Wouldn’t it be awesome to have some Twitter marketing strategies in your back pocket to give you an unfair advantage over your competitors?
While most companies are focused on building a following on Twitter, not many realize a unique opportunity they have on Twitter: the ability to study their competitors.
You’ll be able to achieve new heights in your Twitter marketing efforts by examining key competitors and their social strategies on Twitter. This “social intelligence” will improve your Twitter marketing strategies based on what your competitors are (or aren’t) doing!
So how can you get a competitive advantage over your competitors on Twitter? Check out these 10 easy ways:
1. Follow/monitor your competition
This is a no-brainer. One of the best ways to get to know what is working for your competitors is to watch what they do.
You don’t even have to follow them. Just create a private Twitter list that will only be visible to you. Then add your competitors to that list and you can monitor them 24/7.
To create a private Twitter list is simple.
All you have to do is go to your competitors profile. Click on settings:
Next click on “Create a list.”
Set to private.
Then add your competitors into that list. Once you’ve done that, you can then load that Twitter list to your favorite social media manager like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck.
2. Follow their followers
The second technique is to follow their followers. Why shouldn’t you? Twitter is a FREE for all platform and anyone can follow anyone’s Twitter followers.
When I first started to on Twitter, I learned that duplicating followers works. All I did was follow everyone who followed my competitors. Many would follow back quickly.
But we know that Twitter is quite saturated now. This tactic is now less effective than before. So what can you do instead?
There are a few techniques available. You can either choose to use apps and tools or do it manually.
Here’s how I do it manually.
Method 1:
First I’ll take my competitors’ blog articles and post them onto Twitter’s search. I’ll then follow people who tweet about them.
I’ll use one of my blog posts as an example. All you need to do is paste the URL in the search bar.
Here’s what it looks like once you searched it. Now all you have to do is follow.
Method 2:
I won’t follow EVERYONE who follows my competitors. I’ll vet these people based on their profile and tweets. But doing this too quickly can get your Twitter account suspended. You might want to take it slow, especially if your Twitter account is new.
Manual work can take longer since you need to vet these accounts individually and there’s a risk of getting suspended if you follow this method.
That’s why using tools to follow people, tweet specific tweets, and retweet specific people is my method of choice.
A tool I would recommend for you to accomplish this task is Social Quant. If you don’t believe the power you get with it, I recommend you try their free 14-day trial and see for yourself.
3. Get data
Another way to have an unfair advantage over your competitors on Twitter is getting more data.
Knowing more than your competition can give you a lot of leverage. To do this, I use Twitonomy.
All you have to do is type in your competitor’s Twitter handle and Twitonomy will tell you everything you need to know about your competitor. This is invaluable info to help you shape your Twitter marketing strategies.
For example, I typed in Sprout Social, and here are some of the things I’ve learned. In just a minute I found out:
Who their top retweeters were:
What time they usually posts:
Most retweeted tweets:
& more! (see below):
It’s that simple.
4. Speed
Great SPEED is an unfair advantage. Chris “CJ2K” Johnson’s competitors would tell you that (FYI fastest NFL player).
Does speed help you win on Twitter? YES! 100%! On Twitter, many potential customers are judging the speed of which you’re responding.
As an ex-social media manager, I’ve had many experiences that proved speed wins. There were occasions where people tweeted our product vs. competitors, and I was able to respond hours quicker than a competitor and I know for a fact many decided to try our product instead for this reason alone. They felt that if we could respond to them quickly, it means our customer service would be better too.
To do this, here are a few sample search techniques you can use.
Method: Use -http method
As mentioned in my Advanced Twitter Search blog post, the “-http” method is gold. It shows you real conversations that are happening and removes all tweets with links. This allows you to find and respond faster to those real conversations.
Here’s an example:
5. Video
Video is another method to gain competitive advantage. Why? Hardly any businesses are making them.
It’s so rare to find businesses respond to their customers through video on Twitter.
Imagine responding and guiding people through their customer issues by incorporating video into your Twitter marketing strategies. I mean, if you were on the receiving end of customer service like that, wouldn’t you be blown away?!
As a customer, I know that it would give a business a definite edge over their competitors on Twitter in my mind.
6. Start a retweet group
If you’ve read my How to Get 3X More Retweets (By Tomorrow), one the methods I shared was starting a retweet group.
A retweet group is where similar Twitter accounts in the same industry come together to retweet each other’s tweets. Everyone can post a tweet a day in the group and everyone retweets them.
When you’re in a group, it allows you to get better exposure for your tweets and is an awesome addition to your Twitter marketing strategies tool box.
7. A/B testing tweets
Here’s a Twitter marketing trick not many people know about. You can A/B test my tweets even before I post them.
I use a neat little tool that allows me to post two different headlines in it. Their algorithm will then predict which tweets will do better.
I’m sure you have some doubts about the tool. That is why they created a quiz to help prove that their algorithm does in fact work. Plus, I’ve used it enough to say with confidence it definitely helps.
Take this for example. Which of these tweets do you think had more retweets?
First or second?
If you answered second, you were right!
8. Grade your Twitter account
While all the methods above are focused on your competitors, one trick to have a competitive advantage is improving the quality of YOUR Twitter marketing strategies.
I recommend Hootsuite’s Twitter Grader. All you have to is sign in with your Twitter account, and you’ll get a rating on your Twitter performance.
This will grade your account and even show you how you can improve your Twitter marketing such as reach and engagement.
Here’s the start that shows how complete my Twitter profile is. If you follow Social Quants 14 Days TMTS Challenge. You’ll know the importance of a complete Twitter profile. If you have not signed up yet, what are you waiting for?
Next, you’ll get an overall rating for your Twitter account.
As you may have noticed, I got an A+ for reach but F in engagement. They recommended that I spend more time engaging with people on Twitter and it’s hard to argue with that data.
The reason I got A+ for reach is because 95% of my tweets gets retweeted, which is pretty good. But I’ll still use what I learn to see if I can improve on this score.
Next is engagement.
That’s one area I need to improve on for sure.
I also need to include more visuals in my Twitter marketing strategies.
9. Use Twitter analytics
There are so many businesses that don’t use Twitter analytics, so make sure you’re not one of them. Twitter analytics is one of the best analytics platform out there. Why? Because it comes from direct from Twitter!
Twitter wants you to know every single thing you need to know about your business on Twitter and spend money on ads. That’s why they provide you as many details as possible. You basically get every single thing you need to know.
There’s so much in Twitter analytics that I recommend you use it today.
Here’s a preview of what it looks like:
10. Invest in Twitter ads
If you have the budget to invest, I recommend you start a Twitter ads campaign. While there are many great resources who can help set you in the right direction, my go-to guy is definitely Larry Kim.
This blog post can get you started.
Conclusion
Although some of the steps above require a bit more work, these are proven Twitter marketing strategies to gain a competitive edge on your competition.
If you aren’t active on Twitter, I highly recommend that you fix that TODAY.
It’s one of the best platforms to grow a following and build a brand.
So, in what other ways can you get a competitive edge on Twitter?
The post 10 Easy Twitter Marketing Strategies to Crush Your Competition appeared first on Social Quant - Twitter Growth Done Right.