#66: How to Level Up Your Twitter Conversations with Christine Gritmon

In this episode, Christine Gritmon tells you how to raise your Twitter conversations to an even higher level. These strategic tips will give your business the edge it needs to rock your Twitter marketing plan.

Christine talks about amazing, cool ways to communicate and build an engaging Twitter community: fun stuff, like participating in Twitter chats, using GIFs, and live-tweeting at conferences.

Listen in Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Overcast, iHeartRadio and Spotify.

This podcast episode is brought to you by the #TwitterSmarter Twitter chat. Each week, I host this chat and bring together hundreds of people in an active one-hour discussion revolving around Twitter marketing. It’s every Thursday at 1pm ET. Hope to see you there!

My Favorite Quotes

“Twitter is all about conversations. The more you can identify relevant conversations and the people who are having them, the better chance you have to make a good name for yourself.” – Christine GritmonClick To Tweet “Twitter chats are about the connections and being able to have conversations with like-minded people at the same time every week.” – Christine GritmonClick To Tweet “GIFs make a bigger impression than words do sometimes.” – Christine GritmonClick To Tweet

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Transcript

Madalyn Sklar: Hey Christine, Thank you so much for joining the #TwitterSmarter podcast. I am so happy to have you here as my very special guest today. Uh, my question for you is what are your best Twitter tips?

Christine Gritmon: What are my best Twitter tips? Well, Thank you, Madalyn. My first best Twitter tip is of course to follow Madalyn Sklar.

Madalyn Sklar: Awww.

Christine Gritmon: But honestly, Twitter is all about conversations. So the more you can identify relevant conversations and the people who are having them, the better chance you have to really make a good name for yourself.

And the bonus is you will also learn things. So, um, I definitely feel like the people who you follow on Twitter and the conversations you get into with them are the things that really make your Twitter experience and can help you build a relevant following. So then your conversations just get better and better.

Madalyn Sklar: That’s like a simple, easy answer to the question. I love it. And really Twitter can be that simple. Right?

Christine Gritmon: It really can. And, and for me, one of the biggest gateways to that, to finding those people in those conversations, have actually been conferences. And I don’t necessarily mean attending them.

I do attend a lot of conferences, but if you’ve identified relevant conversations and gatherings in your industry, there’s a few different ways that that can really help you out – even if you’re not attending.

One of them is to look at the speaker lists because the people who are speaking at conferences that are relevant to you are probably going to be people whose Twitter presence is relevant to you and the content they put out there on social media, in general.

So I like to follow the speakers for our conference, whether I’m attending or not. And another thing is following the hashtag. The conference hashtag is typically used also by people who are attending the conference, and those are also good people to follow because clearly they share an interest with you and they are sufficiently motivated as to be participating in that conference or at least in that conversation online.

And that’s another good way to use Twitter lists. A lot of times I will create a Twitter list that consists not only of people who are speaking at a conference but also people who have identified themselves as attending and sometimes even people who have just used the hashtag, saying, I can’t go but I’m going to be following it because those people often have things to say as well.

One really good example of this is my friend Dan Willis. He wound up being the top tweeter or at least one of the top tweeters at Social Media Marketing World this past year, and he wasn’t even there.

And the best part is he wasn’t, he wasn’t hashtag hijacking. He wasn’t just hopping into the conversation with the hashtag and posting irrelevant content. He was keeping up on the conversations. He was reading people’s insights that they were tweeting from the conversations – people like myself, like May King Tsang, like Chris Strub.

We were all tweeting our guts out with the things that we were learning live in San Diego. And Dan was hopping on those and actually discussing the things that we were tweeting out about. So he was creating relevant content with the hashtag, and he was seen by a huge audience of people who shared that interest.

And um, don’t be afraid to, to do that, to hop in and to say, “You know what, I don’t have to be sharing an original insight. I can comment on someone else’s original insight.” It’s all about showing that you have a brain, that your thinking.

And um, though, to that end, another thing that I have had great success with doing is when I’m at an event or even listening to a webinar or something of that nature, tweeting out relevant content has been a huge way that I have gotten the attention of people who are also interested in what I’m saying.

And that’s how I discovered them ’cause they comment on my stuff. And then I go look at them and realize that they have something to say too. So it’s a very good way to get noticed, to find other people, and also through following those communities that have built up around these events and conferences it’s also how I found Twitter chats like #TwitterSmarter.

