Twitter for business remains a popular social marketing outlet because of its uncluttered interface and live updates. While some brands have the budget and established brand recognition to enjoy successful Twitter marketing campaigns, for smaller, lesser-known brands, as well as the B2B marketing environment, Twitter brand marketing is still an uphill battle. We at The Ludlow Group have helped brands in the architectural products market grow their Twitter presence using the best social media practices for the clients we represent.

Despite the character limit, it is important to give your tweets structure; consistency is key in developing a professional brand voice. As an example, for distributing a blog post or news story that is relevant to our clients’ industries, we include: a headline, a shortened link, relevant hashtags (which should be monitored or researched to see if the hashtags have any engagement), as well as imagery (this study shows how engagement has increased for tweets with images versus those without images). Replies or mentions should always be professional as well, excluding religious, political or sensitive opinions that may offend others.

Building on the professionalism that a brand must convey on Twitter, we understand that the content shared should also build our clients’ presence as thought leaders. With the notion of the 80/20 rule that 80% of content shared should be from others and 20% of content shared should be from your brand; we fine tune ratios of original content versus related content for our clients. These ratios may be a 60/40 or even 50/50, depending on what content is offered through their website or blog.

Although follower growth is important, engagement is often overlooked. Knowing what kind of content drives the most engagement, in terms of likes, replies, retweets and mentions help to create important insights. For example, sharing a content link with a different headline or image can be used for a simple form of A/B testing, as well as repurposing content. Keeping track of headlines that receive the most engagement help to tailor a brand’s voice.

For our clients, Twitter has led us to discover different uses of their product than their original intent. From monitoring our created hashtags (based on client products) and keywords, it is possible that one might find an interesting project application that might not have been found via search engine. These discoveries have helped us hone in on specialty niche users of products and include content that would resonate with them.

In terms of metrics, we have helped our clients’ Twitter followers grow over 100% in the course of a year, as well as achieve monthly potential tweet reach in excess of 300,000 users. By utilizing third party tools, as well as manually recording reach, we are able to create reports for clients that provide accurate details of our efforts. A client's ability to understand this analysis is just as important as the metrics. In many cases these analytics, especially reach, will vary, sometimes greatly, on a monthly basis. Explaining to a client that reach, or the potential amount of users who could consume their content, varies based on how influential the users are (how many followers they have) allows the client to understand the concept of reach without getting hung up on the numbers themselves. Like we mentioned, engagement is a more important metric than reach.

Twitter, from an architectural materials standpoint, doesn’t need to be a daunting task for marketers. What makes it beneficial to your business is that you have a platform to connect with others in both your industry and others as well. It allows you to share your brand’s knowledge in your industry, promote projects that use your products, find who is using your products and how they are using them. At The Ludlow Group, we pride ourselves in executing effective Twitter campaigns that drive engagement and interest in the brands we represent.