Marketing Trend: Automated Tweeting & Poor Timing

This week we look at a way for marketing campaigns to increase their exposure through better timing of tweets. Automated tweeting of an email message or blog post is common. But there are ways to repurpose that same tweet for better engagement, more retweets and increased subscriber/follower base. Tools to help you test are available, and various tweet methods can be used to find the right timing for your business.

TREND
Social media sharing is a valuable part of any email marketing campaign. But many businesses automate content posting as soon as email campaigns execute and that’s where their sharing ends. “Auto-pushing” to as many people as possible, regardless of the intended target segment, is a bad idea if this is the extent of your social media strategy. In addition to possibly flooding news feeds of untargeted social media subscribers, poor timing can result in the most engaged subscribers missing an important promotion.

TAKEAWAY
It’s important to have a handful of tweeting methods and to experiment. While getting the message out to multiple channels is good, this practice can water down the overall message strategy if the posts lack variety. Plus, reposting and retweeting is going to be low when these updates aren’t timed strategically and are obviously posted through an automated service. Unlike email subscribers, social media followers can’t be segmented into buckets of “past purchases” or “clicked links.” Therefore tweets should be planned accurately in order to gain interest and momentum.

HOW TO
Find your sweet spot by testing these or other methods that work for you.

Method 1: Auto-push
Whether it’s a blog post or an email campaign, as soon as something is published, a link should be automatically pushed to Twitter. Just remember this shouldn’t be your only strategy! Your followers probably follow a lot of people so they might not see this update, and the auto-pushed tweet probably won’t appeal to everyone.

Method 2: Manual updates
Timed manual tweets by you can create more interest through follower retweets. Choose a stat or quote from the email that was auto-pushed earlier. Since your followers aren’t segmented, remember that variety rules – some people may only be interested in coupons while others want news. Use a tool such as www.tweetwhen.com to determine your “retweet sweet spot.” (Ours is 1pm on Mondays.) You may need to test the right frequency (either several times per day or every other day).

Method 3: Engaged responses
Don’t leave out the key influencers. Those are people who send you “@” replies on twitter, or who have retweeted your content. The idea is to expand your audience, so if engaged followers are helping expand your audience you should publicly respond to, mention or quote them. Note: there are two ways to retweet, either through someone posting “RT” in front of their post or by clicking the retweet button. Look for both.