That has really opened up a whole new world to me in terms of conversations, Twitter chats. Should I slow down now. Should I let you get a word in edgewise or should I keep going? (Laugh)

Madalyn Sklar: Oh. I’m loving this. This is awesome. This is great. This is a great discussion for this topic because I think a lot of people don’t realize like why not like participate in a conference – even though I’m not there – by just watching the hashtag. I love how all these interactions led you to discover Twitter chats. So there’s so many avenues that it can take you down.

And I love that you mentioned Dan Willis. He’s one of the regulars on the #TwitterSmarter chat. I’ve known him for quite some time and [inaudible] say, Oh yeah. I love the fact that he had this huge presence at Social Media Marketing World but wasn’t there.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. You know, some people kind of look at that as like, “Oh, I don’t know if I want to do that because I feel like I’m misleading people.” And you’re, you’re misleading people if you make them think you’re there, you know. Don’t lie and say, “Well I’m here” even though you’re not.

But there’s nothing wrong with participating in the conversation. And he was one of the top tweeters during the conference, which was amazing. But people got to know him. He made an impression with people. He walked away with new connections and people that can help him in business.

And that’s what it’s all about, you know, using social media platforms, especially like Twitter, to connect and engage with people. You know, we met on Twitter. And you know, you’re just so awesome, and I love seeing your tweets. And I love how active you are at conferences live-tweeting.

And, uh, I loved that you talked about that as well, and we can definitely, uh, deep dive a little more on this. But you know, when you do that, you’re showing everyone that like, “Hey, I’m here. I’m present, and I want to be a giving person and share when I’m learning with everyone.”

And I, I love reading … You know, you’ll just do tweet after tweet after tweet when somebody is having a presentation, a live presentation. And so many people are learning from you through that and getting to know you. And also it helps for them to see you as an influencer. Don’t you think?

Christine Gritmon: It does. I like to think so. And it also shows, cause there is a certain amount of editing when it comes to live-tweeting. And what I mean by that is you can’t be a stenographer and you know, tweet out every single word someone says.

Sometimes you do need to summarize what they say, and sometimes you just need to choose what is and isn’t worth tweeting. And in recent years I’ve actually been rolling back my life tweeting a little bit. And instead of really trying to capture everything, I’m really trying to capture main points. And I think that it’s very useful to know what is useful.

Madalyn Sklar: Yeah, for sure. So, so you discovered Twitter chats from participating at, was this at conferences you were at or just conferences where you weren’t there, but just connecting with people? Do you remember like when you first heard about chats and where that took you?

Christine Gritmon: For me, it actually started with your chat Madalyn. It started with #TwitterSmarter. I was at Social Media Marketing World in 2017, and I was a baby social media marketer. I had no idea who anyone was. I didn’t know who to follow.

And I just met so many people, and obviously I looked at speakers, but the fact is not all speakers are created equal. I got to know, sort of, who was the person in each … or people in each area. And you were certainly that for Twitter.

And I knew that people who I was following, including yourself, were talking about #TwitterSmarter and participating in #TwitterSmarter. And once I started following all these people, #TwitterSmarter started appearing on my feed regularly.

Um, and a lot of those people also participate in other Twitter chats, which is how I found out about them as well. And a Twitter chat is a really great opportunity. First of all, if you can be more disciplined with your time than I often am, you can make a priority of attending them regularly.

I have them on my calendar. I have at least three Twitter chats on my calendar, and they’re there on my calendar. I don’t not take appointments in order to do a Twitter chat, but (though I would if I were leading one) but I do always have it in my brain that it’s happening.

So that, first of all, I can participate if I’m going to participate. But even if I’m not participating, I like looking back and seeing what the conversation was. They tend to be tremendously educational.

I always learn from Twitter chats, especially #TwitterSmarter. Someone always has an insight that I haven’t thought of yet every single week consistently. And that’s one of the great things about these chats that bring great minds together. These are people who know their stuff. And then I also tend to make relationships through them.

A lot of people who I’ve since met in real life become friends with in real life. In some cases I’ve stayed at their houses in real life I met through Twitter chats because we were there week in, week out and you know, you feel like friends and then you become friends.

Madalyn Sklar: Yeah, that’s definitely one of the benefits of being a regular on the Twitter chat because you become friends with all these people.

Christine Gritmon: It’s really nice to be part of that community. And the best thing of all is at Social Media Marketing World this past year I participated – and actually at Social Media Week Lima, as well – I participated live in some Twitter chats, by which I mean all these great people who I talked to week in and week out were sitting live around a table together. And we were sitting there on our phones, you know.

We were participating in the Twitter chat, but we were also doing live video. Uh, we were also socializing before, after and during. It was really, really great to be able to take that experience live.

