COVID-19 has taught us several valuable lessons, one of which is how vital social media is for businesses. Needless to say, every entrepreneur now understands the importance of including social media in their digital marketing strategy.
Why?
Social media is here to stay.
Through these platforms, brands can interact with consumers on a personal level.
With the help of the right influencers, businesses can boost brand awareness and build loyalty. When it comes to influencer marketing, Instagram takes the cake.
But Twitter is an underrated platform that has a lot to offer too.
Why Should You Leverage Twitter For Influencer Marketing?
Twitter offers a clear and concise means of communication.
The snappy nature of tweets makes them easy to consume, build relationships with others, keep up-to-date with the latest developments, and reach new audiences.
In 2019, Twitter had 330 million monthly active users in the USA. Out of those, over 40% of users used the platform daily.
But wait, there’s more.
Partnering with the right Twitter influencers can magnify customer purchasing intent by up to 88%.
Impressive, huh?
To help you tap into the potential of influencer marketing on Twitter, let’s discuss some of the best practices you can use to engage with influencers.
How to Approach Twitter Influencers: A Reliable Guide
Before you reach out with a proposal, there is a lot of background work that you need to do. Here are some social media marketing tips to get you started with Twitter influencer marketing:
1. Identify Your Brand Personality
Developing a brand personality helps people relate to the brand. By attributing human characteristics to your brand, your business appears human in the eyes of potential customers.
For instance, Nike’s brand personality is associated with ruggedness and excitement, while Apple’s is more about sophistication.
Other brand personalities can include qualities like quirkiness, sincerity, sharpness, and competence.
Depending upon your brand’s personality, you can search for individuals on Twitter that align with your business. Moreover, by developing a consistent identity, viewers know what to expect from you. By providing engaging and entertaining content, you’ll be able to attract a large follower base.
2. Maintain an Active Twitter Profile
The key to social media marketing success is engaging consistently with your target audience. This helps deepen relationships making it easier to reach consumers and boost your brand’s online presence.
Moreover, maintaining a strong presence has a two-fold benefit. Increasing your follower count and engagement rates can help attract influencers looking for greater followership and reach for their own brands. It provides a strong incentive to collaborate with them.
Using a social media management tool like Agorapulse will help tremendously.
3. List Down Important Criteria
On social media, anyone and everyone can be an influencer. But when it comes to finding an influencer for your brand, you want to collaborate with an individual who has a social influence on their followers. List the criteria that are important for you.
This list can include:
- Engagement Rate
- Content Quality
- Content Tone
- Reach
- Niche
- Personality
4. Filter Out Influencers
Finding the right influencers who will amplify your brand message and help you down the market funnel can be challenging. But specialized platforms for influencer marketing can help you filter out the best Twitter influencers based on your niche, number of followers, or other criteria.
Also, look into the good old #hashtag search technique.
Ideally, search for mutually beneficial relationships. The characteristics of your influencer should help you achieve your marketing goals, whether that’s raising brand awareness, boosting brand image, increasing engagement, etc.
That begins with clearly determining what you want from your Twitter influencers. Consider defining your ideal influencers by audience, topic, or campaign. Typically, those that share the same interests or tweet messages relevant to your industry, product, or services can sway the target audience the best.
5. Engage With Your Shortlisted Influencers
Before you reach out to any online influencer, make sure you like their posts or comment on them. It can be a great way to break the ice.
To get the attention of influencers, you need to get creative.
@mentions and retweets are great ways to get on an influencer’s radar. Answer their questions or share relatable content that they’ve created.
While this can help you get noticed by the influencer, it can also help generate more engagement and traffic.
After you’ve engaged with them a few times, you can even send them a direct message. Communicating with them can help give you more insights into their thoughts and preferences.
By asking industry-related questions, you can gauge whether an individual will be able to appropriately communicate the brand image. And the more informed you are about an influencer, their niche, habits, etc., the better position you will be in when it’s time to make your pitch.
Remember to ask only relevant, meaningful questions that can help an influencer establish themselves as authority figures. Appreciating them and explaining how they are important to your brand can get the ball rolling.
6. Offer Incentives
Once you have decided on which Twitter influencers you would like to endorse your brand, you need to offer compensation for their services. It’s obvious that established influencers will prefer monetary compensation for their services.
However, many, especially micro-influencers, are more than willing to agree upon other compensation methods such as:
- Shout Outs – You can help them receive more recognition.
- Giveaways and Discounts – Offer free products or discounts in return for tweeting about their experiences.
- Commission – An influencer that generates significant sales might agree to work for a commission.
7. Identify Trending Topics
Twitter is all about trending topics.
To create content that can go viral and get the most engagement, you can jump in on the trends. For that, you need to listen actively to topics that are trending in your niche.
By identifying topics that are getting the most engagement, you can come up with content ideas that you can work on. It’s also an easy way to find influencers who may already be creating such viral content.
8. Use TweetDeck
To make it easy for you to manage your influencer marketing campaigns, leverage TweetDeck. Add all the influencers you are interested in working with to TweetDeck.
It can help you keep an eye on their latest posts. It’s a platform that shows a stream of tweets and retweets of all the accounts you’ve added to your list. Basically, you get to curate your feed.
Staying updated can help you start conversations, and reply or comment on their posts instantly.
Image via TweetDeck
Sometimes, influencers may approach you directly. Don’t ignore them. If they show interest in a collaboration, take the conversation forward to see if you can work together. It can save you a ton of time and effort.
Final Thoughts
When it comes to influencer marketing, Twitter is like a dark horse among all the other social media platforms. It’s a platform that can help you grab the attention of your audience only with a few words. If done right, Twitter influencers can help generate more traffic and leads.
Before you approach an influencer for collaboration, make sure you’ve done a background check. Once you are sure they fit your requirements, start engaging with them on Twitter. Keep in mind that your goal should be to build a meaningful long-term relationship with them.
Do you have any questions about approaching Twitter influencers? Please leave them in the comments section.
You can learn more about influencer marketing within Ultimate Guide to Social Media Marketing available now.
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