Twitter. The social platform where Titans duel to the death.
Delete your account. https://t.co/Oa92sncRQY
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 9, 2016
“I’m bullish on Twitter remaining the most powerful way for publishers and influencers to connect, share, and converse. The platform’s open systems (versus the closed ecosystems of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.) and its huge media presence give it a hard-to-catch lead in this field. “
-Rand Fishkin [source]
I’ve been on the Twitter for over nine years, according to my profile. I remember the good old days of ‘08 & ‘09, where you could tweet something out and get dozens and even hundreds of reactions with a fraction of the followers that you’d need to accomplish that now. It was a high engagement platform.
But Twitter can still be a very powerful tool if you apply a little bit of creativity.
Before diving into the advanced tactics below – I want to give a shout out to four people who inspired this post. First, Dennis Yu, Jordan Frank & Derric Haynie for uncovering these hacks.
It wasn’t easy finding tactics that haven’t been broadly discussed online, but these gentleman unearthed some good ones.
Contents
The Hacks
- Secret Twitter Ads Feature [Borrow an Influencer’s Authority]
- Create an Endless Firehose of Journalist Requests with Hootsuite
- Add Retargeting Capability to Your Links using Rebrandly
Additional Reading
- Marketing Using Twitter
- More Awesome Twitter Hacks
- Additional Twitter Tips
- Twitter Analytics
- Twitter Advanced Search and Research
- Twitter Security
- Advanced and Super Advanced Tactics
1. Secret Twitter Ads Feature [Borrow an Influencer’s Authority]
Hack: Use paid promotion to boost someone else’s tweet
Tools – A Twitter Business Account
Cost – An influencer’s permission and an ad budget ($1 – ???)
It’s common knowledge that you can run promoted (paid) tweets on Twitter. But did you know that you can also promote someone else’s tweet?
**Note – you’ll need to be already be spending money on Twitter’s ad platform before being able to unlock this feature.
It’s a little-known feature that can lead to big wins. You’re essentially ‘borrowing’ the authority of the individual who has tweeted about you.
Look it at is a hybrid of influencer marketing and paid social promotion. And it’s win/win as you’re also promoting the person or brand who originally tweeted.
Let’s say I wanted to promote this tweet by Andy Crestodina.
How to Grow Your Audience w/ Content Syndication Like James Altucher ~ @massivekontent https://t.co/HJs3SA1oUp pic.twitter.com/T4nLXgohlM
— Andy Crestodina (@crestodina) December 9, 2016
Or this one by Loz James of the Content Champion…
How to do Content Syndication Like James Altucher, Ryan Stewart, James Clear etc https://t.co/hbWxRPWJBa #ContentMarketing pic.twitter.com/LZj4pLopTs
— Loz James (@contentchampion) February 3, 2017
I’d reach out to them via email – asking for written permission to put this into play.
Once you’ve secured that – head over to ‘Advertising on Twitter,’ and hit the ‘Start a Campaign’ button on the upper right.
Now you’ve landed on the ‘Welcome to Twitter Ads’ landing page.
Click on ‘Tweet Engagements’ under ‘Promote Your Brand’ on the left-hand menu.
Now – click on ‘Create Campaign.’
Step 1: Setup Your Campaign.
- Name your campaign.
- Set your start and end dates.
Step 2: Select an Audience
This is the step that will determine the success of your campaign.
Here you’re targeting by four main parameters: Followers, Keywords, Tailored Audiences or Remarketing.
Step 3: Set Your Budget
If you want to run this over a longer period you’d probably want to set the budget to a lower amount per day ($1-2 / day).
If you need the promoted tweet to get in front of a lot of eyeballs quickly – you’ll need to ramp up the daily ad spend.
Step 4: Choose your creatives.
If you’ve gotten the properly written permissions, the applicable Twitter account name should now appear in the drop down menu.
Click on the Twitter handle and click on ‘Organic Tweets’ in the second box. A list of all of their tweets will appear below.
Choose the one you want to promote and let the fun begin.
Source:
Twitter Has a Secret Feature, Dennis Yu, February 22, 2016
#Bonus Tip: If you want to accomplish the same as above in both Facebook and Instagram – go through Ian Lurie’s brand new Slideshare Deck below. He takes you through the process, step by step.
