A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post called Brands Must Have a Presence on Social Media. An organization I’m a part of, Heelprint, is working for a client, Tar Heel Beginnings, to plan their social media campaign for Week of Welcome – a week long series of fun events for new students.
My job was to create a content calendar for their Twitter account. So what works best to promote a brand on Twitter?
After doing some research here’s what I found:
- Repetition is great. In advertising there’s the rule of 3 – where essentially it takes a person to see something three times to remember it. So recycling tweets isn’t a bad idea. But maybe change up the wording so it’s not exactly the same.
- Schedule tweets at different times to learn what generates the most engagement. There’s tons of research that says this time is better than this. Is it Tuesday, is it Thursday? Is it morning, lunch time, night? I know I check my Twitter constantly throughout the day, as probably do most college students, so a simple experiment can be done to find out what time and day gets the most favorites or retweets.
- Retweet responses. We’ve set up a lot of campaigns such as tweet us your questions or share a picture at your favorite event. The more you engage with followers the more they will engage back.
- Tag groups in hopes of a retweet. Getting one extra influencer has a multiplier effect. Retweets work both ways and by getting a retweet you’re expanding the number of people who see your name. Certain campus handles have thousands of followers and a simple retweet can help increase brand awareness.
- Tweet pictures and videos. They’re more interesting and eye catching than just text.
Jess also researched why people will interact with a brand on social media. Her findings were interesting.
- Freebies – people can be bribed to like a page
- Whitty posts – clever + funny = a retweet or favorite
- Engaging with the audience – we all like to be heard and know that someone is listening
- Being the best source of information – because why else would someone care.
Hopefully the campaign will work. It doesn’t matter how funny the tweets I wrote are though, if no new students follow the account it’s all for nothing. That’s the first step, and then creating engaging and interesting tweets.
Keep an eye out for #UNCWOW15 next fall! Follow @THB_UNC for all the updates and see how well I did my job.
Morgan's Minutes 