Madalyn Sklar: Yeah, for sure. That, that’s great. I love that you’re sharing all these great nuggets of information that I know is helping the listeners. Now, some people say, you know, Twitter chats are great. I like them, but it’s so hard to make time for them.

I love how you said that, you know, you got to just make the time. But of course, we have appointments or things that come up that that takes precedence, over precedence over (Can’t say that word right) takes precedence over it? Um, how like… For me there’s so many chats out there that are great that I want to participate in each week. But you know, it’s a time issue. But …

Christine Gritmon: Yeah.

Madalyn Sklar: I’ll just set reminders on my iPhone. We’ll calendar reminders. How do you, how do you remember, ’cause it’s interesting lately I’ve been noticing on the #TwitterSmarter chat some people are starting to show screenshots of their calendar reminders like “Hey look it’s time for #TwitterSmarter” and like, “Oh that’s cool.” And then other people started sharing their little popups or, or how they’re remembering getting those reminders. What was your method?

Christine Gritmon: I just have it on my Google Calendar, and I haven’t been perfect with it. I’m not good at time blocking, ultimately. I’m very bad at being self-employed because I suck at time blocking and that’s so important to be able to do. But what I do is I make sure that that it is on my calendar.

It’s not marked as “Busy” so people can book time with me during that time. But if I’m around, and especially if there’s a routine to it, I know that for a little while there was a Twitter chat that fell during my son’s piano lesson, so I was only able to participate in that one sort of sporadically.

I was usually able to answer the first couple of questions, and then I kind of had to drop off. But the fact that that was part of a routine of something I was doing on that day definitely helped me to remember it cause I said, you know what, while Josh is playing piano, I am tweeting.

Madalyn Sklar: There you go. And it’s something you can do when you’re on the go because we all have our, our mobile phones, and it’s not easy participating in a Twitter chat on mobile. It’s a lot easier on a computer.

Christine Gritmon: Oh, I always do it on mobile, but it’s, it is much better on a computer. I, it’s great on a computer because you can have … I … When I do it on a computer, I have three tabs open. What I do … I don’t use TweetDeck like so many other people do during chats or any other apps. What I do is I just have three tabs open. I have one that is the person who’s hosting the chat.

Madalyn Sklar: Yup.

Christine Gritmon: I have one that is following the hashtag, and I specifically always keep clicking “Latest.” And then I have one that’s my notifications because there are always sub conversations happening, and I keep on top of those. But I have to say one time I was a guest on a Twitter chat, I believe it was even yours, and I did it while walking to pick up my children.

Madalyn Sklar: No Way.

Christine Gritmon: Yeah. So, since I was the host, I had gotten the questions in advance so I’d written all my answers up in a, in a Word doc and I copied those to Notes. And I sent that to myself. So I had them on my phone to cut and paste.

But I was also … I mean, interaction is so important. I don’t, I don’t like being automated in that regard. I feel like interaction is almost, it’s kind of the most important part of Twitter chats for me.

Madalyn Sklar: Sure.

Christine Gritmon: Even more so than answering the questions, and you know what? I was walking. It’s not like I was driving, so I was able … and I have a mile to my kid’s school, so I was able to just keep that going for the walk.

And then I stopped at the coffee shop that was a block away from their school and just finished it up, and, and it was fine. I, I have thumbs of fire, Madalyn. I have thumbs of steel. They’re not quite as fit as May King Tsang’s thumbs, but they are close. I’m getting there. A lot of training.

Madalyn Sklar: That is so awesome.

Christine Gritmon: I don’t want him into a thumb wrestling match with me.

Madalyn Sklar: I’ll remember that next time I see you in person. I think that what you’re doing is you’re inspiring people that … in the past have been like, “Well, I can’t participate in chats because I’m not ever sitting in my computer when a chat is going on.”

And they’d probably figured, “Well, I can’t do this on mobile.” It’s not as easy on mobile guys, but it can be done. It can totally be done. There’ve been times where I’m just, you know, not sitting at my desk in my office, but there’s a Twitter chat happening. I want to participate, and I’m just sitting somewhere with my phone. And just, even if you’re jumping in for five or 10 minutes, it really can make an impact for sure.

Christine Gritmon: It really can. And another thing that I find really fun on mobile is I feel like GIFS work better on the Twitter mobile app.

Madalyn Sklar: Yes. It does.

Christine Gritmon: And I’m, I’m a big fan of GIFs, especially during the Twitter chat because here’s the nice thing. A GIF is so bite-size that on the one hand it’s very noticeable because it is literally a big moving picture. So it’s very noticeable.

