5 Twitter Tricks To help You get more out Of Tweeting
Credit : Shelley Pringle
It wasn’t that long ago I used to say, “Twitter’s for twits.” At the time, tweeting seemed pointless and foolish.
And then I got an iPad. I loaded it with Flipboard , a fantastic app that lets you read your Twitter feed and other online content in exactly the same way you read a magazine.
That was my Eureka moment when I realized there’s a lot of wonderful content being shared on Twitter.
I was hooked. I now spend far too much time on Twitter, but it’s worth it. I learn a lot from followers and friends about social media, news and trends in communications.
Over the last year I’ve picked up a few Twitter tricks that help me get more out of tweeting. Here are my top 5:
- Find The Best Time To Tweet
My colleague Steve Hughes wrote an interesting post about Social Bro a few weeks ago where he took a look at how many of his Twitter followers are “real.”
If you haven’t heard of it yet, Social Bro manages and analyzes your Twitter community. I haven’t had a chance to investigate everything it has to offer but the one tool I really love is Best Time To Tweet.
The free version analyzes your top 100 followers and suggests the best times to tweet based on when they’re online. Other analytics come into play to help you decide when to tweet, but for my purposes the Social Bro tool is more than adequate.
Here’s what my Best Times to Tweet looks like this week:
And here’s the best part.
Social Bro will configure your Buffer schedule (see next point), allowing you to pick the days on which you tweet, the number of tweets per day and the minimum interval between tweets
5.
Your Turn
If you haven’t heard of it yet, Social Bro manages and analyzes your Twitter community. I haven’t had a chance to investigate everything it has to offer but the one tool I really love is Best Time To Tweet.
The free version analyzes your top 100 followers and suggests the best times to tweet based on when they’re online. Other analytics come into play to help you decide when to tweet, but for my purposes the Social Bro tool is more than adequate.
Here’s what my Best Times to Tweet looks like this week:
And here’s the best part.
Social Bro will configure your Buffer schedule (see next point), allowing you to pick the days on which you tweet, the number of tweets per day and the minimum interval between tweets
- 2. Schedule Your Tweets
Ever wonder how someone can tweet 24/7? Want to know their secret? They’re scheduling their tweets.
It’s not a bad thing to do as long as you can change the schedule if something big happens. You don’t want to be tweeting about Facebook or sharing a funny video if an important public figure has just been attacked.
There are a number of applications that let you schedule your tweets, including Hootsuite , TweetDeck and Buffer .
Buffer has a handy extension for Firefox that allows you to add tweets to your Buffer from any website. You can also email links to your Buffer when reading an interesting article on your tablet.
My click-through-rate has definitely increased since I started using Buffer and Best Time to Tweet, although it hasn’t impacted re-tweets… yet.
3. Choose Your Twitter Check-in Times
It’s not hard to get sucked into the Twitter vortex. To avoid wasting time, discipline yourself by checking your Twitter feed only at certain times of the day. I look first thing in the morning while I’m eating my muesli, after lunch and at the end of the day before I leave my office.
4. Join A Twitter Chat
Twitter chats are opportunities to ‘talk’ with like-minded professionals by sharing information and opinions around specific topics. There are hundreds of Twitter chats happening throughout the week on every topic under the social media sun, including healthcare, blogging, PR, journalism and LinkedIn.
A chat schedule was originally inspired by a blog post by Meryl Evans and from there a Google doc was created. Check the schedule to find a Twitter chat that will help you learn new things and meet some new folks to follow.
5. All Work, No plau Makes For Dull Twitter Feed
All Work, No plau Makes For Dull Twitter Feed
Tweeting the same stuff day in and day out can get pretty boring for you and your followers.
Plan your tweets by mixing it up a bit using a combination of the following:
- Interesting content that’s relevant to your business
- A funny video from YouTube, especially appropriate at the end of the day or on a Friday afternoon
- A humorous joke or comment. And if you’re not funny, follow someone who is and occasionally retweet them (like @BorowitzReport)
- Snap a photo with your smart phone and share it
- Ask a question, either business or personal, depending on who you’re representing on Twitter
What tricks do you use to get more out of Twitter? Have you found ways to reduce the amount of time you spend planning your tweets and reading your feed?
