Twitter is one of the most actively used social media platform in the World. It allows users to share news items, gossip and opinions relevant to events of the day. Messages and tweets can contain videos, text, images and hashtags within a limit of 140 characters.
2 main activities businesses gain influence
- Indegree Influence
Number of followers = Size of the audience
- Retweet Influence
Number of retweets = ability to generate content with pass-along value
So, how do businesses improve their influence?
Let’s look at how these four areas of communication on Twitter and how this can be used to gain influence.
- Message formulation and language,
- Native platform behaviour,
- Reciprocity and
- Persistency
1. Message formulation and language
A message’s formulation is inclined to relate to how it is perceived by the audience. Examples of such communications are the use of
- exclamation marks – indicates strong feelings or high volume
- question marks – engage and interact with consumers
As seen on H&M tweet, H&M tweeted a video with a rhetorical question on their caption. This creates emotions on their followers.
2. Native platform behaviour
It refers to the use of communication tools native such as posting of photos/videos, using hashtags. Using such tools, businesses are able to draw their content with larger audiences. Not only will they catch the attention of their followers, but also to their followers’ followers with the increase number of retweets. Hashtags also make it simpler for users to search for a specific information. Providing help to users to find what they are looking for may also be perceived as maven-like behaviour and related to influence.
As seen on Fenty Beauty’s Twitter, Fenty Beauty advertised their new product by posting a tweet. It contains an image of their product with #profilterconcealer. Tweet has over 1.8K retweets.
3. Reciprocity
Reciprocity is the total number of followers, retweets and likes.
More frequent use of following, retweets and likes = higher level of indegree and retweet influence.
NARS has a relatively huge amount of followers, retweets and likes. This shows that NARS is paying attention to the content posted by their consumers and a form of interacting with them.
4. Persistency
The twitter variables for persistency are the month & year joined and the total number of tweets. The number of followers and retweets grows over time. Higher volume of tweet increases likelihood of more consumers following and sharing the content.
Victoria”s Secret has created their Twitter profile back in 2009. Over the years, they managed to accumulate to 11.2 million followers with their frequent updates on Twitter.
Dorc’s blog 
Thank you for the post! Would like to ask if you feel that other than Twitter, what other platforms would you believe could reach and go viral as well?
LikeLike
Thanks for the comment. I hope my post is informative for you 🙂
Hmm, other than Twitter there are quite a few social media platforms that can go viral as well. For example, a video posted on Facebook can go up to millions and billions of shares and views. This is also one of the reasons companies should be careful of what they post as it is possible to go viral.
LikeLike
Facebook vs twitter which one will you recommend?
LikeLike
Thanks for the comment 🙂 I’m glad you asked so I can share my thoughts too!
When it comes to choosing between Facebook and Twitter, I would recommend Facebook. Facebook has a wider age range where businesses are able to target a wider age group customers. In addition, Facebook has a greater number of active users than Twitter.
However, companies should not only focus on one social media platform to market their product/services 🙂
LikeLike
Interesting sharing on useful ways to gain influence on Twitter.
To me, message formulation and language catches my attention most! Especially based on your example of H&M where the question mark serves to be a way of engaging and interaction with me as a consumer.
In your opinion, what other platforms do you think business can use to gain more influence?
LikeLike
Yes, message formulation and language does engage the audiences in their advertisement!
Besides Twitter, other platforms such as Facebook and Instagram can be a platform for businesses to gain more influence! I’m sure many of us use both the social media platforms on a day to day basis. Users will be able to like and share on the platforms, creating influence 🙂
LikeLike
This may be the first time I actually heard that companies are resorting to Twitter for marketing purposes! Can u name a few companies that does this?
LikeLike
HAHA, I’m glad you have learned something new through my post! 🙂
There are actually many companies using Twitter to market their businesses. One example would be Apple. Apple has millions of followers and uses Twitter to advertise their new products that have been launched recently. With the retweets and favorites by the audience, Apple is able to have a wider audience.
LikeLike