But at the same time it doesn’t stop the flow of conversation because you don’t need to turn sound on, you don’t need to click on it. You don’t need to devote sufficient, you know … You don’t have to devote significant energy to it or attention to it. You can just look at it quickly and move on.

But it makes a bigger impression than words do sometimes. I believe in words for communicating the information, but at the same time GIFs are fun; GIFs break it up a little; GIFs get a little attention; and GIFs give everyone a laugh.

Madalyn Sklar: I love that. Yeah. I’m a fan of GIFs too. I always noticed that with you from the start, like you’re really big with using GIFs. And I feel like GIFs can just add that little extra oomph to a tweet. Right? That just … where you can showcase some personality or have some fun with whatever it is you’re saying. And then even going so far as to making some of your own custom ones.

Christine Gritmon: I need to make some new ones. So a year and a half ago I decided I was going to make custom GIFs, and I did a whole little video shoot in my office and made some custom GIFs.

And first of all, it took so long. Giphy just kept messing up on my computer. I think Giphy didn’t like Chrome or something happened. So, first of all, I couldn’t do it. And then I finally did it, and I got them solid. I still didn’t get them in search for Twitter.

I don’t know why Giphy is taking so long to respond to my creator request. But I did save them to my phone, so I had them and I can upload them as you would upload an image, and it worked. But I’m discovering, I’m like, how did I come up with my list of GIFs to make because all the reactions I seem to want to do lately, I don’t have a GIF for.

Madalyn Sklar: Oh no.

Christine Gritmon: So I need to do a whole ‘nother …

Madalyn Sklar: Make some new ones.

Christine Gritmon: Yeah, I need to do a new shoot, and I have a new haircut anyway. So, you know what: new shoot coming up.

Madalyn Sklar: There you go. There you go. I think that’s an awesome idea. And then we’ll be sure to uh, embed some of those into the show notes for this episode so people can see them.

Christine Gritmon: Aww, yeah!

Madalyn Sklar: And I’ve been bad … I have a very generic one I made about two years ago that I just did on my phone one day out of the blue where I’m like kinda like pointing at the screen and doing a thumbs up. And it’s just very simple, very basic. But when somebody says something really cool to me, I’ll usually send that, and they go crazy because it’s …

Christine Gritmon: They do.

Madalyn Sklar: It’s me. It’s not … It’s so easy to just use something in Giphy and just use a generic, which is fun. But to have one that’s personalized to you, people just go crazy over that.

Christine Gritmon: I really … Now I’m excited to go shoot some more. I definitely need a thumbs up one. I’m … I try to be a very positive person, and so a lot of what I’m posting is encouragement. And yet I didn’t make a good GIF for that.

So I need … I need a GIF of encouragement. I need a GIF that says, “Awww.” Um, I need a GIF that says “You go girl.” I need a whole bunch of stuff. I may even reproduce that one of the guy tossing glitter in the air that says, “You go girl.” I might have to do that myself.

Madalyn Sklar: Oh, I love … I love that one. Oh, you should totally have your own version of that ’cause …

Christine Gritmon: I mean I don’t really want to bring glitter into my home, but I have a five-year-old daughter, so it’s happening soon anyway. So I might have to, I might have to glitter it up…

Madalyn Sklar: It can totally work.

Christine Gritmon: And then make sure the Dustbuster is at the ready.

Madalyn Sklar: That is so great. I love that. I’ll make sure in the show notes I put some … I know there’s some articles out there of how to make GIFs and even, um, some of our friends – Um, why am I … I would, of course.

Christine Gritmon: Chad.

Madalyn Sklar: Uh, no, the ones over in England. Your friends. Gosh …

Christine Gritmon: Andrew and Pete?

Madalyn Sklar: Yes! Andrew and Pete. Thank you.

Christine Gritmon: Andrew and Pete.

Madalyn Sklar: It was on the tip of my tongue, but they’ve written for Social Media Marketing … no, Social Media Examiner.

Christine Gritmon: Yes.

Madalyn Sklar: They did an article a few years ago on how to make custom GIFs.

Christine Gritmon: Yes. So Andrew and Pete I think were the first people I knew personally that had their own custom GIFs. And actually sometimes I reply to them … Their GIFs are available in Twitter search. So, sometimes I reply to them with GIFs of them, uh, which is always fun. And then, um, Chad Illa-Petersen is really, really – Did I pronounce his last name wrong? One second. Let me look it up.

Madalyn Sklar: [inaudible] And JJMatt (@JMattMke) who, uh, has been a regular on my Twitter chats in the past. He did some custom ones and made a Giphy account for it, and he’s gotten millions and millions of views.

