In this edition of How’d They Do That?, we examine how Hootsuite increased its Twitter engagement rate by a whopping 180 percent in just two months. Hootsuite is a social media management system. Many small businesses use its powerful platform for social network message dissemination and scheduling. [Disclaimer: LGK is a Hootsuite client.]
Hootsuite’s focus on meaningful metrics offers a significant lesson to inspire your small business Twitter objectives. First and foremost, if you have yet to do so, check out Twitter’s analytics dashboard. Hootsuite used the available stats to gain invaluable insight and to calculate its Twitter Engagement Rate (TER), a measure of how many people who see your Tweet interact with it. How many users clicked on a link, favorited, retweeted or replied to a Tweet, were a few of the engagements analyzed. Hootsuite graciously shared a few secrets to their success. Here is a brief summary of their findings, one of their most engaging Tweets, and their top five tips to help you maximize the return on your social media investment of time, manpower and money.
Hootsuite Findings
…what our team discovered is that TER is a directional metric—a performance indicator if you will. If you are increasing your TER, other good things start to happen to your KPIs.
For example, the traffic we were driving to our blog increased by 38% from October to November. We were floored. Moreover, we had shifted our content to focus on our core audience: social media pros. We assumed this would increase our traffic, but we wondered how it would impact other KPIs. What about lead generation? We were reminded that providing our audience value should always be our focus: lead generation increased by 53% from October to November. November is historically a slow month, but it became our top month for social media lead generation in all of 2014.
A Hootsuite Tweet That Engaged
… While this image made our design team threaten to take away our keys to Photoshop, it performed extremely well over and over again with a TER in the 5.5% range. …this screenshot of our content calendar resonated with the audience and it’s an image we go back to time and time again.
Hootsuite’s Tips
- Understand what your audience WANTS to see in their stream.
- Select compelling images to accompany your Tweet.
- Refine your copy over and over again.
- Double down on content that works. Tweets and content that perform get published over and over again. Tweets or content that are duds quickly find their way out of the rotation.
- Show a little personality in your copy.
Read Hootsuite’s entire overview of how the company increased its Twitter engagement rate here.
Hootsuite’s experience proves that while the number of followers matter, engagement matters more. This assertion rings true in the SocialTimes article Who Are The Most (and Least) Engaged Brands on Twitter? Here are a few highlights:
Total followers, while a somewhat useful metric, should not be the driving force behind your strategy.
The percentage of followers who engage is a good indicator of how responsive the company is to its customers. Many consumers turn to social media to have their needs met before trying any other platform; companies would do well to keep up with their audience.
As social media matures, it’s important to concentrate on those metrics that allow companies to react appropriately to their audiences. Adding more followers isn’t enough if those followers unfollow, bad-mouth your brand, or simply don’t engage. It’s time to concentrate on more meaningful metrics.
Read the entire article at Adweek.com/SocialTimes.
How do you measure your small business’ effectiveness on Twitter? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section of this post. You may also want to check out this LGK post, 10 Really Good Tips for Small Business Social Media Marketing.
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GB O’Brien
LGK Principal
Featured image photo credit: twm1340 / Foter / CC BY-SA