factor in deciding whether to click follow or not. And that's what you want someone to look you up and make those snap judgments in a split second and think, right, I'm gonna follow these people. So what are they looking for? They really want to see someone that is tweeting in a human way. So if your business is using lots of pompous language, lots of jargon, and not everybody understands lots of acronyms, then that's going to be really off putting. And one of the great things about Twitter is that you can write in this really kind of more, more conversational kind of way that's a bit more human but more engaging. Like we might talk to each other on a day-to-day basis if they came into your business. And they also want to see someone that is tweeting regularly. So this doesn't have to be 24 hours a day. But if you come across an account on Twitter and they haven't updated if six months per year or longer, then you're never going to click follow because you think, well, they're not going to be tweeting. So why should I bother? And so sometimes a lot of people do say to me, Oh, I don't know what to write about on Twitter. And I've got this idea of a rule of thirds. So a third of your tweets can be about you and your business. So maybe you've got a new product coming out, you've got an event coming up. Maybe there's a blog post you've written that you want to share. And then another third can be looking a bit more outwardly. So this could be about what's going on in your industry or sharing the latest comments from a broadsheet newspaper which gives some insights into the sort of work that your business does. And then the third section, third type of content can be engagement. So this is replying to people. It's retweeting people, particularly if they say something nice about you or your business. It's at general engagement. So it's very appealing when someone, CMS looks at your profile for the first time, they see that you are actually responding. It's not a one-way broadcast. And so a few pointers on where people sometimes go wrong. So it's thing to swearing. So you don't really want to be too sweaty or aggressive in your tweets. However, everything is in context. So someone like folk kitchen for example, their brand is very swearing. If you ever look up their cookery books, there's a lot of swear words in there and that's what people come to expect from them. So if their Twitter profile was very kind of, you know, prim and proper, then it would be at odds with the rest of their whole marketing, their branding. And equally. You don't want to be too political or do anything that might be offensive. So Twitter is a global platform and in no time you can tweet something that isn't very offensive in the UK, but another part of the world it may be. So think through the way that you write and think what actually is this potentially going to offend someone? But then equally, maybe your stand-up comedian or your comedy club. And the content you are going to be tweeting is going to have the potential to offend. So everything is in context for your business and just think about what's gonna work for you. But it's always good just to have this rich mix and make sure does have a look through it all the time and think, well, is this going to sort of resonate? Is it going to chime with these sort of people who are following us? So in summary, what are the things you need to remember when creating that really enticing Twitter profile for your business. Firstly, visuals. So you want a really strong cover photo and a nice bright and cluttered profile image. And don't forget to make them really good quality. Next you want to look at your bio were fresh eyes. So it's always good as well to show it somebody else who knows your business and say to them, Well, what do you think? Do you think this really says who we are and what we do? Does this look attractive and appealing? And then the third thing is to make sure you've got a good mix of content. So people don't want to see a one-way broadcast. They want to see a business that is interesting. And it's going to have lots of varied content and is going to engage with followers. Okay, so let's have a little quiz so we can make sure this is all some kin. And then in the next module, we're going to look at writing tweets that really engage your audience. 5. Engage! How to write a (brilliant) tweet: Now let's get to the really fun bit, and this is about writing our tweets. And so what we're looking for here is generating lots and lots of lovely engagement. And by engagement, I mean, people liking your tweets, they're sharing them really widely by retweeting them. Or perhaps they're commenting. So you get that two-way dialogue. Do the thing you're looking for is for people to follow your call to action, which is a phrase you'll hear a lot. And so this is where maybe they're clicking link to go and read a blog post, or maybe they're booking a demo. Maybe they're signing up to your mailing list, whatever it is that you'll do in your tweet that you want them to do, you're writing it in such a way that they go and do it, which is fantastic. So let's look at some ways you can encourage more engagement in your tweets. So one thing that you can do is make the tone of your tweets positive. And there's a simple way of doing this, and this is just used more adjectives. And I don't mean you have to be really flowery over the top. And every tweet say, this is fantastic, this is wonderful, isn't amazing. Sometimes you can be more subtle about it and use words like innovative or disruptive or enticing or these kind of things. And I'm going to show you some examples on screen now so you can see the sort of thing that I mean, so these tweets that I've shown you here, Hopefully you can see how they have this enthusiastic, positive tone. And just through using some nice adjectives and just through being warm and friendly about what they say, which encourages people to click through or to engage in some way. Or for some businesses say take a little step further and they create graphics as well. And so these might be a quote certain that could be