Christine Gritmon: Absolutely. Yeah. Chad Illa-Petersen. He is always at conferences and events with his camera, and there will always be a million GIFs made of everything after the fact.

In fact, after Social Media Week, Lima, he, he sent via, you know, private message to a whole bunch of us who were there… He sent us little GIFs he made up all sorts of moments. There’s a GIF of me like shaking my stuff during Karaoke. There’s a GIF of someone riding a shark. There’s like all sorts of crazy GIFs, and it just helps you relive the moment. And it’s a memorable thing, and it also helps us remember him cause that’s the thing.

Madalyn Sklar: Sure.

Madalyn Sklar: Once he’s known for doing that, that means the next time you see him at an event you’re like, “Chad, Make a GIF of me” or “Chad, Don’t make a GIF of me.” But either way, you know, he’s the guy who does that. So that’s a great branding tool for him, honestly.

Madalyn Sklar: That is awesome. I love that. Yeah. We’ll, we’ll have some stuff in the show notes on, on uh, creating GIFs because you know, doing your own can really help promote you and your brand.

Christine Gritmon: And it can be so easy.

Madalyn Sklar: Yeah, for sure.

Christin Gritmon: There are, there are apps. What I did is I actually did just straight-up video with my DSLR. I did straight-up video. I made sure that I was sort of pantomiming in very short bursts. And then on my computer, I just trimmed those into like two-second clips, and I uploaded, I uploaded them to Giphy. And it could not have been easier.

Madalyn Sklar: Yeah, that’s super cool. Yeah. We’ll have some simple instructions in the show notes so people that want to venture into this and do them themselves, I think would be awesome.

Christine Gritmon: Great for Twitter comments.

Madalyn Sklar: Yeah.

Christine Gritmon: I really wish that Facebook had a more robust GIF database because Twitter’s internal search for GIFs is much stronger than Facebook’s internal GIF search.

Madalyn Sklar: Right. Oh yeah.

Christine Gritmon: And I also … I know this won’t happen, but I wish Instagram would let us comment with images and GIFs. I know they won’t, but it would make me really happy because there’s so many times where I want to comment on something and be like, oh, I know the perfect GIF for this. And I’ve in fact commented, “insert that GIF of blah, blah, blah.” You know what I’m talking about? It’s part of, it’s part of the vernacular now. Honestly. It’s a, it’s a visual vernacular, but …

Madalyn Sklar: It really is.

Christine Gritmon: Yeah.

Madalyn Sklar: It’s so interesting how GIFs have been around forever. I mean, I remember GIFS in the ’90s, you know. We called them animated GIFs back then.

Christine Gritmon: Yep. And they were actual GIFs back then. Nowadays, they’re usually not the movie files, but back then they were actual …

Madalyn Sklar: Yeah. Dot G-I-F. I um … I’m so glad you talked about all that. I do have a question for you. I want to kind of back up for a minute. For those that were listening earlier in getting inspired of like, “Oh man, The next time I go to a conference or an event, I want to be that super tweeter that’s sharing all this great information that I’m taking down.”

Christine Gritmon: Aww yeah.

Madalyn Sklar: What are some like tips like, you know, I always tell people: “Make sure you have your phone charged up; make sure you bring a battery pack.” Even bring, um, you know … If you really want to be popular at a conference or an event, bring a power strip and, and hang out in the back of the room because people are always running out of power, and they’ll become your new best friend if you like, have a strip and go “Here. Help yourself.”

But like little things like just being prepared so that when you’re at a conference, you know, having Twitter lists in place of all the speakers and things. So like what are some, some simple tips that you could share that would help people that really want to like, “Hey, I want to be that power tweeter at the next conference or event I go to.”

Christine Gritmon: So live-tweeting at events is amazing. And my, my biggest tips to make it as easy on yourself as possible is, is create a note document on your phone. First of all, it’s got to have the conference hashtag. But then another thing that I would like to do is on different lines of that notes doc, I like to put the handle of the person who’s speaking followed by the conference hashtag.

And when I go into a person’s session, I will actually copy from my note doc the person’s handle, that thing, that nice little lockup of the person’s handle and the conference hashtag. So I can just paste it at the end of every tweet. It’s so easy.

And another thing, and I learned this tip from Tim Lewis and I don’t know how I wasn’t doing it before: You can customize auto-correct. You can do … Sorry … You can do shortcuts on your phone. You can do customized shortcuts on your phone, text shortcuts. So I can make it where I literally just have to type “m-s,” and it will automatically fill in at “Madalyn Sklar.”

