Tools and Best Practices to Manage an X (Twitter) Account
With over half a million monthly active users, X (formerly Twitter) is a crucial tool for brands looking to connect with their target audience. Brands and businesses can thrive on X by reporting on live news and updates, inserting their brand into trending topics, and raising brand awareness.
While the platform has seen major changes and rebranding over the last few years, adding this platform to your channel list can not only increase visibility but also drive conversions, especially when leveraging X advertising.
This article will walk through five comprehensive management tools, and ten best practices to carry out your X strategy effectively.
5 Tools to Manage an X (Twitter) Account
Leveraging a social media management tool streamlines content planning, analytics, engagement, and profile growth. These tools can speed up your processes, automate tasks, and give you deeper insights into which content performs best on your page.
Metricool
Metricool is an extensive social media management tool, compatible with X and other major social media platforms. This tool allows you to effectively manage and monitor all active channels in a single dashboard, centralizing accounts, assets, analytics, and inboxes.
Key Features:
- Schedule and automate posts with optimized timing suggestions, based on your specific audience activity.
- Detailed analytics, including engagement, follower growth, and post performance.
- Competitor analysis metrics to benchmark your brand’s presence.
- Centralized inbox management to review and reply to private messages in a single space.
- Multi-account management for agencies or businesses with several profiles.
With other features like an AI text generator, automated monthly reporting, link in bio tools, Canva and Google Drive integrations, and social media advertising, Metricool is a one-stop shop for social media managers and brands looking to unify social media management tools and assets.
Metricool is also an affordable tool, with paid plans starting at $18/month. While Metricool has a completely free platform, X has changed its API, pushing Metricool to include X features into the premium plans. Learn more about X with Metricool here:
X Pro (Formerly TweetDeck)
Formerly known as TweetDeck, X Pro is a premium feature allowing subscribers to schedule posts, monitor multiple accounts, engage with communities, and organize X management.
Key Features:
- Real-time monitoring of multiple timelines, lists, and hashtags.
- Customizable dashboard for focused account management.
- Post composer for quick scheduling and posting of threads with images, videos, GIFs, polls, and emojis.
- Decks to organize columns into groups for clean workspaces.
As mentioned above, this is a paid service for X users, starting at $3/month. This program is not available on mobile devices and requires a viewport resolution of more than 500px in width and 500px in height.
Buffer
Buffer is another centralized social media management platform with a connection to 11 channels. The platform offers a free plan as well as two premium plans.
Key Features:
- Post scheduling and queue management for consistent content delivery.
- Built-in analytics to identify high-performing content.
- Engage with followers directly via the platform.
While offering threaded posts and scheduling, the free plan does limit the number of users and channels available. It’s also important to note that Buffer charges per the number of channels.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite has been around since 2008, one of the most popular and well-established social media management platforms. Hootsuite excels in providing an all-in-one dashboard.
Key Features:
- Schedule posts across multiple platforms, including X.
- Track brand mentions and hashtags for real-time engagement.
- In-depth analytics to monitor campaign success.
- Collaborative tools for teams managing large accounts.
For teams looking to keep costs low, they should review Hootsuite’s pricing models. The platform discontinued its free plan, with the first “Standard” plan starting at $99/month per user. This can become extremely expensive for teams looking to collaborate with social media planning.
SproutSocial
Sprout Social is ideal for larger businesses or brands looking for advanced features and analytics.
Key Features:
- AI-powered analytics and reporting for strategy optimization.
- Social listening tools to monitor industry trends and audience sentiment.
- Centralized inbox for managing conversations and queries.
- Team collaboration features.
As with Hootsuite, SproutSocial doesn’t offer a free platform, with the “Standard” plan starting at $199/month per seat.
10 Best Practices for Managing an X (Twitter) Account
Regardless of whether you’re managing one or ten X accounts, these best practices will set you and your team up for success and a pristine organization system.
