Easy Ways You Can Achieve Twitter Success
Is Twitter primed for a renaissance? Recent changes to how accounts can share tweets on Twitter might change your strategy a bit, but from a positive perspective, it could help your content stand out.
Update: Twitter is now called X.
From The Verge, “Twitter is announcing major limits on how users and apps can automate tweets, to combat spam and political propaganda bots. Developers are now banned from using any system that simultaneously posts “identical or substantially similar” tweets from multiple accounts at once, or makes actions like liking, retweeting, and following across multiple accounts at once.”
Now you can't automate tweets across accounts [good!], but you also can't repeat tweets from the same account. I used to add content to Sprout Social and schedule it for a few tweets over an extended period. This was allowed under the old rules of not repeating the same content within 24 hours.
I'm going to advocate sharing better content in an optimized manner. Take advantage of these opportunities to increase your Twitter success:
Create a workable schedule
Now that you'll be creating unique content for each tweet make sure that you create a plan that you can reasonably fill each week. It was easy to have more content scheduled when you could repeat your content, but you can use the same principle to create new content each week.
SmarterQueue allows you to create categories for content topics. For example, you could add two tweets for #SaturdayMorning and then can add tweets to this schedule and two will post per week.
They're also working out a way to repeat tweets by retweeting your old tweets which is part of Twitter's new policy.
Schedule time to be live
It's always important to have a few times to check your tweets and replies live on Twitter. No one wants to follow accounts that all automated content, right?
Respond to replies, tweet your friends and colleagues, and say hello to new followers.
Follow the trending topics
When you're live on Twitter, check the daily trends to see if there's something that you'd like to be a part of. It's a great way to get more interactions with your tweets.
Make sure that you're on topic and know what the hashtag means to avoid being spammy or insensitive to the hashtag conversation.
Add GIFs to your tweets
I love GIFs so much! You can add them directly to Twitter or schedule them in SmarterQueue.
It's a fun way to respond to a comment or add some humor to your text.
Ask questions to connect
Josh Hager is a food blogger that creates terrific content on Twitter and uses hashtags and questions to reach his audience. And they love it!
Think of ways that you can connect by asking interesting questions. And, of course, respond when people tweet their answers. People are looking for conversations.
Choose a solid social profile photo
Your photo, or avatar, is another crucial part of your Twitter personal brand. A tiny picture is in the top left-hand corner of every tweet that you send, so people see the tweet is from you.
Your face provides the most data about what kind of person you are. Thus your avatar shouldn’t show your family, friends, dog, or car, because there isn’t room. This also means you should not use a logo or graphic design unless the avatar is for an organization.
Here are three additional avatar tips from The Art of Social Media:
Go asymmetrical. Symmetry makes a picture less appealing, so don’t stick your face precisely in the middle. Divide an image into thirds and place your eyes near one of the vertical lines.
Face the light. The source of light should come from in front of you. If the light comes from behind you, your face will probably be underexposed unless you force a flash on your camera or use a photo editor.
Think big. When people scan posts and comments, they see your avatar at a postage-stamp size. When they click on it, however, they should see a big, crisp photo, so upload a picture that is at least 600 pixels wide.
Tell your story
No, I don't mean overshare the details of your personal life. Your words create your story so consider what you're tweeting and check your past content to see if it represents what you want people to learn about you and your ideas.
To keep your brand tight, you want to come up with two or three main topics for your brand content. I call these the three seeds of your brand. Your blog or website may already have one theme that is your main brand focus so of course, this will be one of the seeds.
Focusing on building a niche with tightly curated content on these topics will help create a substantial flow of material on your Twitter stream. My three seeds are social media, author, and marketing. These are the main things that I share content about so people know that they can find these things on my Twitter profile.
Make a list of your primary focus with three seeds or go super-niched with one main focus and you’ll build a robust Twitter following that will love your content.
I hope you'll look at your Twitter feed and consider a few of these ideas to help boost your tweets and create a more engaging experience for people that follow you.
See you on Twitter!
