Twitter marketing for cannabis companies and cannabis companies
Twitter continues to be an important channel for cannabis and cannabis-related companies to indirectly market their products and services. In its latest study, the Pew Research Center found that Twitter will be used by more US adults than WhatsApp, TikTok and Reddit in 2021. Here is the breakdown by percentage of US adult users:
- Youtube – 81%
- Facebook – 69%
- Instagram – 40%
- Pinterest – 31%
- LinkedIn – 28%
- Snapchat – 25%
- Twitter – 23%
- Whatsapp – 23%
- Tick tock – 21%
- Reddit – 18%
- Next door – 13%
If the Twitter user demographics reported by Pew Research sound like your target customer, Twitter could be a great place for your brand to stand out.
According to the study by Pew Research, 23% of adults in the US will use Twitter in 2021, with acceptance being higher among men (25%) than women (22%) and among respondents who consider themselves black (29%) and Hispanic American (23)% identified as white (22%).
In addition, U.S. adults between 18 and 29 years of age use Twitter more often (42%) than any other age group (27% of 30 to 49 year olds, 18% of 50 to 64 year olds, and 7% of people 65 years and older ).
Pew Research also found that 46% of US adults who use Twitter access it at least once a day. This makes it an active platform to showcase your brand.
If the Twitter user demographics reported by Pew Research sound like your target customer, Twitter could be a great place for your brand to stand out.
10 Twitter Marketing Tips For Cannabis Companies And Cannabis Companies
Promoting a cannabis business or a cannabis-related business is a major challenge (if not impossible) to use Twitter ads due to Twitter’s advertising policies. However, you can post content and interact with consumers through a Twitter branded profile. It’s very effective for increasing brand awareness, loyalty, and even sales.
With that in mind, here are 10 Twitter cannabis and side business marketing tips that will help you get the best results from your efforts and investments:
1. Publish the original content
Similar to Facebook marketing and Instagram marketing for cannabis licensees, a critical part of successfully using Twitter to increase brand awareness and the type of brand trust that leads to sales is posting original content. These can be text-based tweets or text with pictures or videos. However, statistics show that tweets with pictures and videos perform better than text alone. So plan to include images or videos with every tweet.
Bloom Farms has a great example of the tweet shown below that includes text and a powerful image:
2. Follow the rules of Twitter
When you post content on Twitter, make sure you are following Twitter’s rules. Otherwise, your account may be closed without warning. Note that the Twitter rules state: “You must not use our service for any unlawful purpose or to promote illegal activities.”
Cannabis is federally illegal for Twitter, so you have to be very careful. Do not post any promotional content that sells your product or service. Instead, focus on posting useful information that will support your brand story and create an experience. Your posts may contain news, laws, research, or advocacy information that your target audience is likely to be interested in.
Use a tool like Buzzsumo to find content that is performing well on Twitter and to help you decide what types of posts to post. You can search for keywords and sort the results by the number of Twitter shares to find out which content is most popular in specific time periods.
3. Add links back to your website
When posting original content, include a link to a relevant blog post or page on your website where people can learn more about the topic.
Don’t link to a page that has your product or service for sale, but rather to relevant, useful information on your website. This is the safest way to avoid Twitter trouble.
MedMen does this when it posts new blog posts and tweets the links to those posts on its Twitter profile:
4. Use hashtags
Finally, add hashtags to your tweets to make it easier for users to find your content. Hashtags (like #cannabis) make it easier for users to find posts on topics they’re interested in. So use a tool like Hashtagify to find the best cannabis-related hashtags for your Twitter posts.
You can also reverse engineer your competitors’ hashtag strategies by visiting their Twitter profiles and looking at the hashtags they are using in their tweets.
5. Share content posted by other people
Twitter isn’t just about posting your own content. It’s also about sharing useful and meaningful information that was originally published by other people. Whether it’s a highly relevant message or a blogger’s opinion on decriminalization, if the topic is useful to your audience, aligns with your brand, and is of high quality, share it on Twitter.
A big part of using Twitter to promote a brand is to become a great resource for people on a topic related to your product or service. You can do this by posting a variety of useful content from other sources that will benefit your audience.
BioTrack is a good example. BioTrack is inventory management and point of sale software that regularly publishes content from various reputable sources on regulations and compliance issues. BioTrack shared important news about cannabis licensing in Missouri in the following tweet:
6. Be on time
Look for ways to post timely content that is important to your audience on your Twitter profile. For example, every year Twitter publishes an events calendar filled with events that can be used to create content that you can share on Twitter. You can follow the link to download the 2021 Twitter Marketing Calendar.
For many cannabis and cannabis-related companies, the annual Health Awareness Days provide inspiration for timely tweets that are highly relevant and meaningful to their audience. You can follow the link to view Healthline’s 2021 Health Awareness Calendar and use it to post educational and motivational tweets.
Below is a great example from Evergreen Organix of using a current event to create a tweet indirectly promoting the brand:
7. Engage with your followers
To get in touch with your Twitter followers, you need to retweet their content, reply to them when they mention you on Twitter posts, like their content, send them direct messages when necessary, and @mention them on your own posts.
To be successful on Twitter, you need to build a following of people who pay attention to what you tweet, share it with their own audience, and develop trust in your brand, which leads to more sales, word of mouth, and brand loyalty. You can’t do that while working in a silo. So go out there and be social.
8. Find new people to connect with
Don’t wait for people to find you on Twitter. You need to invest time in finding people who are likely to be interested in your products and services and following their Twitter profiles. If you post great content that is relevant to them, it may follow you back and then you can really start digging into it. Hopefully they will like your posts and share your content with their own audience, building your brand and following even more.
First, find and follow people and profiles that match your target audience, business partners, industry experts, online influencers, mainstream media, and cannabis media. Get creative too and find influential Twitter profiles for people and companies related to the cannabis industry. For example, look for health and wellness bloggers who may also advocate cannabis.
9. Reach strategically
Who are the most important online influencers whose target group fits your target group perfectly? Which journalists and bloggers write about topics that affect your company? When you find these key people, reach out to them strategically.
Follow them on Twitter and like their content. Retweet and reply to their posts to comment on the content they posted. You may be able to start a conversation.
It’s also a good idea to share your content directly. So go to their blogs or news articles and tweet any relevant content. Of course, add an @mention to your tweet that not only allows for mapping but also gets you on the radar screens.
Over time, you can send a direct message to anyone and introduce yourself. Make a pitch or suggest a collaboration. It can’t hurt to ask, and if they recognize you, there’s a better chance they’ll say yes.
10. Plan ahead
Earlier this year, Twitter released its tips for 2021, which included the following recommendations for improving your future marketing results:
- Update your Twitter profile
- Make a schedule
- Focus on your buyer personalities
- Interact with your audience to learn more about them
- Measure your success
- Shorten your response times
- Run digital events
All of these suggestions will help ensure your Twitter marketing investments get higher returns in 2021. The first step, however, is to create a Twitter marketing plan. Fortunately, you don’t have to start from scratch when creating this plan as Twitter has released a free Twitter planner for 2021 that will save you a lot of time and not just keep you organized and updated.
Essential Twitter Marketing Insights for Cannabis Companies and Cannabis Companies
Like other forms of social media marketing, Twitter marketing for cannabis companies and cannabis companies is challenging, but not impossible. The key to success is using Twitter to indirectly promote your products and services by focusing on educating consumers, increasing brand awareness, building brand trust, and promoting word-of-mouth marketing focus that turns into sales.
Develop your plan, always follow the rules and post responsibly so that your Twitter account is not closed without notice or recourse.
Originally published 5/8/19. Updated on 04/23/21.
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