X (formerly Twitter) is a powerful tool when combined with the right experiment and analytical techniques to become an integral part of your go-to-market social experimental ground.
What you’ll never have to do again:
- Tweet just because everyone assumes frequency and activity equals effectiveness
- Stare at a blank calendar and agonize over what message you should be sending out, and when
- Speculate and dread response rate to your message because you don’t know what works
Part I. Figuring out what works: experiment your way into epiphany.
The goal is to find the causal relationship between your actions on X and the response from your audience. Like all good science, there must be precise measurement of what you did and what the outcomes are, allowing you to hypothesize about what works and test those hypotheses.
Implement a 7 day experiments, with defined experimental conditions that look like this:
Tweet x times, about topic x. Hold one of the variables constant so you can see the effect more easily.
There are three dimensions that are critical to track:
I. Time: Picking the length of your experiment
Go to “Growth/Decline”
Change the time-dial to “ Last 7 days” to limit the time period. For longer campaigns use the time dial to select the appropriate time period.
II. Effect: Did your actions produce desirable outcomes?
Watch for Green regions for follower growth and Red regions for follower decline
Keep an eye out for the magnitude of the growth/decline!
III. Location: How do the effects varies from one region to another?
Something that works for London, UK may not work for Cairo, Egypt.
This stage presents a great opportunity to look for unexpected connections between seemingly disparate groups of your audience. This is a fun part!
Part II. Key to getting your message across: finding the perfect topic based on your follower geography
Knowing where your audience are located and how they respond to your message, now we can add one more dimension to the equation: Topic of Interest
Your message must be the perfect balance of:
- Achieving your intended goal of being heard (of course);
- Sending your message at the right time while your audience is receptive to the message
Followers are human beings and no one likes to be interrupted with marketing messages – 2 can be achieved by blending your message seamlessly into conversations that people are already having.
It’s not unlike teaching 6 year olds about the adult conversational paradigm: to have a conversation, there must be an appropriate amount of listening and talking.
As a marketer of your message, you must constantly monitor the conversations to find the most opportune time to send out your message.
Go to “Action Report” , which shows you conversation data layered with location data – allowing you to pick a topic to talk about at the best possible time
X campaigns: more science than art with the right analytics
Knowing your followers intimately can change your Tweeting strategy for the better and allow you to reach your target market with a new efficiency and predictability.
Marketing doesn’t have to interruptive and volume/frequency driven. It can be utility-driven, conversational, just like a good chat with a friend.
Redefine your relationship with your audience on X and transform your brand into something your audience will come back to, time and time again.