quite inspiring or motivational in some way. Or you could take a comment that someone said, maybe someone's left a really positive feedback about your product, about your service. And you can turn that into a nice little graphic in itself. And this gives you something positive to share on Twitter. Coupled with positive content comes helpful content. So when you tweet about something which shows people how to do something, which has an insight into the industry, then this is really helpful. And people are by nature quite generous and they want to not only learn things themselves, but they want other people to learn and get insights into things as well. And so this kind of content is very sharable. And sometimes you find that you tweet something which is how to in some way. And it looks so interesting and useful to people share it without even reading it. And obviously you do want people to read your content. But this, by giving it this contexts that is helpful and useful in some way, makes the content very sharable. And another thing you can do to encourage people to engage with your tweets is to make them funny. And so you find some brands. So just have a very, very witty tone of voice throughout all of their tweets. And once you get going like this, you need to keep it up because this is what people are going to be expecting from you. But to add a little bit of width into your tweets, It's just a really good thing to do and you can make that works for your brand. And every brand marketing is going to have a particular tone of voice. So everything is going to be in context for you. So what will be your Buzzfeed style content and things that are very kind of Witchy and sarcastic will work for one brand to somebody else. It might be just vocational kind of wry comment that you make. So you need to think about what works for you, but funny content has been shown to get a lot of engagement. Equally if you pick on something topical, this can be very good. So when you're picking a trending topic or something that everybody's talking about. So maybe there's an election coming up. Maybe there's a massive sporting event like the World Cup or the Olympics, something like that. This is what everybody is talking about. So if your tweets can reference this in some way, then that can make them very engaging, very sharable as well. And lastly, when we think about making our tweets more engaging than a good thing to do is simply to use more visuals. So you can include up to four images in a tweet, or there's video content or funny the O'Keefe. And adding visual still tweets can make them up to three times more shareable than a tweet that's just text. And so there's lots of options which we'll go over in one of the next modules. But definitely including more visuals in your tweets can make them more, more engaging. So in summary, you want to make your tweets positive. You want to make them helpful or useful in some way. It's really great if you can inject a bit of humor, make them funny. Timely content is really good or make them visual. And these things will all help with engagement. Now, let's look at some of the tips and tricks. I've got it my sleeve, which will help you write your tweets and a more engaging way. So this is more about the structure than the content. So the first thing to say is that even though the character count has gone up lately to 280, this doesn't mean you have to fill that whole space. So you want to write tweets in a way that people can read them and understand them, because then that means I'm more likely to share them as well. So if you still try and writing quite a concise way, That's a really good habit to be getting into. And so what you can do, you can use more punctuation. And so often it's been shown previously that tweets with more punctuation do actually get more retweets. And I think it's maybe because it helps you express yourself in a slightly more kind of pithy, fun kind of way. And equally, writing a short sentences can be really good. So rather than one long rambling sentence that goes on for ages with loads of long words. Then if you break it up into shorter sentences, maybe with a colon, maybe with a dash bit more punctuation in there. Then it's instantly a little bit more bright and lively and captures the attention. You can also ask a question. So if someone asks you a question, then you want to respond. It's a natural human instinct and it will, it all adds up to this feeling of there being a dialogue instead of it being a one-way broadcast. And something else you can do. You could add a poll. So poles are really fun. You don't want to overdo them, do them, you don't want to have them in every single tweet. But you can ask a really simple question. There was somebody I saw one major brand, one of the sports brands. They had four different questions. Each one had a different hashtag, and the whole thing was too complicated. So nobody was responding to this pole. Whereas one of the best poles that I've seen, K from Yorkshire Tea, and it was a very simple, Just two answers you could choose from. And it was quite a funny, lighthearted pole as well. And that in itself, it gives them something to share because then they can also share the results later. So you want pulls a really easy for people to respond to. Just one-click, great, They've been involved and it's something that they can then share. And another good thing in the tweets that you're putting out there is to tweet from events. So you find the event hashtag. So that's really good to include that. So you make sure that everybody can find a content. And then you write the event and you're treating regular insights from the day. And this is brilliant for not just events organizers who've got some content to share themselves, but also people externally. And they can be part of the event. They can follow the hashtag. And then that means that they can share all your insights as well and hashtags. So this brings me nicely to hashtags, including hashtags in your tweets is a really good tip. I wouldn't overload your tweet with them. One is fine. Some people try and squeeze way too many n, but including hashtags that are relevant that a topical can be really good and particularly if it's very timely. So everybody's tweeting about a major sporting event or something political or something cultural everybody's talking about. And if you use that hashtag, it means anybody else who's following that hashtag will be clicking on it and then they might come across your tweets. So in summary, you can make your Tweets more engaging by adding more punctuation. Having shorter sentences are asking a question, including a poll and being timely and tweeting from events. And of course, last of all, don't forget hashtags. They can be really great for engagement. So we're going to have another little quiz now. So have a go at that. And then we'll move on to the next module, which is going to be all about visual content. 