Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, WhatsApp, YouTube, Snapchat, Pinterest — they’re all powerful tools for marketing yourself and/or your business online, and you might be tempted to pursue them all to connect with, how to share valuable content and what time is the best time to post. Twitter is a great platform for establishing yourself, growing an audience and making important connections. If you’re creating a profile and building influence and thought leadership, keep up with Twitter. This blog (Part 3) emphasizes on Twitter and we will also tell you which tools are very helpful.
Available tools supporting you scheduling your Twitter posts and Presence
When it comes to marketing (yourself), building blog traffic and generating leads Twitter is one of the most underestimated platforms.
Keep your social presence active 24/7 by automatically scheduling hundreds of social media posts at once, across your social accounts. There are hundreds of tools out there that can help you better manage your social media presence. The best benefit of these tools? They help you manage all your social accounts in one place, instead of visiting a half-dozen sites every day. Automation is your friend, since you need to tweet often and spread the tweets out throughout the day, you need a scheduling tool. There are lots of these types of tools, but here are some of the most popular.
HootSuite lets you manage interaction as well as post on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. Buffer works with Twitter and Instagram and many more platforms as well. Its focus is on social media post scheduling. Socialoomph is the third platform we would like to mention. The app originally concentrated on social media solutions for Twitter. But the app expanded its functionality by covering other social media networks as well. The good news: All platforms can save you hours each week managing your Twitter and other social media accounts AND can be used for free (the more professional features are available if you pay ofcourse).
The above mentioned social media management tools allow you to schedule updates. This lets you batch your messages so they post regularly throughout the day. Rather than taking five minutes every hour to post an update, you can just take half an hour in the morning or evening to schedule all of your posts for the day…
Twitter Followers and scheduling your updates
The best social media management tools allow you to schedule updates. This lets you batch your messages so they post regularly throughout the day. Rather than taking five minutes every hour to post an update, you can just take half an hour in the morning or evening to schedule all of your posts for the day. If you’re going to use this, use one of the tools mentioned earlier.
Don’t follow everyone who follows you
When curating content, make sure you mention the Twitter handle of the source in your tweet – this can earn you followers or retweets.
Further: It’s common to feel like you should follow everyone who follows you. On sites like Facebook, following is a two-way street. You accept a friend request and they automatically see your updates as you see theirs. But on sites like Twitter and Instagram (as well as business pages on Facebook) users can follow you without a requirement to follow them back. A lot of people think it’s good manners to follow anyone who follows you, and when you only have a few hundred followers, that can make sense. But as your follower numbers grow from a few hundred to a few thousand or more, trying to keep up with all of those people is impossible, so don’t even try. For example, some people have hundreds of thousands of followers, but they only follow a fraction of those.
Nothing says you’re obligated to follow them back, and most people won’t be offended if you don’t.
Organize your friends and followers
If you just can’t bring yourself not to follow everyone who follows you, then take advantage of the organizational tools out there to filter your feeds. Use lists on Twitter to categorize those you follow so you can make sure you’re getting the updates from those you care about most. With other sites, use the filtering tools built into some of the social media management apps mentioned above to organize everyone. You can create lists of most and least important people, allowing you to prioritize who you want to watch the most.
Stick to a Limit and post enjoyable content
If you post, make sure its enjoyable content. And on Twitter it’s ok to re-tweet or tweet your content again. This is accepted. The lifespan of a tweet is short. If you don’t tweet over and over again, you are not visible on Twitter. It is not ONE tweet that will bring you a ton of traffic. Many tweets with each getting a couple of clicks have the power to sum up to a lot of traffic. Make sure it’s fun to watch or read (see the twitter post below – it’s also the header image of this blog – of .@Pietervanschie). Use text overlay on your header image to point out the most important facts about you and/or your blog. You can use the (free) tool Canva to create an image with text overlay in the right dimension.
Social media can be addictive. It’s easy to get lost spending hours on sites like Instagram and Facebook. You find yourself popping over to check your new notifications and photos every ten minutes, interrupting your other work. The best solution: use a timer. Set it for 15 or 30 minutes, and when the time is up, make yourself log out. Or, if you’re managing multiple accounts, set the timer for 5 or 10 minutes, and then move on to the next…