At Viraltag, we keep on experimenting with our content marketing efforts to make them even better. During this time, we were lucky to stumble upon some nice hacks. We wanted to share those hacks with you, hoping they would help you bloggers and marketers as well. So, we are starting a blog series ‘Grow your biz with Viraltag’.

 

Our first post of this series is rather a short one on how we massively increased Twitter shares by using Twitter’s Pinned tweet feature with an image attached to it.

What is Pinned Tweet

You basically pin one of your tweets to the top of your user profile. Anyone visiting your Twitter profile page will see this tweet at the top. You can do that to any of your tweets, and not only the recent one. Even if you tweet afterwards, your pinned tweet will always stay on top.

Like this:

Why use Pinned Tweet

Let the results speak for themselves. Here are some of our recently Pinned tweets, and see how many Retweets & Favorites they have received. We tend to pin tweets related to our latest blog posts and that has worked quite well for us. Also note that we attached a relevant visual for each post along with the pinned tweet.

 

New post: 5 Social Media Marketing Resolutions to win in 2015: http://t.co/QCA9G5hG0U pic.twitter.com/Z5RtvMm0Ym

— Viraltag (@viraltag) December 29, 2014

We tweeted the same post without pinning it to check the results. Here is the tweet:

5 Social Media Marketing Resolutions to Win in 2015 http://t.co/xXdDeNXy0k — Viraltag (@viraltag) December 29, 2014

Here is another one we pinned for a week:

6 social media marketing trends to watch in 2015: http://t.co/XXZVYCIkhB pic.twitter.com/IPpuJ10ZFJ — Viraltag (@viraltag) December 19, 2014

The results when we didn’t pin it. Just 1 retweet and 2 favorites.

5 Social Media Marketing Resolutions to Win in 2015 http://t.co/xXdDeNXy0k

— Viraltag (@viraltag) December 29, 2014

 

Here is the most successful one we pinned for a week:

New post: 15 best social networks for viral marketing in 2015: http://t.co/csoYBeWjbC #2015 #SocialMediaMarketing pic.twitter.com/grEm4jXkH3

— Viraltag (@viraltag) December 12, 2014

And see how it performed when we didn’t pin it:

15 best social networks for viral marekting in 2015 http://t.co/yWPimx7xYl

— Viraltag (@viraltag) December 12, 2014

You must have noticed that when we pinned a particular tweet, we also made it sure to add a picture with it. That gave us a massive boost in shares.

A Pinned tweet with a visual attached to it got almost 10x more shares than the regular tweet.

Other advantages of Pinned Tweet:

1. When you pin your best tweet which has good number of retweets, it puts a good impression to new visitors.

2. By pinning a tweet you also indicate what is really valuable for a visitor at that time. If you blog a lot, your latest blog post has to be your pinned tweet.

2. Even if the visitors don’t retweet the tweet, the chances of them checking out the link from your tweet increases significantly.

3. New visitors tend to read only first couple of tweets. You don’t want your visitors to read some random tweet and miss the best ones. By pinning a tweet you are making sure you are showing your best content.

How to Pin a Tweet:

Pinning a tweet is breeze. Once you tweet, look for a three dots at the bottom of the tweet. Click on it to open a dropdown, which will have an option ‘Pin it to your profile page’ like this:

Select that and done. The tweet will appear at the top. To unpin a tweet, follow the same process and click on ‘Unpin from profile page’

Recipe for a good pinned tweet:

1. Have a catchy tweet that will interest your targeted audience.

2. Attach a really cool and original visual with your tweet. If you don’t know how to create stunning visuals, read this post: 33 apps for creating stunning visual content.

3. Do not forget to include the link of the blog/website where you want to take your visitors.

4. Do not use all of the 140 characters. Some of the users prefer commenting. Leaving some characters for them, will make it easy for them to comment.

5.  We pin one tweet for a week as we have new blog post coming every week. It might work for you as well. In case you have some other intentions, like taking them on your website where you sell something, you can pin it for long time as well. Try out different durations and see what works for you.

Crucial wins from Pinned Tweet

1. Pinned tweet makes tremendous impact on our blog traffic. If you pin a great content, it will result in more retweets. More retweets increase the chances of your content getting noticed by curators and weekly roundup sites. Even one good mention can drive hundreds of new visitors directly to your blog or website.

2. After we started pinning our latest tweets on content, Twitter has been among the top 5 sources of traffic. Before that, it was hovering at 7th or 8th spot.

3. We have also observed a nice jump in the rate at which we add new followers. If you get more retweets, you are bound to reach new audience out of which some will definitely follow.

So, its no brainer to try this out for your own. Let us know when your results are out. We will love to feature your success on our blog under ‘Grow your biz with Viraltag’.

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