6. The power of visuals in your tweets: Let's have a think now about visual content and visual content in your tweets can be really effective and really make them fly. So it's things like images, video, It's gifts, all things that we're going to be looking at more detail further on in the course. Now, why is visual contents so effective? First of all, people have quite short attention spans. So imagine someone scrolling through their phone, looking through lots of quite dry, boring tweets from other people. And then they see your tweet with a really strong image. And this could be just the thing that causes them to stop and pay a little bit more attention. And they're very good at triggering an emotional response. So getting people excited or delighted or interested, all these kind of things. And also that mental response where it just simple curiosity. People see that image or video and they're curious, they want to see more. And video and images have really good at storytelling too. So I know where restricted by the character count and that might have got it recently to turn to 180. However, if you add an image in, this does a brilliant job at telling a lot of the story for you. And then last of all, with images that just really effective at pushing everybody else's content further down the page. So you've got your images there. Everyone else is pushed down. You've got your video content again, it is, takes up more of the screen. And so it gives you more priority will prominence. And you'll notice over the years, social media marketing has taken a much more visual approach. So Facebook, which didn't even have video content when it launched. Video is now really, really cool part of its service. You've got the rise of YouTube, you've got the rise of Instagram and Pinterest. And all of these social media platforms have taken is very more visual shift over the years. They've realized this is what customers want, what users want. And so for you as a business, it's really important to use more visual content in your social media marketing. And if you haven't been using it before, then it might be time to start. I've got some handy stats for you as well. We process visual 60000 times faster than text. So particularly if you're a retailer, than including an image of the product that you're promoting is really effective, rather than just having a text post and tweets with images of retweeted 35 percent times more, which is really great. And then tweets with video increases engagement rates. So people liking commenting, sharing or less, by 2880% percent of marketers use visual assets in their social media marketing. So if you're not doing it than it really is a good time to start because everybody else is at 90% of all video plays on Twitter, tape lengths on mobile devices. So if you think, if your business is in an industry where lots of the users are using mobile, so maybe retail or gaming, then your customers are going to be very receptive to video. So be really good to think about using that a little bit more. So we've taken a look at visual content and how powerful it can be and your business tweets up. Next, we're going to look at images, video, and gifts in more detail. 7. Get visual! Using images in your tweets: Let's have a look now at ways that you can use images in your tweets. So how you can come up with ideas for great visuals. And I've got lots of tips as well to help you do really brilliantly. So sometimes people say to me, Well, I want to make my tweets more visual, but I don't know. There's not really many opportunities to get visual content in there. What am I actually going to take pictures of? And so some ideas to start you off. Firstly, think about your day-to-day business. So what do you selling or you perhaps in the food industry, are you a retailer? Have you got lots of products around that? You've gotten the shelves you could be taken pictures of. Could you take pictures of the working environment where everything's in a beautiful display. So it's really nice sometimes to hone in on particular very small details to really show the beauty of your product, the craft if you like. And so this is all around you and there's so many ways that you could be taking pictures of the products in your business and then talking about them on Twitter. And then also thinking about what's in your business. And of course that's people. So you've got your team. You could be taking pictures of your team in action out and about meeting customers, that kind of thing. And also you've got people who are coming into the business. So when you've got meetings and might be opportunities there to take pictures of the people who are coming in with people emit events. Just show that human face again. And then thinking about events. Something I liked doing a lot is taking pictures and tweeting them whenever I go to an event. So it's not just doing event itself to show what's happening. It's also on my way there, so same off to London for a conference, that kind of thing. Then I quite often take a picture in the morning and talk about the wonderful day ahead. And the beauty of this is that events organizers then looking at the content share as well. So if you use a hashtag that goes with the event, then quite often the people who are running