1. Define Clear Objectives
Set measurable goals such as increasing followers, boosting engagement, or driving website traffic. Tie your strategy to these objectives. We recommend using the SMART goal framework to set realistic, measurable goals. These allow brands and businesses to frequently monitor and benchmark results on a monthly or quarterly basis.
2. Know Your Audience
Understand your audience’s preferences, demographics, and activity patterns. This allows you to tailor messaging, posting times, and CTAs depending on your key audience’s behaviors and interests.
While analyzing your audience demographics, monitor top-performing posts to understand what content best resonates with your audience. Creating buyer personas can distinguish different client profiles, and actualize who your audience is on a human level.
3. Create a Content Calendar
Plan and schedule your content in advance to maintain consistency. A content calendar organizes your posts and ensures diversification. Metricool’s drag-and-drop planner is intuitive and allows you to schedule and auto-publish to multiple platforms simultaneously.
Furthermore, schedule content when users are more active with Metricool’s Best Times feature to maximize engagement and exposure.
Source: Metricool
4. Engage Actively
Reply to mentions, comments, and direct messages promptly. Engaging with your audience fosters trust and loyalty. This is how social media can turn into a customer service experience, increasing brand loyalty and trust. As mentioned above, Metricool’s single inbox tool allows users to centralize DMs and comments, without jumping between platforms and accounts.
Metricool’s inbox feature also includes filters, markers, and notes to communicate with team members of message statuses and key information.
5. Leverage Hashtags and Trends
Use relevant hashtags and participate in trending conversations to expand your reach and visibility. As X thrives on news, trends, and cultural moments, brands can insert their POV and personality to connect with users. Frequently monitor the app’s “Trending Topics” section to grasp large-scale trends and utilize Metricool’s competitor analysis tool to track how industry competitors market for their brand.
6. Optimize Post Timing
Post when your audience is most active. Metricool can analyze your account to suggest the best times for engagement, based on when your followers are online. The ‘Best Times’ feature is key to reaching followers at the right time, helping boost engagement and algorithm prioritization.
You can also analyze your audience activity within the X app to schedule and post content at optimal times. As you fill your content calendar, posting at similar times each week can trigger users, and the algorithm, to watch out for your posts and expect useful content on these times/days.
7. Incorporate Multimedia Content
Use images, videos, and GIFs to make your posts more engaging and visually appealing. Metricool’s planner allows users to schedule content with multimedia files, and automatically publish for you. If you are lacking content assets, Metricool’s stock images and videos provide high-quality and royalty-free content. Also, review Metricool’s GIF gallery to insert timely graphics and GIFs to leverage posts.
Source: Metricool
8. Monitor Analytics and Adjust
Regularly review metrics such as impressions, clicks, and engagement rates. Refine your strategy based on performance data. Metrics are key to understanding which content has achieved the most engagement, to replicate similar strategies.
Metricool’s X analytics include crucial data to optimize content and approaches including:
- Community growth and follower balance
- Posts engagement, impressions, and interactions
- Profile and link clicks
- Type of content published and number of published posts
- List of top-performing posts in period
- Competitor community growth, engagement, and top-performing content
Source: Metricool
9. Experiment with Ads
Consider running paid ad campaigns on X to target specific demographics or boost high-performing content. Exposure to X ads can result in an average incremental lift of 153% post-conversation. While this may not cover your whole X strategy, launching X campaigns can help boost app downloads, product sales, event sign-ups, and more.
Learn more about X advertising here, to see how X ads can leverage your business’ discoverability. Furthermore, follow this guide for a complete overview of all social media advertising:
10. Maintain Brand Voice and Consistency
Ensure all posts align with your brand’s voice, values, and visual identity to build recognition and credibility. When defining your content pillars, keep your brand values and goals in mind to tailor messaging. Brand personality is especially important on X, helping you stand out from competitors and other brands on the app.
By combining the right tools and following these best practices, you can effectively manage your X account to achieve your brand’s goals. Start with a robust platform like Metricool to gain actionable insights and drive results.
