Denver Content Marketing Firm Breaks Down Some Basics To Make Twitter Easier
Twitter is that beast of an animal that some love, some hate, and some simply don’t understand. However, Twitter has a huge place in the world of social media and a huge place in building authority and influence for your brand. As someone who has been using Twitter for many, many years, I’m here to give you my personal opinions on what I love and what I hate about Twitter and what I do to make Twitter SIMPLE!
What I Love About Twitter:
- You can meet and follow NEW people that you don’t know already. You can find people and brands based on interests by searching specific hashtags or keywords.
- I LOVE Twitter for live events. When I’m at conferences or big events, I’ll tweet out some of my “notes” or key thoughts that I’ll want to remember. These tweets will also show up for others who are tweeting about the same hashtag for the event. I find a ton of quality people to follow based on following the tweets of others from these live events.
- I love that I can continue the conversation with people on Twitter. For example, I find a lot of new people by interacting on Blabs and Periscope live streams. However, the conversation can keep going even after that initial one via the chat features in the live stream videos. I love that these programs sync so well with Twitter!
What I HATE about Twitter:
- My biggest pet peeve is people who follow the strategy of following people only to unfollow them if they don’t follow back. I see this a lot and it makes the Twitter follower number feel very hollow to me. I’d rather see a lower number of followers, but bigger numbers of retweets, comments, or mentions.
- It’s overwhelming. It’s true; Twitter has just too much information. It’s like trying to drink out of a fire hose.
- Twitter isn’t as visual. I like seeing graphics and images. I just do. The Twitter interface, while getting better than it was a few years ago, is just not as visually based as other social media platforms.
Here’s How I Make Twitter Work For Me:
- Create lists. Lists help me manage the people I follow and tailor the content I see. For example, I have a Twitter list for social media experts and so when I want to see what people are chatting about relating to social media, I look at that list alone. In fact, I rarely look at my general Twitter feed at all anymore. It’s just too much.
- Go mobile. I like to make use of miscellaneous moments in the day while I’m waiting in a long line or at a doctor’s waiting room and the mobile app for Twitter is really easy to use. I’d say at least 85% of my Twitter use is on my phone.
- Recycle content. Because there is so much information out there on Twitter it’s easy to tweet the same thing a few times throughout a week or month. For example, when I tweet about my latest blogs, I will put it out there a few times a week over the next month or two (as long as it’s still timely and relevant) because I know it will hit people who use Twitter at different times of the day or days of the week. I also recycle content by using different hooks to publicize the same article. That way, I get more mileage out of the same article and it might attract different people based on the different hook.
- Give yourself grace. I have to give myself grace to know that I cannot possibly follow every tweet, nor tweet all the time myself. I have found my level of involvement with Twitter that works for my business where it’s at now. And while Twitter is always changing, I know that I can adapt as needed.