the event they're going to be sharing on there to defeat to. So that's really good for your business because it's going to spread your twitter name in the content from wide. And then the other idea for, for images, if you're looking for ideas to come up with content, is to have graphics. So what you can do is use something like Canva, which we'll come on to a little bit later to create some templates remedies which you can use again and again. So you can make these lovely graphics which all Twitter sized right dimensions. So everything gets included without being cut-off. And you can lay a text over these graphics. You could perhaps have quotes, either a motivational quotes, something inspirational. If someone leaves a great testimonial for you or gives you some really positive feedback or one of your products, then you can say, well, well actually is there any way that I can treat this as well? And this is a great thing to do if you feel that your business itself, maybe you're very much in a service industry, customer service, and there's not so much that you can take if the day-to-day business, then this is a really nice trick for coming up with ideas remedies all the time. Let me give you a few tips on using images effectively in your Tweets. First of all, you want to make sure they're relevant. So does this image work with the text? The two should compliment each other and come together to make something even stronger. And then you want to make sure that the image is already bold and striking. So they're going to capture the attention of people who just scrolling through their tweets and hurry. And then when it comes to editing, you can edit them in the app itself. And this is really good if you want to just crop it a little bit more, you want to lighten it up? And I do this quite a lot safe. I've been on the move taking lots of pictures as I go. And it's been in bright sunlight or something. And I just want to make sure that it looks good before it goes out. And then the other thing I do is add a description. And this is really useful if someone is visually impaired and they're accessing Twitter, and it helps them find out what the image is about. Let me give you a few pointers on what not to do when you're adding images to your tweets. Firstly, you don't want to be sharing other people's content without thinking about it. So something that might work for their audience and image might not work so well for you all. So always think about context and the potential to cause offense and then stock images. So you might be familiar with really cheesy looking stock images that look really staged. So try and use authentic images, things that you've taken yourself, things that you have the right to use, rather than just using stock images that get repeated again and again. And the other big things about quality. So really try and use good quality images, it will make such a difference. And if the images are in your own sort of brand styling as well, That's really useful. So people will get this sort of familiar fail with all of your visual content around your brand. Not just your Twitter feed, but how you present your visuals across any of your marketing channels. And then lastly, and this is a particular bugbear for photographers. I know don't tweet images without giving credit. So if there's something particularly great that you see, something very beautiful or something very controversial. They're interesting that somebody else has taken. You need to always credit them. So look, this person I've saved, they want Twitter and include that their Twitter handle in the tweet. Always try and give credit. Don't take other people's content without saying who it's from because apart from anything else, it's rude, but it might lead to bad feeling with other people and you don't want that. So these have been a few pointers on using images in your tweets. And next we're going to look at the wonderful world of gifts. 8. Get visual! Using Gifs: Let's think now about gifts and they can be certain that you can add to your tweet in the same way is image or video content to really bring it to life. And if you've been knocking around the internet for as long as I have, then you'll remember back in the day when animated gifs were seen to be a bit embarrassing. But if a byword for low-quality content, but they're back, so they're back and they're very popular. And so they are little, few frames and they plan a loop and a very short. So I think you can have a maximum of five seconds, but best to stick to something that's about three really good way of expressing an emotion. So it definitely works with the text. Heightens that a bit rarely, It says something that you can't say just in words alone. And they're often used definitely for, for comedic effect rather than anything that's too serious. And I've got some stats for you as well. So one study showed that tweets with gifts got a 167% more click-throughs and tweets were static images. And engagement rates increased by 20 percent for B2C brands. So that's brands that are dealing directly with customers. So food retail, that kind of thing. When it comes to using gifts in your tweets, you just need to stop for a moment and think if it's right for your business. So for some businesses is a perfect fit. Maybe if your retail or something bit more show busy or lifestyle, then gifts can be a really fun addition. If you're certainly a bit more heavyweight, professional services, that kind of thing, then you want to go ahead with a little bit more caution. Or for some businesses, it depends, it depends on context. So a large train operator, for example, using your GIF here and there is really good to show that human face of the business. Whereas if they use gifts in the middle of some massive nation-wide disruption, whenever one's upset and complaining, then it might come across as a bit kinda patronising or, or frivolous, almost. So always think before using gifts, but done well, they can be brilliant and they can really drive a lot of engagement. And let me give you a few tips on using gifts well, and your business tweets. So timing