Madalyn Sklar: Yes. I love that.

Christine Gritmon: So that’s a really handy thing to do especially, um … I mean, I usually have the speaker handle and conference hashtag ready to roll, so I don’t need a shortcut for that necessarily.

But if it’s a given topic, if there’s a word, you know they’re going to be using a lot, you can, you can do that. If there’s two different speakers and you want to be able to flip back and forth and instead of copying and pasting, um, you can have the whole lockup of speaker handle conference hashtag be one tech shortcut and the whole lockup of the other speaker and the conference handle be a second tech shortcut.

So tech shortcuts are really huge. Um, May King Tsang is a really good person to look at if you want to get into live-tweeting because she does it like nobody else. And she has made a career out of it. She just did it the way that I do for a while, which was just, you know, doing it to take notes at conferences and to meet people.

And she has actually been able to spin that into getting hired by conferences to live-tweet and to maintain their social profiles during the conference. Uh, Andrew and Pete’s conference, AtomicCon – she was the official social media correspondent and FOMO creator.

She calls herself a “FOMO creator,” which is brilliant because really that’s, that’s a lot of what live-tweeting does. It’s not just for the benefit for people who are at the conference. It’s also for the benefit of people who wished they were at the conference – those people who are doing what I advised, which is following the conference hashtag even though they’re not there.

She creates that FOMO. She gives the essence … She captures the essence of being there. She captures all the key learnings, and that is really helpful for people who are having recurring events, especially because if they’ve been following her stuff and she’s doing her job right, they want to hop on top of buying conference to next year’s event as soon as they can because they wished they were at this year’s.

Madalyn Sklar: I love that. I’m glad you brought that up because if I’m at a conference and I’m there during a Thursday when I normally host my #TwitterSmarter chat, I will host it live, and I’ll just say, “Hey, whoever wants to come hang out with me, I’m going to host it live. Let’s do it live together.” So I’ve been doing that as Social Media Marketing World for the last three years …

Christine Gritmon: I’ll be honest, I was a little starstruck the first time I did that. I was like, Oh my God, I’m going to be tweeting right next to Madalyn Sklar. I think that was when I first met you was around that table at the #TwitterSmarter live-tweet in uh in 2018.

Madalyn Sklar: Oh, that’s awesome to hear. Well, it’s fun to do that. It’s fun to, like, sit with people you, you know, through the chat virtually, but then to do it in person? But what I always found so interesting was when we would be hosting that each year, it really put a lot of FOMO out there.

So many people are like, “Oh my gosh, I’m missing out because I’m not there.” And people came the next year because of that. Like, which really, I’m so glad you brought up. This is such a great point that being a FOMO creator. I, I … That’s like a whole new industry. How neat is that? I love that she created a job out of doing that and super, super smart.

Um, and I wanna mention that, uh, when you were talking about the keyboard settings, let me tell you how to do it on iPhone for those of you who are listening going, “OK, This sounds really interesting.” I have it on my iPhone set so that all I’ll have to do is put in “#tw,” and it’ll automatically put #TwitterSmarter in for me, ’cause I, I use the hashtag #TwitterSmarter so much.

So next time you go into a conference, you know, little things like this will save you so much time when you’re live-tweeting. So on iPhone, you go into General and then you go from General… You scroll down to Keyboard, and then you’ll see Text Replacement. And you go in there, and there’s a little plus sign and you can just put in like, you know, what it … like a few characters that would, when that’s typed will turn it into whatever it is that you want. And that has been so helpful. So yeah, Tim Lewis has talked about that recently in some of the Twitter chats, and, and he and I had been talking to people about how, how much of a timesaver that is.

Christine Gritmon: Oh, so also watch what your shortcut is because if it’s something that is very, very frequently in words, like if it’s “r-e” or something like, don’t do that to yourself because it’s going to keep auto-populating that. You have to keep deleting it. So really do something that you may be, wouldn’t ordinarily be typing.

Madalyn Sklar: Exactly. That’s a great point because I have one for my name “Madalyn,” which is M-A-D-A-L-Y-N. So initially I did “M-A.” Well, “M-A” … I might be typing the word “made” or “mad” or something, you know. So I made it “M-A-D-A.” So, all I’ll have to do, if I type in M-A-D-A, it will finish auto-populating my name.

So yeah, you definitely want to watch with how you’re doing that. And just last week somebody on the #TwitterSmarter chat was talking about how they prep for live-tweeting at conferences by ahead of time putting a bunch of tweets into the draft on their phone, which I think is super brilliant because you can already have … if you know, you gotta go …

Let’s say, like, somebody who’s, like, “OK, I’m going to go see Christine Gritmonan speak at a conference. I know I’m going to live-tweet while she’s speaking,” you can just go in and have some tweets ready with tagging you, the hashtag and just so it’s there and ready.

