May 16, 2016
We’ve said it before, but nurturing a social media account is a lot like having a baby. They require constant attention in order to thrive and achieve greatness. Take your eyes off the prize and you run the risk of your precious campaign tugging the tablecloth and causing a social calamity.
This is especially true for social advertising. If you’ve been trusted with the purse strings to deliver a killer social ad campaign, best you wise up on a few handy tips to make the best of that investment.
Cards are King
Twitter Website Cards aren’t new to the platform. They’ve been kicking around for the past two years or so – think of them as promoted tweets on steroids.
In a recent test we did, these proved 1.5x more effective in driving link clicks in a campaign we are running than the average promoted tweet. ‘Nuff said!
The key difference between Twitter website cards and promoted tweets is that Twitter cards are larger and more engaging than standard, promoted tweets. When users click the image in your website card, unlike normal tweets in which that click just opens up a larger version of that image, with a website card, clicking the image will direct people to a URL of your choosing.
This is ideal for directing people to a landing page and, provided you craft your content wisely, driving them to a form fill where you can capture their contact details.
Website cards are comprised of a Card Image, Website URL, Headline and tweet copy. To make the most effective use of Twitter’s website cards, stick to the following guidelines:
- Card Image specs – The ideal image size for a Twitter Website card is 800 x 320 pixels. It goes without saying, but using striking images and including an attention-grabbing line of copy will go a long way to piquing curiosity and driving engagement
- Website URL – For B2B, you’d ideally want to drive to a landing page where there is gated content. This allows you to close the loop and capture people’s contact details for retargeting. Also, including Google tracking in the website URL is a great way of assessing the effectiveness of your website cards in driving leads
- Headline – The KISS principle (keep it simple, stupid) applies here. Your headline is your call to action, as such simple headlines like “Download the whitepaper”, “Click to enter” or “Read more” tend to work best. Your audience knows what they are getting, and are less likely to bounce from the pages you direct them to
- Tweet copy – GOLDEN RULE! Do not include hashtags or handles in your tweet copy. They can divert clicks away from your website and distract from where you are trying to direct your audience
Handle it
Launching a new campaign and supporting it with powerful content is only the first step in your Twitter advertising journey to greatness.
Next thing you need to get a handle on (see what we did there?) is optimisation, starting with (wait for it) @handles.
You will have no doubt selected a list of relevant handles to target when kicking your campaign off. Job done right? Yeah… neglect your handles and you run the risk of the baby clawing at the tablecloth.
Optimisation is the key word here. Once your campaign has been running for enough time to generate a decent amount of data, you can start separating the chaff from the grain.
Note any obvious patterns that emerge in terms of best performing handles and search for similar handles to add to the campaign. Twitter’s similar user lists are your friend. Make good use of them to give your campaign timely boost and track the results.
Crack out the pruning sheers
You will have no doubt setup a list of keywords for targeting at the start of your campaign, neglect these at your peril!
Shortly into your campaign, once you have amassed a decent amount of data, you need to have a look at the keywords that are performing well and those that are shriveling up and prune where necessary.
Again, look for patterns. What can you learn from your top performing keywords? Add similar terms to your keyword targeting and see how they perform.
A handy tip is to also keep your top performing keywords in mind when creating ongoing organic campaign content. Stands to reason it should drive engagement if these keywords are the ones that your audience is engaging the most with.
Rinse and repeat these steps periodically throughout your campaign to keep engagement levels up and ensure your campaign stays fresh and delivers the goods!