is really important. Friday afternoon could be good. So this is when people expect things to be a little bit more fun and lighthearted equally, Sunday morning can be when they can be used with great effect. And you wanna make sure that they're relevant. Gifts can be quite nuanced, so it can be quite easy to use slightly the wrong thing. So maybe people don't get the joke or causes offense, or it just doesn't quite work in some way. And you can also make your own. There are actually quite easy to put together, easier than you'd think. And it's something that a lot of businesses haven't quite realized that they can do yet. So you're going to give fee and then you can create your own gift there. And then lastly, don't overdo it. So gives a really fun, but you don't want to put one in every single tweet. Otherwise, when people scroll through all of your messages, all of your tweets, then they can see actually you get this kind of CSI kind of feelings. Everything's moving about the place. So we've had a little look at gifts, and then let's move on to video and see how that can drive more engagement on your Twitter feed. 9. Get visual! Using video: As you've probably noticed, more and more businesses are using video in their tweets. And it's a really effective way of driving engagement, increasing the reach of your tweets, which means they get shared more and more widely and helping define your business tone of voice. And so Twitter gives you five different ways of adding video to your tweets. The first two are using the Twitter app itself. So you can record video through the Twitter app, edit and share it that way. You can take videos on your phone and then share them through Twitter. Or what you can do perhaps if you've got something that's a bit more polished and it's so maybe it's a promotional video for your business. You can upload that directly to Twitter.com and share it that way. Or you might have seen people live streaming. And this is particularly good. Say if you're running a workshop or you own a business and you're speaking at a big event, then you can live stream some of it and you can let the outside world and what might be quite small event. And then lastly, you can do promoted videos. And so you can add a little bit of money and create a target audience. And then that means that you're directing his video content far and wide. And it's helping you reach the customers that you really, really want to target. Let me give you a few tips on using video effectively in your Tweets. First of all, and like with all visual content and all the social media, then remember that people have quite a short attention span, so they don't want to sit through something really long winded, edit the video, and get straight to the point. Because the thing is if you don't grab people in the first few seconds, then they're just not going to watch it. I hate to break it to you, but they won't. And then it's really good to look at the Twitter website and just get the latest spec on what the video should be. So what the duration is. So currently it's no longer than a 140 seconds, but that could change. Maybe the aspect ratio is different, the file format. So it's worth checking all of these things before you upload any video content. And again, as with any web content more widely, any digital content, Then always just have a look through, you know, it's going to say read through it like you would with a tweet, but this is visual content. So watch it through first and make sure there are any problems with it. And it's not just something that could be offensive. Maybe if you've taken a video in the workplace, that could be people featured in it that don't want to be included. Or you could have shots of people screens or something confidential that might be showing up in a video. And you don't really want that out there. So it's always really good to check through for that. And then lastly, when you're writing the text that goes with the Tweets, got the video in it, then put the word watch at the beginning. And this tells people loud and clear that its video content, and they're more likely to go ahead and watch it. So all of these tips should help you create really strong video content for your tweets. And this will really help build engagement, build followers, and build interest in you as a brand. So let's move on to the next module, which is going to be all about advertising and promoted tweets. 10. Promote your tweets to reach your customers!: In this section, we'll look at promoting your tweets, will cover this in a lot more depth in our other course, Twitter strategy for business. But for now what I want to do is get you familiar with the basics. So you were a lot more confident in promoting your content on Twitter. So why should you promote your tweet says five key reasons. So firstly, it's about awareness. We've got organic content, which is that's all your tweets that you're just sharing normally. And then with paid content, it really helps extend your reach. So in a way, it helps you leap frog over everybody else because it's putting your tweets out, out there much more widely than your general organic content. And then there's engagements. So when you promote your tweets, then it's going to give you more likes and more retweets and more shares. And you can also promote a, an account itself. So that's really good at building out your followers. And promoted tweets can also drive traffic to your website as well. So it can help you get more clicks. Or some people they do it for app installs. So that's really good if you're developing an app and you want to accelerate the process, you want to make sure that people really start downloading it quickly. So how do you decide which type of promotion is right for your business? So we've promoted tweets themselves. This is really good if you've got a particular piece of content you want to share. So maybe you want to promote a white paper or download, or there's an event that you're trying to promote. And you have a particular tweet which is talking about this driving people through to your website and you can put