And then like all you’ve got to do is go into your drafts. And for those of you listening, if you’re not sure how to do that, it’s super simple. You actually go into the, the mobile app, compose a tweet and instead of hitting tweet, you hit cancel. And you’ll see where it says saved draft. And you can actually go and put a whole bunch of them into draft and, and be prepared, which I think is cool.

Christine Gritmon: That’s also a great thing to do if you’re the speaker. If you’re going to be on stage and you want … I mean I haven’t done this when I’ve been speaking, but the fact is if you know there are certain beats you are going to be hitting, you can do that and give your phone to someone else while you’re on stage. And they can … I mean I’ve known people who have also literally just scheduled out tweets ’cause they know approximately at one point they’re going to say things.

Madalyn Sklar: I’ve done that.

Christine Gritmon: But I think it’s, I think it’s much safer to have someone do it.

Madalyn Sklar: It is safer, and that’s so smart. OK, so I did an experiment. A couple of years ago I spoke at Agents of Change, which is an awesome social media conference in Portland, Maine. And my, my uh, presentation was about Twitter chat, and I had all these great nuggets of information in my presentation.

I thought, you know what, I’m going to try something really interesting. I’m going to schedule a whole bunch of tweets and try to time it so that if I go, if I start the presentation on time, if they let me start on time, I could kind of have it so that these tweets will will .. And it’s a risk ’cause, I mean, you know, what if, what if they have you start late, you know.

But it worked, and people were blown away … ’cause I was encouraged them to live-tweet ’cause here I’m talking about, you know, tweeting, uh, during chats and that also applies to live events and conferences. And they were really blown away seeing my tweets pop up while I was speaking.

And it was relevant to what I was saying. So, but you still got to be a little generic, you know, you know, you’re not going to time it where it’s exactly what you said, but I just kinda had like the gist of some of the things I was saying in a generic way. And it worked. So don’t be afraid to experiment and try things and be bold.

Christine Gritmon: You know what’s really impressive? May King herself, May King Tsang, has live-tweeted while on a panel, like she’s literally been standing on stage. And I wasn’t there when this happened.

So I can’t, I can’t picture it ’cause I know when when I’m on a stage I’m kind of doing stage face to some degree. I’m trying to have that pleasant, bemused look when I’m looking at the host or whoever’s speaking. So I don’t know that I’d be so good.

But then again, she probably doesn’t even have to look when she’s typing on her phone. I mean I’m nearly at that level myself. I’m already a two thumb typist on my phone, but I do generally have to at least look a little bit, I think, I think maybe she just didn’t look, I dunno.

Madalyn Sklar: We’ll have to find out what her secret is and maybe get her on this podcast maybe.

Christine Gritmon: She may have to kill us.

Madalyn Sklar: Maybe. Yeah. I love all these tips and advice you’re sharing. This is so great. So let’s switch gears for a moment. Tell us about what are some of your favorite apps and tools that you like to use when you’re using Twitter?

Christine Gritmon: I will be honest, I a, I use very few tools on anything. I’m very native on all social media platforms. Um, I do now use Agorapulse for the occasional scheduled tweet. I don’t do enough of that, but I’m trying to do that to promote my shows, which are every week. So I’m trying to get into the habit of having an auto, um, tweet, go out on Agorapulse.

Um, I do like Giphy, as I said, for GIFs. I’m, I’m trying to use that more frequently to make my own GIFs. And again, I haven’t gotten it to the point where I have a creator brand, whatever account and can search in Twitter. So that means I do have to download my GIFs from Giphy into a little photo album on my phone and upload them, but still Giphy’s awesome.

Um, what else have I been using on Twitter? I feel like not a whole lot. I’m very, I’m very, I, I hate to say tool adverse. I, I’m taking baby steps. Um, I was at your great presentation on Twitter tools a couple of years back. And so I am trying to look at those things like Social Jukebox. Was that one of them?

Madalyn Sklar: Ah ha. I love social jukebox.

Christine Gritmon: I think that’s a good idea. I need to start loading up some fairly evergreen, evergreen tweets. Um, so I haven’t been very on top of content strategy on Twitter. I’m, I’m just a conversationalist on Twitter.

Madalyn Sklar: Yeah, And there’s nothing wrong with that. You know, that’s actually a very good strategy for sure. But if you have good evergreen content then I think a tool like Social Jukebox can just take it to a whole new level for you and save you so much time.

