Twitter is home to over 305 million active users, and you should take that for everything it’s worth. You’ll never be able to reach everyone, but with a user base as staggeringly large as Twitter’s, you’ll certainly be able to reach more than enough people to do whatever it is you’re trying to do. Twitter comes with tools to help you run a successful campaign, and that removes much of the guesswork. All you need to do is understand what these tools do, and determine how to most efficiently use them for your desired end.

Starting your Twitter campaign – the essentials

Before you start planning your Twitter campaign, decide what are your critical goals on Twitter. Twitter’s Ads feature allows to choose from several different objectives like website clicks, conversions, engagement, Twitter leads, followers or video views. Pick your goals carefully and identify your target audience. You can’t take another step without knowing who it is that you want to convert.

Here’s a case study to help you understand how Twitter campaigns look like in real life. Following their transition to Fair Trade produce, Ben and Jerry’s launched a Twitter campaign to make the most from this new awareness. The brand created a simple tool which allowed customers to send tweets directly from their website – if they didn’t use up all 140 characters, Ben and Jerry’s would add their own short message about Fair Trade produce.

Turning their campaign into a donation action, Ben and Jerry’s managed to acquire over 500,000 characters from Twitter Users, helping the brand to effectively spread the #FairTweets message around the web – all thanks to the brand’s followers.

Carefully Consider the Kind of Campaign You’ll Need

When you’re beginning your campaign, Twitter will give you a list of preset options. You can start a campaign for followers, website clicks, website conversions, Tweet engagements, App installs, or leads. You also have the option to launch a custom campaign, but that won’t be necessary in most cases. The basic tools cover the most prevalent ways to draw people in, and you won’t have to worry about convoluting your plan if you stick to the basics.

If you aren’t already blessed with a large crowd of followers, you may want to run two campaigns consecutively. You should run a campaign solely to grow your number of followers to increase the success rate of whatever you decide to do afterwards. There’s no sense in preaching if you have no pulpit. Once you’re happy with the amount of followers you have, move on to a more specific campaign.

Twitter’s list of presets is very direct, and easy to work with. When you run a campaign for clicks, conversions, apps, or leads, Twitter presents you with the opportunity to design a card. These cards are entirely customizable images that will run with your tweets. This will help more people find your card. Take advantage of your card to show off killer images, leaving the burden of text mostly to the accompanying tweet. Don’t forget to use the right hashtags.

Understand Twitter’s Targeting System

There are several ways to target Twitter users, and using a combination of all of them will never hurt. Start by familiarizing yourself with trending hashtags. When you know what people are talking about and searching for, it’s much easier to work your campaign into the current global conversation.

You can narrow down these hot topics even further when you sort them by interest. If you can’t provide anything meaningful to the general crowd, you may be able to get involved with people whose interests are in line with your campaign by researching the goings-on in Twitter’s 350 preset interest categories.

Twitter will also give you the option to work within targeted audiences if you already have a thorough understanding of the demographic you’re trying to appeal to. With different labels, you can be as specific or as general as you wish.

Observe, Optimize, and Continue

With Twitter’s thorough tracking system, you’ll be able to easily view and interpret every relevant metric you can imagine. Knowing what’s going on will allow you to make changes that will maximize the results of your campaign. If your engagement is low, it’s time to try something else. You don’t have to waste time hoping you got things right on the first go around. You can modify your campaign while it’s still in progress to drive your numbers up higher.

Take a close look at your metrics every month. You’ll be able to separate your productive Tweets from the ones that didn’t work so well, and develop a plan based around the positive results you’re getting. A campaign is an evolving process – you can’t set it and forget it. If you want to see meaningful results, you’ll have to be willing to make small changes along the way.

About Author:

Mary Frenson is a Marketing Assistant at Checkdirector.co.uk, a new source of information on UK companies. Mary is always happy to share her marketing ideas and thoughts on business issues. In her free time, she enjoys handicrafts.