some money behind that. But then if you're new business or startup, and you're very new to Twitter, and you want to build that following quickly then to promote the account itself is a really good way to go. And with both of these types of promotion, then they all appear in the user's Timeline, my Kenya, the tweet, but they'll just have that little word promoted at the bottom as well for transparency so that users can see, yep, this is something that someone's put a bit of money behind just so they can tell it it's promoted or sponsored content. And from that they can interact with that in exactly the same way that they can with any other tweets. So they can retweet, they can comment, they can ask you a question, they can share it. Philips particularly good or interesting. And it will be the same kind of engagement as with any other tweet. What I'm gonna do now is walk you through the interface so you're familiar with what you'll see when you do your first campaign. So first you've got to pick your objective. So maybe one app installs followers, you want more tweet engagements, promoted video views. There's lots of options here. And like any kind of marketing, it's really important to define your objective before you start. And particularly because there's money involved, it's not just your day-to-day tweets. You really need to think carefully about what the objective is going to be. And then you can name your campaign and give a budget and choose your time zone particularly important. So if you're trying to promote your tweets to the US and UK, then you want to make sure that these tweets are going out first at the right time when your audience is actually going to be engaged. And you can set a start and end time. And then of course, pick the tweet that you want to promote. So it can be a tweet that you've already created. And then from there you can put some money behind it. And then next you want to pick the audience. And this is where you can really make it work for your business. So you can make sure that you're promoted content reaches the right people with much less money wasted. So you can select by demographics, location, language technology, so people using mobile rather than desktop, and then review it to cause you wanna make sure that when you read it through, it's gonna make sense. You haven't made any errors. Make sure it reads okay to people who have never heard of your business before. And then you're ready to go. Let me give you a few tips on promoting your tweets. So firstly, you want to make sure that you're writing in plain English and write in a way that if someone hasn't heard of you before, they'll understand who you are, what you do, what you're offering, and what the promotion is about. And it sounds obvious, but you putting money behind this campaign, behind these tweets. And so they are going to reach people have never heard of you. And that's the whole idea. So you want to make sure that you're not using jargon. You're not writing in a way that means that people will look at the tweaking. Think, Well, what's all this about? You know, if there's kind of an in joke with it, then people just aren't going to get it. So, so right for an audience's never heard of you. The other thing as well is don't leave the campaign running for too long. Try and check back regularly and see how it's doing. Are you getting engagements? How are people commenting? Are they asking the questions? And one thing you might find is that if you leave it running for too long, number 1 is a waste of money. But secondly, you might start getting complaints and there's a number of accounts that I've blocked over the years for businesses who have never previously heard of. And I've gone from, oh, these guys are contrasting two. Oh, I wish I'd shut off and get out of my timeline. So you can, if you leave the campaign running too long, you just going to overdo it and start to annoy people. The other thing as well is try and share helpful or useful content. So it's not enough just to say follow-up follower account, follow a business account, because unless you give people a reason to do it, then they're not going to do it. Whereas if you share something that is genuinely helpful or useful, you know, it's an interesting video. It's a guide to doing something. It's a blog post that's gotten those of insights in it, then it's much more likely that people are going to share this content. It's really important to include a clear call to action and you're promoted tweets. So you're spending all this money trying to get people to do something and making the call to action clear will really help you achieve this. What I mean by this is a phrase like book now, or sign up or download, something that says really clearly what you want people to do. And the more clear you can make this, the more likely they are to actually do it. So say if you're promoting an event, then this makes people much more likely to click the button. It says booked tickets book now. And then the other thing and this is similar actually is is asking a question. So both these things are clear call to action and asking the question. They work not just in promoted tweets, but across all sorts of digital content. So when you ask a question, it's really good at encouraging people to engage with you, to comment and to respond in some way. And then last of all, if you've got images or video content in new promoted tweets, really try and make sure it's good quality. So these tweets are out there. They're exposing your business to a whole new audience. And so if you have quite poor quality images, then you're going from people who've never heard of you to have now heard of you. And your business is not doesn't really make an effort and doesn't produce a high-quality service. So really think about the images that you're using and see what other people think, get their opinion. And then once you're happy with all of this content, then you're good to go. So this has been an introduction to using promoted tweets and your business. And they can be brilliant at helping you reach your targeted audience or simply building