Before you go deep into the Twitterverse, make the most of your time, energy and money by developing a strong content strategy that will engage your community and that supports your business objectives.
In its social media strategy guide, HootSuite offers a list of things that your strategy should include: 1) what types of content you intend to post, 2) how often you will post, 3) target audience for each type of post, 4) who will create the content and 5) how you will promote the content. Since we’re focusing on Twitter, each of these will play out a little differently in the context of our 5 steps to Twitter content stardom.
1. Mark the calendar.
Your Twitter calendar is a schedule of what will be tweeted when and who will tweet it. This calendar can be as simple as an excel doc or a whiteboard. Or try using Google docs so that people can add what they’ll be posting for everyone else to refer to, get ideas from and to keep from being too redundant. Consider assigning days or types of content to specific people on your staff so that you know who will create what content ahead of time.
How often should you post? Firstly, don’t tweet just to tweet. You want to add value to your followers with every tweet. At the same time, remember that the half-life of a tweet is about 30 minutes. Do you need to create a new tweet every 30 minutes? Absolutely not. But you want to have a presence. And you can do that by creating new content, repurposing old content, relevant retweeting, and engaging in conversations on Twitter with not only people with influence in your industry but also your customers.
A general guideline for beginner Twitter users is 3 to 5 tweets per day. Most importantly, you’ll want to test what feels right for you and your business. You can also look to your competitors to see how often they’re tweeting. Once you find the right amount, consider using tools like Sprinklr, KaPost, Sprout Social, HootSuite or Buffer to schedule and manage your tweets.
2. Put on your creating cap.
Our rule of thumb is to tweet only what we ourselves would find useful and interesting. If we’d scroll right by it, it’s a no-tweet. Create another shared document that your staff can share ideas to. Once you have a few ideas, ask yourself, “Would our customers find this useful and interesting?” Then, be sure to use hashtags so that users can find your content.
The Twitter blog released a great video last month with suggestions for the different kinds of tweets that you can put on your Twitter content calendar. Here are a few ideas from their video with a day-by-day breakdown:
Monday: Twitter-only promotions
Tuesday: Behind-the-scenes tours of your business or information about new products and services
Wednesday: Informative or surprising tweets
Thursday: Retweet positive customer reviews or industry-related news that your followers might find interesting
Friday: Let customers see what your business is really like with photos or videos of employees at work or play. (The Twitter blog also notes that tweets with media get double the engagement of text-only tweets.)
3. Channel your inner curator.
Curating great content is equally important to creating great content. You can curate content from all over the web as well as other tweets to add value to your Twitter feed. And the same rules apply to this content: make it interesting and useful.
Consider using Twitter favorites to mark content on Twitter that you want to share with your followers. For additional content, check out tools like Prismatic, which can help you discover new blogs in your industry that aren’t on your radar, and RSS readers like Feedly to stay on top of the newest articles and posts.
Follow basic Twitter etiquette by mentioning the author in your tweets. Most share buttons only mention the post title along with the link. You’ll do yourself a favor in the long run by taking the time to add the author’s name.
4. Talk amongst yourselves.
Twitter strategy is about the conversations going on and being part of those conversations. These conversations are just like the face-to-face conversations that you have with customers every day. Get into the habit of engaging with followers on a consistent basis.
A recent blog post at Social Media Examiner suggests you try on the “big-brand mindset” using three approaches:
- Find the people talking about your industry, i.e. customers or potential customers.
- Create content that people want to talk about.
- Use Twitter to listen to customers.
The second bullet point we’ve already covered above, but the other two are key tasks toward not only joining the right conversations but also promoting your content with the right people. Plus, as you’re chatting with customers and colleagues on Twitter, you’ll get a better sense of who your audience is on the platform, which will allow you to better tailor your content to them. Listen to them and watch their activity to find out what kinds of content they talk about most.
Just as you’ll want to get into the habit of mentioning authors in your curated content tweets, you’ll want to thank everyone who mentions, shares or retweets your tweets. A great tool for doing this is Tweetbot, a handy iPhone app that notifies you whenever someone retweets you or mentions you so that you can send a quick note of thanks.
5. Measure. Tweak. Repeat.
When it comes to tracking engagement on Twitter, be sure you have clear goals to guide what you’re looking for and what you’ll do with the data once you find it. For example, if you’re trying to build engagement, measure the impact of your conversations by tracking monthly followers, retweets and mentions. If your goal is to generate traffic to your website, you’ll want to track unique visitors from Twitter. Once you know what you’re looking for and why, you can stay informed about what’s working and what’s not and make changes as you go.
With these 5 straightforward steps, you’ll be in an excellent position to grow your reach online and create real impact. With patience, flexibility and good listening skills, you’ll engage your community in a way that supports your business objectives and helps build your brand. So, onward, Twitterers! Create, curate, conversate!
Contact Filament to find out more about creating a Twitter content strategy, crafting to right message for your audience, or building an overall social media strategy. We’re here to help you get found online and join the conversation.
