How to engage your audience with Twitter

Twitter is a valuable social media tool for online store owners. This network is crucial for ecommerce stores because you can reach a large audience and grow brand awareness, especially after Twitter introduced the "buy" button so users could make purchases directly from the platform. Twitter also provides ways for ecommerce retailers to engage in trending conversations with their target audience. This platform is excellent for ecommerce marketing because store owners are often able to reach a larger number of people for free.

Create a tweet engagement campaign

Tweets serve a multitude of purposes, but Twitter offers campaigns that are specifically based on engagement. These engagement campaigns enable online store owners to select their audience before tweeting, which increases the chances of quality content being seen by the right people (1). Although these tweets are labeled as promoted, they function like regular tweets in every other respect, including retweets, replies and favorites.

Online store owners need to put their best content forward on Twitter. Even though these tweets are often to promote a specific product, they should be interesting to encourage engagement. Photos and videos spark higher levels of interactions from followers. Online store owners are able to combine up to four images on Vine to form a video that is then posted to Twitter. Engagement campaigns also give retailers a way to get in on seasonal events or pop culture, as well as events specific to the industry.

How to define your audience for engagement tweets

There are multiple ways online store owners segment their audiences on Twitter:

• Interests: Twitters offers 350 different categories for retailers to choose between. Targeting by interest enables marketers to reach a larger audience outside of their followers.
• Followers: This form of segmentation helps marketers target individuals who follow similar accounts, which is useful for connecting with a niche audience.
• Keywords: Segmenting by keywords allows retailers to reach users searching for or tweeting a particular word of phrase, enabling real-time communication with potential customers.
• Television: Live tweeting during popular TV shows has become a major component of Twitter. Using hash tags related to a particular show, brands are able to engage with people based on a common interest.

Use Twitter chats for higher levels of engagement

Promoted tweets are just one way to engage with your target audience. Marketers that implement new or unique tactics have a stronger change of making better connections with customers. Posting tweets in a key area of subject matter expertise is a great way for online store owners in a niche industry to attract brand awareness (2). A Twitter chat is a discussion centered around a certain topic that is of interest to your target audience, and it's especially effective for connecting with a specialized industry. This is another way to target your audience without creating specific segments.

Twitter chats are easy to find; in many cases, online store owners can search a hashtag relevant to their products. Some Twitter chats have pre-determined questions, and retailers increase their chances of boosting engagement by preparing answers in advance. This is crucial because responding to questions enhances interactions and increases the chances that other participants will follow your brand. Be sure to respond to those who tweet at you and track your mentions, retweets and new followers.

After a Twitter chat, it's important not to let your activity die down on the platform. These interactions are a way for brands to gain new followers, but these individuals will except new content to interact with.

1. Increase Twitter Engagement
2. 10 Twitter Chat Best Practices to Build Brand Awareness and Drive Sales