Is Twitter part of your product launch strategy?
Focus on engagement and reciprocation for effective launch of product/features
Out of 115 million active monthly twitter users, who constitute 21% of all twitter users, about 38 million share opinions and make recommendations about the brands they follow.
Going by these stats, if your brand has 1000 Twitter followers, about 70 users are actively willing to talk about your brand. When those 70 users retweet or share about your brand it gets the attention of at least 5000 users who are their followers and the message spreads exponentially from there.
This is just an indication of the potential of this platform to reach a wider audience. On day to day basis we are seeing more and more people willing to engage their network on social media by talking about the likes and dislikes about the brands they encounter. This phenomenon has laid out an amazing platform for brands to easily reach to their target market and potential customers.
With this understanding of how twitter follower-ship leads to better market reach, engagement and sales of your products, you need to focus on the two things to make the most out of Twitter.
- Increase Twitter followers
- Tactically spread your product updates
Build your Twitter network
Stick to the basics
You need to have a relevant and unique Twitter bio and a cover photo, for people to instantly identify who you are and what you do. Tweet consistently and regularly to keep your twitter handle active round the clock considering your global audience. Attach your Twitter URL on your business card, email signature, your social profiles and website. Follow relevant people who you think would add value to your understanding of business.
Do not forget, about 30% people you follow will follow you back.
When you don’t talk about yourself, be relevant
Regularly tweet your questions and opinion on stuff useful to your followers. When you talk about things that people would love to know, yet hard to find for themselves, readers feel engaged. More the engagement, more retweets you get and thus more followers.
Retweet someone who you think should follow you. When you retweet, people have a natural propensity to follow you back as a sign of appreciation and may even return a retweet later. This strategy works well when you want to have influencers as your followers who could serve as your brand evangelists later.
Also add appropriate hashtags to your tweets since millions are always searching for those topics who will find your tweet useful and follow you back.
Talk about your brand
Build the hype
The launch of your new product should not be the first time your Twitter followers hear from you. Use the quiet time before the product launch to tweet regularly and the benefits of your new release, generate interest and expectation around your launch.
Draft the message
Draft your message highlighting the benefits that your target readers could derive from your product or feature. Always remember to engage your followers with your tweets and not let them feel you are promoting something. To get the most attention for your tweets and product updates try to tag along with trending hashtags. Come up with a list of hashtags relevant to your update and also watch out for trending topics in Twitter. Strategically planning your launch with relation to trending topics could help you reach out to more people.
Get the timing right
Engagement rates are highest for brands during Saturdays and Sundays. Also more people use Twitter at around 9 AM, 12 PM, 3 PM and 6 PM on any day. Strategize your tweet calendar keeping this in mind.
Promote through Twitter ads
There are many ways to promote via twitter using paid plans. See what is appropriate to you. You can use geo-targeting to attract people from a specific location, device targeting to reach out to mobile users, promote to people searching for tags specific to a particular topic, etc. There are more such tactics and examples that could help you.
Use visual brevity
Do not make your tweets too long for people to read i.e., keep your tweets lesser than 100 characters. Share links for people to click and get more information.
Wherever possible add images. With the new preview photo and video option on Twitter it is really easy to visually engage people.
In all, using Twitter to connect with customers and prospects is so easy that it doesn’t make sense not to do it, when it comes to promoting your products.
If you found this post helpful you might want to follow me on twitter where I tweet about Startups and Product Strategy
