Twitter is the perfect platform for building your brand, amplifying your message and establishing the credibility of your certification. Let’s explore best practices and tips for marketing certification programs on Twitter.
Twitter can help you:
● Find new audiences, prospects and partnership opportunities
● Follow developing stories in the testing and certification industry
● Follow your competitors to see how they’re using Twitter to promote their certifications
● Be seen, heard and recognized by your followers and the media as a certification expert.
Why Twitter Matters
Of all the social-media platforms out there, Twitter is one of the easiest for reaching a target audience because it doesn’t have the privacy features of, say, Facebook or LinkedIn. All conversations are visible, (which is an important thing to remember!).
On Twitter, everyone can see what everyone else is saying (tweeting) because it’s not necessary to first be friends like on Facebook or connected like on LinkedIn. Things can go viral quickly on Twitter precisely because of the platform’s visibility and its 400 million users.
Twitter followers are loyal and engaged. Researchers from Hubspot report that simply asking followers to retweet your content, in order to expose it to a much larger audience, results in 55 percent more retweets than if you hadn’t asked.
More than 60 percent of active Twitter users comment on blogs, write monthly reviews and comment on news stories. Daily Twitter users are six times more likely to publish articles online than non-Twitter users.
Getting Noticed
Twitter is a great place to get noticed, and, at the end of the day, we’re all in the attention business.
Twitter allows you to find influencers in your niche and interact with them in full public view. Truth is, some people simply have more influence than others, and, if you can leverage their authority by associating your name with theirs, you can amplify your own story and reach more people in less time with fewer resources.
Twitter is all about immediacy and engagement. When you participate in conversations in your niche, you’ll get noticed. More than 80 percent of all Twitter users access the platform by phone. This convenience, along with the 280-character limit, encourages multiple tweets throughout the day. Such frequency is essential for being relevant on social media.
Twitter Hashtags Demystified
Hashtags bring order to the seeming chaos of Twitter’s 340 million daily tweets.
Here’s how hashtags work. You create a tweet on a specific topic and then just include a hashtag with the tweet, often at the end. So the tweet, Read our new blog article on creative ways to use your certification to get promoted. #ernurse, includes the hashtag #ernurse, which would appear as a clickable link.
When readers click the hashtag link, they’ll be taken to a separate Twitter page with a timeline of tweets (most recent on top) focused on emergency-room nursing.
Hashtags signal to readers that your post is relevant to popular topic shared by a specific audience. The hashtag is searchable on Twitter so others can find the hashtag page, read the posts and participate.
Hashtags always begin with the pound sign (#) and there is no space after the hashtag and the next word.
It’s best to keep your hashtags short and memorable if you’re creating a new hashtag. It’s even better to search Twitter for hashtags for your industry and use them because they’re already established by practitioners and influencers in your field.
Studies show that including hashtags in your tweets increases your odds of getting retweets, which multiplies your exposure and introduces your message to hundreds, possibly thousands, of new Twitter users who may end up following you.
Hashtag Best Practices
● A tweet can contain multiple hashtags. It’s recommended to use no more than two or three because anything more can make the tweet look spammy, as if you’re selling something.
● You can search for existing hashtags for your industry on Twitter and also on the free service www.hashtagify.me.
● Most conferences these days have a hashtag specific for the event. The hashtag page will give you an idea of who’s attending, allowing you to reach out to a prospect or colleague for a quick face-to-face meeting. Hashtags are a powerful back-channel networking feature at live events.
Include the Media in Your Tweets
A great way to become more visible and credible in your niche is to watch for newsworthy trends or events and to then include a notification to the media in your tweet as follows:
You may be surprised at what your certification really says to prospective employers @johnsmith www.myblog.com/certification
In this example, @johnsmith, the Twitter handle of mythical business reporter John Smith, will notify him that he’s been mentioned in your tweet. He gets an article idea and a knowledgeable source (you) who can send him more content ideas in the future. He can click the link www.myblog.com/certification to read your amazing blog post.
