In Twitter Strategy Part I, we discussed several foundational strategies to setup your firm for effective Twitter marketing. In Part II, we’ll cover improving audience engagement, implementing an editorial calendar, benchmarking, and the ever-elusive topic of account verification.
1. Engage with Your Target Audience
If you read our first article, you already know how to identify and connect with your target audience by implementing a following strategy to reach key influencers and leveraging hashtags for broader reach. For firms that have mastered these basics and are looking to take their social media strategy to the next level, the key is audience engagement.
You’re already following legal and trade publications, clients, leads, and other influencers, but how do you start the conversation? Low hanging fruit includes sharing or retweeting bylined articles or articles in which your attorneys are quoted, and @mentioning the publication in which the article was published or the journalist. They’ll be flattered, and there’s a good chance they’ll comment, like or share it too.
Monitor your firm’s mentions and new followers, and make an effort to engage with those who want to engage with you! Consider mentioning or tweeting to your new followers. Take a look at their profile and recent tweets, and construct a relevant tweet to get the conversation going.
As the saying goes, “if you want something, you have to ask for it.” Possibly the most powerful tip to boost mentions is to ask your followers for retweets. Big brands do it and reap huge benefits, and law firms should too. If you’ve come up with great content that you feel should be shared. Ask the influencers among your followers to retweet it. Conversely, let it be known that, if approached, you are open to retweeting good content.
While Twitter polls may not be the most sophisticated way to gather market intelligence, they are a great way to engage your audience. If your firm is using live polls during events, consider encouraging your Twitter audience to get involved as well. It is a great opportunity to start a Twitter conversation and extend the life of your event.
2. Planning Your Content
Twitter can be used as a ‘catch-all’ for all sorts of content your firm is producing, but it can be tough to find time throughout the day for maintaining an active account. Employing the Hootsuite scheduling feature or another social media CMS to build out campaigns for and automate planned content can be a game-changer. If your firm produces a newsletter or has an upcoming event, build your content out well in advance to ensure that you’re reaching your audience at the right time, and that content is appropriately spaced. The marketing best practice is to tweet no more than once per hour during the week and no more than every three hours on weekends.
For content that is performing particularly well, use your scheduling too to re-tweeting it on the weekends, when engagement tends to be nearly 20 percent higher. Re-tweeting gives your own content a second opportunity to be seen by people who may have missed it the first time around.
3. Benchmarking and Analytics
Twitter has an excellent analytics platform that allows you to track impressions, profile visits, mentions, and followers, and calls out your tweets and mentions with the best engagement. As you put your Twitter strategy in place it is essential that you monitor and measure performance month-over-month to see what is working and where you may need to make adjustments. If your audience growth and engagement begins to accelerate, you know you’re on the right track.
4. Competitive Intelligence
In order to assess market share, it’s important to know who you’re up against. Follow or monitor your competitors to get an understanding of what types of content they are sharing, how they are marketing it, and how it is being received by their audience. Keep an eye on their mentions and replies as well to learn what people are saying about your competitors and they’re responding to their followers.
If you’re interested in an even deeper analysis, services like Tweepi and Twitter Counter allow you to monitor your competitors’ follower lists, learn who their most active and influential fans are, and see stats, including how often they tweet and the rate at which they are earning new followers.
5. Verified Accounts
And finally, the elusive blue verified badge. Getting verified on Twitter is no easy task, but is worth the effort, because it lets your audience know that your firm’s account is authentic and of public interest. Whether or not you become verified is subjective and completely at the discretion of Twitter: you must fill out a form to request consideration, and the process usually takes several weeks. In addition to providing complete profile details, you’ll need to demonstrate that your profile is of public interest with supporting documentation, and also make an argument (in 500 words or less) for why your account should be verified. When applying to be verified, make sure that your Twitter profile has been active recently (both in terms of posting and audience engagement). Make sure to be specific and put your best foot forward when making your case. Don’t worry if you aren’t verified on your first attempt, you can try again in 30 days.
Improving audience engagement, benchmarking, gaining competitive intelligence and earning credibility on Twitter will take time and commitment, but, once you gain momentum and have a baseline for measuring success, these strategies will put you ahead of the pack.
By Emily Flowers, Manager, Content Marketing & Communications, McDermott and Ashley Rosenblatt, Marketing Coordinator, Gordon Feinblatt for the September/October 2017 LMA Mid-Atlantic Region Newsletter