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Building a brand on Twitter – a social media platform that limits messages to 280 characters – is particularly challenging.

However, should you manage to do it, the results are gratifying: at the moment, Twitter has 330 million users, many of which are your potential customers.

In this article, we will address seven best practices for building a brand identity on Twitter to attract new audiences and engage the existing ones.

Create Your Own Twitter Strategy

Before setting out to post on your business’s Twitter account, you should create a full-fledged strategy by defining what your main goal on Twitter is.

In order to succeed on any social media platform and engage its users properly, you need to make sure that you invest your time and effort into what will drive results. Use your audience’s buyer personas to forge these decisions – remember that you can’t cater to everyone’s needs on Twitter.

When defining your Twitter goals, think about what you want to achieve. Possible goals could include:

• Boosting customer loyalty
• Generating new leads
• Increasing conversion rates
• Educating prospects

A social strategy gains actionable goals once you know what your business objectives are. To get the results you want, you need to make sure the objectives are measurable and specific.

Create A Unique, On-Brand Profile And Username

The most noticeable and immediate aspect of your Twitter’s brand identity is the brand name or, in this case, username.

During the account registration, make sure you provide the full business name or an alternate version of the name, that is relatable and memorable.

A Twitter profile username conveys a particular brand image, improves your business’ likelihood of appearing in social streams/trends and boosts your audience’s trust.

Besides coming up with a compelling username that reflects your brand well, you should also:

• Optimize your profile by picking a branded logo or another relevant image for your page’s profile picture and entering descriptive information about your business in the bio section. Also, add a link to your website’s About section. That will drive more leads to your site.
• Verify your account to signal to your audience that your brand page is genuine. Find Twitter’s simple guide on acquiring the blue verification check mark and follow the steps.
• Link to your Twitter page from other places such as your website, email signature and other social media pages to provide more reach to your network of platforms.

Leverage Your Brand Voice

A well-defined brand voice is a crucial element of your social media messaging and audience engagement.

A brand voice that suits your company, your product and, above all, your target audience, is the number one factor in establishing a sense of trust with your consumers. It is also a tool that positions you uniquely in the crowded market.

Every piece of content and every tweet on your Twitter account should contain your brand voice, meaning a voice that reflects your brand personality.

Whether this tone will be formal and professional or more laid-back and humorous depends on the type of services you provide and the audience you cater to.

On Twitter, like on any other platform, your voice should align with the nature of your business and the type of people you are trying to attract.

Your Twitter brand voice must come across as authentic, not to confuse or alienate the audience, which is used to certain types of communication coming from your business.

This also ensures broader brand consistency and brand recognition.

Brand Your Visuals

The images you plan to post to your Twitter profile will come across as more professional, unique and engaging if they bear your brand’s visual identity.

Remember that branding is all about consistency, which is extremely important when managing your brand on different digital channels.

Branded visuals create a link between your Twitter feed, website, online ads, Facebook profile, and other digital platforms. They help you promote your business and gain recognition from your followers. To enhance this integration, you can embed Twitter feed on website, providing visitors with real-time updates and increasing engagement with your social media presence.

If your business has a brand style guide book, built by an expert digital marketing agency, containing instructions for applying your brand’s logo, colors and typography to all channels, it would be advisable to apply these to Twitter as well.

The most fundamental way to brand your Twitter visuals is by adding your logo to them or incorporating your recognizable brand colors.

Use Hashtags Tactfully

Hashtags – phrases that indicate a specific topic or content – were invented by Twitter. Today, they are an essential component of any social media strategy and how businesses acquire relevancy and keep up with trends.

In fact, tweets with hashtags improve user engagement by 50% for brands.

Your Twitter brand identity should incorporate hashtags strategically to your advantage by grouping your content into different hashtag categories and making it easier to find.

The best practices for using hashtags on Twitter’s business pages include:

• Avoid spaces or punctuation: Hashtags do not work with spaces between words, even if they consist of several words.
• Find trending hashtags: Twitter informs you about trending hashtags related to what you do on your homepage feed. Make the most of it and tap into them at the right time.
• Do not overdo it: No more than a few hashtags per tweet is the general rule of thumb. Anything more than that is not effective and too many hashtags may turn people away.

Stick To Your Posting Schedule And Itinerary

Getting engagement from your Twitter followers is not an easy feat.

After all, Twitter is one crowded place: over 350,000 tweets are sent through this platform every minute!

Knowing when to post during the day can boost your engagement metrics significantly. One recent study suggests that:

• Friday is the best day to post on Twitter
• Posting between 10 AM and 12 AM is the most effective daily time slot
• The worst time for Twitter engagement is Sunday morning

However, only you can get to the bottom of your specific audience’s habits on Twitter. If these general audience traits do not apply to them (or if you’re unsure if they do), follow these best posting practices:

• Make sure to post at least once a day to maintain the necessary level of engagement and brand visibility with your followers. You can also post more than once on certain days.
• When you get to understand your audience’s habits and preferences, adjust your posts’ timing by using Twitter Analytics.
• Schedule your tweets by using Sprout Social or any other similar tools. This way, you will never miss out on the opportunity to engage with your followers at crucial hours.

Boost Engagement With Multimedia

As much as 82% of users watch video content on Twitter and have said they would even like to watch more videos from the pages they follow.

Multimedia, like videos, infographics, polls, etc., is a useful way to engage your users on social media.

Some of the ideas you can utilize in this respect include:

• Twitter feed photos: Visual content such as images add diversity to the generally textual content. Also, these images may add value to your audience if they provide them with information and knowledge that relieves their key pain points and educates them.
• GIFs: Adding a fun and laid-back side to your business, GIFs can be branded to add another layer of personality to them and your business.
• Behind-the-scenes videos: These can help with building your credibility and authenticity. They also add a humane, relatable touch to your business by showing your team and your operations from a different, less “businessy” angle.

Conclusion

Your brand is your promise to your customer. It is critical that your business gets the right presence on Twitter, which is still one of the most popular social media networks for both B2C and B2B segments.

By building your brand for Twitter, you can connect with your followers in a meaningful way that will build trusting, lasting relationships.