Christine Gritmon: Yeah, Chris Strub is really, really great at um, scheduling out certain types of tweets to go out at certain times. He has a lot of tweets, um, from his tour a few years ago. His 50 states, a hundred days tour a few years ago.

He still has accounts that regularly tweet stuff out about that and it’s wonderful because he can just load it up every year from now ’til the end of time. He can say, “Ah, remember back, you know when I visited this place,” and it’s great that he’s got that because people aren’t tired of it. There are people who are discovering it for the first time. There are people who are happy to be reminded.

I think that’s my real thing I need to get over when it comes to scheduling out tweets, especially evergreen stuff. I keep feeling like, “Oh it’s less real. I’m not there. And you know people don’t care.” And it’s like, no, no, it’s new to somebody. And if it’s not a value to someone they’ll just skip by it.

Madalyn Sklar: Exactly. And the thing is you can control how often it goes out. So I have, I have some evergreen tweets on my Social Jukebox that are more on the promotional side that that don’t go out very often and you’re not going to, and you can control how often, like so that you can say, well don’t let my tweets the same tweet go out more like it needs to be at least so many days, you know, like 30 days. So that way, you know, people are not going to keep seeing the same thing over and over.

Christine Gritmon: And one thing you do that’s very smart is, and I believe that these are scheduled, you have a lot of tweets go out during your Twitter, Twitter chats because people are already looking at you. People are … All eyes are on you during the Twitter chats.

So you have a few things go out that are promoting other things or that are directing them to other places. You’re like, “while I have your attention, here’s something that might be a value to you.”

Madalyn Sklar: Exactly. And now that I’m doing this #TwitterSmarter podcast more regularly, I’m always … It’s relevant to the conversation. I’m not trying to do it to toot my horn, you know. I’m, I’m known as you know, the Twitter marketing powerhouse.

I’m, I have … My website has become a repository of so much content-related Twitter marketing. I have #TwitterSmarter podcast coming out twice a week now. You know, once a week it’s an interview like this, and once a week it’s just Twitter tips. I’m sharing a Twitter tip.

Christine Gritmon: Yeah.

Madalyn Sklar: I’ve got articles with a bunch of Twitter tips. I’ve got uh, the #TwitterSmarter chat. We do a recap each week. So much content, so I want …

Christine Gritmon: And it’s all useful.

Madalyn Sklar: Exactly. So, I want to make sure people know about it. So that’s exactly a great reason to schedule things like that because once upon a time you had to do it all manually, and it was so hard. It was so hard. So time-consuming.

Christine Gritmon: And this way you can help people out and show them the stuff that you want to show them beyond what they’re looking at, at that moment in a really easy way. And you’ve got it at the ready. It’s right there. It’s happening.

Madalyn Sklar: Absolutely.

Christine Gritmon: So you can be present in the conversation while still share those things.

Madalyn Sklar: Yeah. And that’s the only reason why I ever use a scheduling tool is to allow me to be more present because you don’t ever want to use a scheduling tool to schedule engagement.

Christine Gritmon: No.

Madalyn Sklar: Your engagement should always been present, and so it frees up my time so that I can be very present and connect with people in real time. And so, yeah. Well this has been so awesome, Christine, you shared such a wealth of information as I knew you would. I knew you would. Uh, this is so great.

Christine Gritmon: I learned from the best.

Madalyn Sklar: Oh, stop. How can people get in touch with you?

Christine Gritmon: On Twitter? No.

Madalyn Sklar: Of course.

Christine Gritmon: I am C Gritmon. That’s C-G-R-I-T-M-O-N on Twitter and on Instagram. I’m Christine Gritmon, Inc. on Facebook. Um, I am Christine.Gritmon.com or just Gritmon.com. And, uh, yeah, let’s see. Am I forgetting a platform? I think that’s it. I’ve, I’m on …

Madalyn Sklar: How about Instagram?

Christine Gritmon: CGritmon.

Madalyn Sklar: Okay.

Christine Gritmon: Yeah. I’m not on TicToc. I’m too old. Um.

Madalyn Sklar: That one is really becoming popular.

Christine Gritmon: It is, and I don’t get it. But I have children, so in a few years I may have to.

Madalyn Sklar: But yeah, I think you’ll have no choice but to be on it in a few years when, when they’re using it.

Christine Gritmon: Yeah. We’ll see how that goes.

Madalyn Sklar: Yeah. Well, this is so great. Thank you so much for being my guest today. I know the listeners enjoyed this conversation.

Christine Gritmon: Thanks for having me.