2. Create an Endless Firehose of Journalist Requests with Hootsuite
The tactic: Use a customized Hootsuite Stream to feed you a constant flow of journalists who are looking for quick sources.
Tools: Hootsuite (free for a limited account or $10/mth for PRO level)
How would you like to log into Hootsuite every day and find a new list of journalists looking for your help with their stories?
Log into your Hootsuite Dashboard
Located in the upper left corner – click on ‘+ Add Stream.’
You want the social platform to be on ‘Twitter, ’ and then you’ll select ‘Search’ as your stream type.
Here you can click on ‘Show Examples’ for an index of search combinations that you can type into the ‘Enter Search Query’ box.
Before drilling down into a more granular search let’s enter “#URGHARO OR #JournoRequest OR #prrequest” to bring up all instances of HARO (Help a Reporter Out), journalist, and public relations requests. ‘for a story’ is another option.
This result will be a little too broad for our needs – as you’re going to be fed every single instance of a HARO or Journalist request on Twitter. Let’s refine this a bit.
How about typing in “(#URGHARO OR #JournoRequest) business owner.”
Now your stream is getting more interesting.
Play around with various word groupings and search combinations and you’ll have a perpetual feed of potential opportunities for you or your clients.
Make one for each category.
Another powerful secondary benefit to this hack will be the consistent making of new relationships with journalists and other bloggers.
There is a huge variety of search operators you can use in both Twitter and Hootsuite.
Source:
The Top 16 Free Digital Marketing Tools to Help Identify & Reach Your Customers, Jordan Frank, SEER, Sept 2, 2016
3. Add Retargeting Capability to Your Links using Rebrandly
The Hack: Use the Rebrandly link shortener to ‘rebrand’ your link also allowing you to inject your Facebook retargeting pixel.
Tools: Rebrandly and Facebook Business (or Adwords) accounts. Chrome browser (for ease of use).
I send out curated tweets all day (and night) and have done so for years. Sometimes those tweets blow up and garner thousands of impressions along with a great deal of engagement.
The bulk of my most popular tweets sends my followers to other people’s sites. And that’s traffic that’s benefiting someone else. Now I don’t have any problem showcasing other people’s amazing content – that’s my job as a curator – but what if I could benefit from it as well?
Did you know there’s a way to retarget audiences who click a link that you’ve sent out via Twitter? Even if the link is to a page you don’t own or control? I didn’t either.
Enter: Link retargeting with Rebrandly.
Rebrandly offer individuals and companies the possibility to brand and shorten the links they share using their name or brand through a specific domain name – via ‘rebranded’ links.
They also allow you to do one other amazing thing…
You can add your retargeting pixel to the link.
Let’s say you ran a photography blog and regularly tweet out helpful Adobe Lightroom tutorials and examples of awesome photographs to your followers.
You want to tweet out this article about ‘Creating the Desaturated Urban Look’ in Lightroom from Petapixel.
First, you’ll want to head over to Rebrandly and sign up for an account.
Next, you’ll want to head over to the chrome web store and grab the chrome extension. Now you can ‘rebrand’ links right from your browser.
In your browser, click on the Rebrandly chrome extension and ‘rebrand’ the Petapixel article link.
In the upper right corner of the Rebrandly box, there is a gear wheel. Click on it to expand the box and then click on ‘Retargeting.’
Head over your Facebook Ads Manager dashboard and grab your retargeting pixel. It’s over on the right side of the panel. You can find it by clicking the ‘eye’ icon.
Copy the FB pixel code and head back over to your Rebrandly link shortening box.
Paste the code into the ‘Script’ field inside the ‘Retargeting’ drop down box.
Give the Retargeting Code a ‘Name’ and then click ‘Create.’ That retargeting code will now be saved in your Rebrandly account under the name that you saved it under. You can now reuse it at will – without having to redo all of the above steps.
Click ‘Save, ’ and now you’re ready to go! Your link has been rebranded, and you can share it at will – with your FB retargeting pixel piggybacking it.