more followers, particularly if you're new business or you're just getting started on Twitter. And they can also help you meet your business objectives. Whether it's driving more web traffic, getting more leads and sales, or encouraging people to do the things that you want them to do. 11. What's in your Twitter toolkit: Hopefully, by now, you're feeling a lot more confident in using Twitter. Now we're going to look at some of the tools that you can use that will make your life a lot more easy. And we've touched upon some of these throughout the course, but we're going to put them together here in one place so you can look through and think which ones might be most useful to you. A lot of these have apps as well, so you can download them on your phone and that helps you update Twitter while you're on the go. So why use more tools when you're updating Twitter. The first thing, it's about saving you time. And so it's the number one thing that people talk to me about. When they say they're just getting started on Twitter, they say, Well, I don't really know how I'm going to fit it all in, and Twitter tools can really help you save time. And they'll also help you become more organized, which is really good. So you can organize your working week, your marketing activity a bit more effectively. And then they help you make sure that your Twitter activity is consistent with your other marketing. So all feels in sync. Then lastly, they can help you use the platform much more effectively, so it's generating more benefits for your business. Once you've used Twitter a little while and you're becoming a bit more familiar with it all, you might want to move on to using a social media dashboard, and this is something like Hot suite or sprout or tweet deck, lots of options out there, and it's a way of managing all of your tweets. Depending on which one you use, then you'll be able to see your own tweets, or people's tweets, replies, posts from other people that you're following, and it keeps everything together in one place. What it means is that you won't be using the Twitter app on your phone to post your tweets or desktop, you'll be using something else, third party tool. And there's quite a few advantages of this. So firstly, it keeps everything together in one place. So quite often, you can also feed in LinkedIn and Facebook, even Instagram, other platforms. So it helps you save a bit of time because you've got everything in one place. And a result of that, you're not getting sidetracked. You're not falling down some rabbit hole where you see something interesting on one Tritter account, you start reading it and before you know it, the whole morning's gone. And it's also good at helping you keep an eye on competitors and different keywords. So you might be able to have different columns set up. So you put a particular keyword relating to your product in, or you could follow competitors, and it allows you to keep an eye on what everybody else is doing. So we particularly like Hootsuite. We use this quite a lot, and it enables us just to keep this kind of overview of what's going on, and we can even schedule content in it as well. And I've got some ideas coming up next on tools you can use for this. But this means that you're keeping everything together in one place and helping you stay more organized and more efficient. So talking of scheduling, then I just wanted to give you a few options here and explain a little bit more about what I mean by this. So scheduling is really great at saving you time. It means that you can decide what you're going to say when on Twitter. And let's say you're running an event. It means that you can schedule some tweets to go out in a run up to it that will help promote it. So it means that you're staying a bit more organized because you've got this plan. And so if you're someone that does like planning and perhaps a big product launch is happening and you want to stay organized, then scheduling more tweets around it is a really good thing to do. It also helps you feel a bit more relaxed about your social media activity because you know you've got regular content going out. I would say, though, that when you're scheduling content, don't just forget it's there. Always keep an eye on it and check back. So sometimes if there's a really big news story, some sort of natural disaster or something awful happening, Then, if you've got your merry little tweets going out in the middle of this, sometimes it can look a bit jarring. So don't just tweet and forget it's there. Always check back. So I've got some examples that we're showing on the screen of different tools you can use. We particularly like buffer. We use that all the time. It's got little slots that you can fill with the content, but then there's lots of other options available as well. We've spoken about the power of visuals in your tweets a lot during the course. And the great thing is that there's lots of tools out there that will help you create this content even more effectively. So there's two that we particularly like called Canva and Pablo, and these help you create social media ready graphics, so you can make them not just for Twitter but lovely visual content for the other social media platforms as well. One thing I particularly like doing is using them to make a template. So let's say you want to have some testimonials or quotes in your tweets. You can create it the first time, and then you've got that template there, and then when you want to do it again, you can just overwrite the text or change the background image. So it's a lovely way of making all of your content nice and consistent. So it's in sync with all the rest of your visual identity. And then there's apps that you can use on your phone. So let's say something like pixel, which I use a lot and lots of these image editing apps, which you can download and they'll refine your images, make them a lot more powerful. And don't forget as well that Twitter itself when you upload images, you can edit them within the app. So it's easy just to maybe just crop them or lighten them up a bit, anything just to give them