This year it was reported that over 10% of Americans use Twitter daily. With those odds, each day that your brand is not on Twitter is a missed opportunity to reach thousands of potential customers.
So, what is the best way to access that unrealized market? Influencer marketing.
What Is a Twitter Influencer?
A Twitter Influencer is any account that has authority in a given field or niche and a significant presence on the platform. There is a space for everyone on Twitter, meaning the variety of Twitter influencers is endless.
What Is Twitter Influencer Marketing?
Twitter influencer marketing is partnering with a Twitter account that engages in your area of interest, and collaborating with them to create brand-sponsored tweets. These can come in a variety of formats, but often include a brand mention and product or service review. Here are a few examples:
Why Your Brand Needs Twitter Influencers
Twitter influencers can provide an authentic endorsement of your brand. Their word is trusted and can directly reach your target audience. If you are a newer company, it is a great platform for quickly and cost-effectively increasing brand awareness. Or perhaps your company has just launched a new product or service. Twitter influencers can be leveraged to provide early reviews to your potential customers.
No matter what stage your brand is in, here are the top benefits of partnering with Twitter influencers:
Earn Trustworthy Reviews
Twitter reported that nearly half of all users rely on recommendations from influencers on their platform before making a purchase. If a Twitter partner genuinely enjoys your brand, their endorsement will be received positively by their audience. Earning a good review by a trusted thought leader in your space is a great way to gain industry authority.
Increase Brand Awareness
A sponsored tweet by your Twitter partner can expose your brand to an entirely new audience. With that said, Twitter is a fast-paced platform, so the effectiveness of sponsored tweets can be fleeting. For that reason, the CPM for most Twitter ad integrations can be significantly cheaper than other social media platforms—making Twitter a great space for inexpensive brand awareness campaigns.
Drive Traffic to Your Site
This goes hand-in-hand with brand awareness. Sponsored tweets can lead to both direct and organic traffic. Google’s algorithm recognizes Twitter activity as “social signals” that can increase your site’s Domain Authority and subsequent search ranking.
Finding Twitter Influencers
Your Twitter influencer marketing campaign doesn’t need to start by paying Kim Kardashian to tweet about your brand’s latest promotion. In fact, it shouldn’t.
The best Twitter influencers are usually those with thousands of followers (often described as “micro-influencers”) who have knowledge and authority in a specific niche and an engaged following. So how do you find them?
Look For Influencers Within Your Industry
Your perfect Twitter influencer might be already following your brand’s account. Comb through your followers and check to see if there are any with a significant audience, then reach out to see if they are interested in a partnership. If an influencer is already engaged with your brand, their sponsored tweets will be a sincere endorsement.
Next, identify common hashtags in your industry. Use Twitter’s Explore page to search for users who are tweeting with those hashtags and see if there are any whom you would like to partner with.
Lastly, use Google to search for industry blogs or publications and identify thought leaders in those spaces. Successful bloggers will often promote their content on Twitter. This is a great way to identify an influencer’s voice and determine if it aligns with your brand.
Use a Tool to Find the Right Influencers
Although follower count is an important metric, the success of a Twitter influencer is especially dependent on their engagement rate. If you want to run a large influencer campaign, it is recommended to invest in a tool that can provide the engagement rates of potential partners.
Here are a few options:
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo allows you to search using filters to identify Influencers in your desired industry, size, and geographic market. Alternatively, you can search BuzzSumo’s content database for relevant topics to find the authors of top-shared content. For both search strategies, you can rank the results by engagement.
Price: BuzzSumo offers 10 free searches per month. Their starting price for unlimited searches is $99/month.
Awario
Awario is a social listening tool. You can use the tool to monitor your brand and industry to receive a list of your brand advocates and industry influencers. It is beneficial to identify who is currently talking about your brand, and where it happens.
Price: Awario starts at $39/month.
Upfluence
Upfluence is a comprehensive influencer marketing tool that allows you to find and contact over 3 million influencers, track their content, and manage your campaign’s performance.
Price: Price is provided upon contacting their Support team, but expect to pay several hundred dollars per month.
Build a Relationship With Potential Partners
It is important to create an initial relationship with a Twitter influencer before asking if they are interested in a paid partnership. This can be done by engaging with their content and sharing it on your brand’s page. It shows your potential partner that you are familiar with their brand, and value their authority in your industry space. Once this preliminary contact is initiated, you may reach out to them via email or Twitter DM to discuss a sponsorship. When the partnership has been agreed upon, it is essential that you provide the influencer with your product or service for free so that they can share an authentic review.
Tips for Running a Twitter Influencer Campaign
Here are key tips for running a successful Twitter campaign:
- Encourage influencers to tweet in their own voice
- Provide your partner with visual assets to use in each tweet
- Offer a special promotion in sponsored tweets
- Create a unique landing page or promo code for each influencer
- Monitor engagement of sponsored tweets
- Track conversions from the influencer’s landing page or promo code
Because Twitter is a fast-paced and dynamic platform, it is important that sponsored tweets are engaging and include a call-to-action that your influencer’s audience can’t refuse. Approve sponsored tweets before they go live, but encourage influencers to use their creative liberty and tweet in their own voice.
A unique landing page or promo code should be created for each influencer so that they can offer their viewers an extended free trial or special discount. In doing so, their audience will feel like they are getting an exclusive offer by trusting the influencer’s genuine endorsement. It also allows you to track the conversions that your brand partner generates via their sponsored tweets. Keep in mind that additional metrics like page traffic are more easily monitored via individualized landing pages versus promo codes.
The Wrap Up
When managed effectively, a Twitter influencer marketing campaign is an inexpensive strategy to earn customers’ trust and increase your brand awareness. If an industry thought leader genuinely enjoys your product, their endorsement will be authentic and trusted by their audience.