Now you have the ability to retarget people on Facebook who clicked the link that you tweeted out.
Note: If Facebook Ads aren’t your preference – you can also utilize the above tactic with a Google Remarketing Pixel from your Adwords account.
***Bonus Points*** – “If people clicked on the link from Twitter, run Twitter retargeting ads, if Facebook run Facebook. This converts better because they’ve already seen you on that platform, so they aren’t shocked to see you again.” – Derric Haynie
Source:
Content Curation on Twitter: How to Quickly Find and Grow Your Twitter Following (Part 2), Derric Haynie, August 9, 2016 & What is Link Retargeting, Derric Haynie, September 14, 2016
Additional Reading
1. Marketing Using Twitter
Before diving deep into specific hacks and tactics, it’s helpful to get a 10,000-foot view of the Twitter marketing ecosystem. Here are three valuable guides to quickly get you up to speed on Twitter’s capabilities.
Everything You Need to Know: Open Graph, Twitter Cards & Rich Pins | Warfare Plugins
Everything You Need to Know: Open Graph, Twitter Cards & Rich Pins
The Complete Ecommerce Guide to Twitter Advertising | BigCommerce
How to Make a Splash on Twitter With Visual Marketing | Peg Fitzpatrick
2. More Awesome Twitter Hacks
I only went into detail on three hacks that I wasn’t previously aware of. Here is a few dozen more for you to discover. Use them wisely.
How to Recover Your Social Share Counts If They’ve Been Lost | Warfare Plugins
How to Recover Your Social Share Counts If They’ve Been Lost
10 Totally Life-Changing Twitter Hacks | Seventeen
Five Twitter Hacks to Skyrocket Your Engagement | MarketingProfs
8 Easy-To-Follow Twitter Hacks to Get Your Tweets Seen | Sprout Social
9 Awesome Twitter Hacks That You’re TOTALLY Not Using (But Should!) | Post Planner
3. Additional Twitter Tips
Still not enough hacks? Here’s a few more for you to check out.
10 Twitter Tips Most Pros Don’t Even Know | MakeUseOf
10 Twitter Secrets You Should Know | Social Media Today
4. Twitter Analytics
Now it’s time to do a deep dive into Twitter Analytics. You can gain quite a bit of insight from the Twitter dashboard. To shorten your learning curve – here are some of the best analytics posts on the web.
How to Use Twitter Analytics: 17 Simple-to-Find Stats to Help You Tweet Better | Buffer
How to Use Twitter Analytics to Increase Your Audience Engagement | Constant Contact
How to Use Twitter Analytics to Increase Your Audience Engagement
How to Use Twitter Analytics to Improve Your Engagement | Social Media Examiner
How to Use Twitter Analytics: The Complete Guide for Marketers | Hootsuite
https://blog.hootsuite.com/twitter-analytics-guide/
6 must-have metrics for Twitter Analytics | Klipfolio
5. Twitter Advanced Search and Research
Over 500 million tweets per day are sent out on Twitter. There are dozens of search filters you can use order to wade through billions of tweets quickly. Time to put on your researcher/journo hat and use this vast search engine like a pro.
Top Twitter Tips for Research Impact | Project Maya
How to: Advanced search on Twitter | Twitter Blog
The Superhuman Guide to Twitter Advanced Search: 23 Hidden Ways to Use Advanced Search for Marketing and Sales | Buffer
6 Ways to Use Advanced Twitter Search for Increased Influence | Social Media Examiner
6. Twitter Security
Time to Lock Up Your Twitter Account With Two-Factor | Wired
https://www.wired.com/2016/06/twitter-hack/
5 Tips For Staying Safe on Twitter | Lifewire
How to control your data on Twitter | Me and My Shadow
7. Advanced and Super Advanced Tactics
Here is where we venture above and beyond my pay grade. Scraping Twitter? Building your own ‘Sentiment Engine’? Programmatically following and unfollowing accounts? It’s all in here.
To execute on some of these tactics, you’ll need to put on your data scientist and technical marketer hats.
You’ll be merging the Twitter API with R Studio, running Python scripts and doing text analysis with word2vec and doc2vec algorithms.
The following posts are for the courageous and experienced.