that little final bit of sparkle. Lastly, we're going to look at measurement tools, and it's really important in any type of digital marketing activity to measure what you're doing. Then you can do more of what you know works and less of what doesn't. Let's say you're experimenting with more video content in your tweets or more image content. If you find this encourages a lot more engagement or a lot more website traffic coming from Twitter, then you can do more of it and you can really refine your approach. We really like the inbuilt analytics that you find in Twitter itself. They're really easy to use, really nice simple layout, and it's really easy to get to grips with it. So, what sort of things will you be looking for? So it's things like impressions. So how many people are seeing your tweets? You'll be looking at engagement, how many people are interacting in some way. So all the replies you're getting, read tweets, all of this kind of thing. But sometimes you find that people don't engage at all. They just take a sneaky peek at your profile because they want to find out more about you as a business. And you'll also want to look at follower numbers. Every business wants to get more followers on Twitter. So it's important to try and track this month after month. And so once you've got to grips with the Twitter tool for its own analytics tool, and you started looking at this and refining your approach and making your activity much more effective, then you might want to try a third party tool. So something like this or Falcon or Raven. And is will pull in the data from not just Twitter, but from Facebook or Pinterest or Linked in, other platforms as well, your blog, e mail marketing, and this will really help you track if you're making a good return on your investment in time. And if you get a really good one, then you can set it up so automates. So every month, it's going to print off a report for you. So it's a really good way of keeping on track and making sure that you're spending your time wisely. So we've looked at four different options for tools that you can use in your day to day Twitter activity. And the key here is that they'll help save you time. They'll help you become a little bit more organized, and they'll help you measure your success so you can make sure you're getting a good return on your investment in time. 12. Project: What's your winning Twitter campaign strategy : So, we've covered a lot of ground in this course, and hopefully you're feeling fully up to speed on things like promoted tweets, the power of image and video, and how you can write really effective engaging copy that's going to help you achieve your goals. So now it's time to put it all together and start mapping out a strategy. So using the worksheet that I've created that goes with this part of the co, let's just go over those objectives again. So write down what the goals are for you. What's really going to make an impact in your business? Okay. And then we need to attach some numbers to this. So start setting some of those key performance indicators. So this could be followers. It could be views. It could be clicks through to your website. It could be retweets. What is it that you want and what's the volume that you're after? And of course, it could be sales. So you could be running a whole campaign around making more sales in your business. So how much money do you actually want to make? What do you think is realistic? And then a key part of the strategy is thinking about the audience. So who are these people that you're trying to target? And how are you going to find them? Is it going to be mostly organic content just coming out of your general Twitter feed, or is it going to be paid promotions? And I must say if you do put some money behind it, then that's going to make chances of success a lot more likely. Think about as well, when they're going to be most highly engaged. So you don't want to be having the bulk of your activity when people are busy doing something else. You want to be targeting these people when you know they're around, and they're going to be a bit more receptive to what you're talking about. And then a crucial element is the creative. So what I'm talking about here is that wonderful mix of your images, your video, your campaign hashtag, the text, all of these things, these component parts, which, when you put them together, really, really do a brilliant job of getting that message out there. So you're looking for that winning combination really, that's going to drive engagement. And then you've got tools. There's lots of tools at your disposal, which will help you do all this much more efficiently and save you money and hopefully make you some money too. So you've got scheduling tools like buffer or Hootsuite or tweet Deck. You've got video apps. There might be stuff that's already lurking on your phone that you could be playing around with. And then, of course, measurement tools. So this is things like Twitter analytics, which is already built in, Google Analytics, and then some of those lovely reporting dashboards that I showed you earlier. And then, of course, a key part to the key part of the success of your campaign is timing. So use a content calendar that I've put in the project worksheet to map out the timeline and really think sensibly about when all this should kick off, when are you most likely to get success with this campaign? And then last of all, when you've done your strategy and you've started your campaign, tell us all about it. So we have a Scio School, Facebook group that goes with all of our courses, and this is a really good group to join. It's full of people who are also trying to get the most out of their digital marketing. So tell us when you launched a campaign, get our thoughts, get us to share, get us to retweet, get us to comment, all these things. And if you follow us on Twitter as well at Scio School, then we can share it too. And the last thing to say is good luck. So you've now got the knowledge, all the learning, all the tools, the tips, the techniques that you need to make your Twitter campaign a success.