Madalyn Sklar

Rethinking Your Twitter Strategy

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Rethinking your Twitter strategy - #TwitterSmarter chat with Jennifer Watson on February 6, 2020

How often do you re-evaluate your social media strategy? Surprisingly, though most of us are aware that we should modify our plans according to changing trends and requirements of the community, we rarely do. That’s why we decided to talk to a social media expert about how to go about retaining the way we approach Twitter.

Aside from being a successful meteorologist, Jennifer Watson is also the social media manager at Agorapulse. Here’s a summary of our chat.

Topic: Rethinking your Twitter Strategy
Guest: Jennifer Watson
Format: Eight questions directed at the guest. Everyone’s welcome to share.

Q1: Share some tips to make your Twitter bio stand out.

Your bio is the first thing people see when they land on your profile. That’s why it’s important to make it relevant, welcoming, and an introduction to who you are and what you have to offer.

To achieve a completely informational and effective bio, use keywords that relate to your industry and business. Include links to your website, articles, or any achievements you’d like to showcase. Add a call to action like signing up to your newsletter or following you for industry news.

Through all of this, however, remember that your bio is about you. And so it’s essential that you let your personality shine through. For instance, Michelle has a pick header and a few emojis that she resonates with the most.

Q2: How many hashtags and links should your Twitter bio have?

This could be a subjective question. If you’ve been on Twitter for a while, you would’ve seen a lot of bios with abundant hashtags—so many that they’re almost illegible and always annoying. That’s spammy, and no one wants that.

As our guest pointed out, make sure the hashtags you use are relevant to what you do. The last thing you want is to derail your audience by hash tagging topics you don’t post or care about.

When you think strategically about your hashtag choices, you’ll realize that you don’t need some of the ones you have already. Also, remember, all text in your bio—even if they’re not hash tagged—is searchable on Twitter. You don’t necessarily have to add one just to be visible.

Twitter recommends two hashtags for a tweet, and your bio can perhaps take one extra. But go more than three and you might be overdoing it.

If you need to add more links to your bio about a range of topics, consider using external tools to help. Jim told us how he’s using smart.bio. This tool creates a landing page where you can add multiple links or calls to actions. You can update these links any time without changing the main link on your bio. Linktree is another tool that has the same functionality.

 

Q3: What’s the ideal length of your tweets?

Ever since Twitter increased its character count from 140 to 280 characters, people have been debating the ideal length of a tweet.

However, it’s important to remember that how long your message should be entirely depends on what your message is. For instance, announcement posts can be have fewer that 140 characters, whereas responses on a Twitter chat may sometimes require the full 280 characters. Do whatever what it takes to convey your point of view clearly.

It’s also a good idea to vary your length once a while. Sometimes in a feed filled with longer tweets, a shorter, more snappy one gets more attention.

Katelyn shared another point of view as well. Twitter’s increased character limit now allows us to add more spaces in our tweet copy. Use the space cleverly to break your content down into more readable chunks.

Q4: What are some ways to grow your Twitter following?

Social media isn’t easy. We often look at successful people, influencers, on social media, and assume it doesn’t take long or much trouble.

However, Twitter takes consistent effort on your part. And you have to work hard to develop relationships. Show up, engage with others’ content, share meaningful messages, and repeat it every day. One of the best way to do that, as our guest said, is to participate in Twitter chats. Even if you’re not too comfortable tweeting out to strangers, a chat will help you get accustomed to the art of conversing and sharing opinions without being hurtful or offensive. It’s excellent practice and a great way to meet new people as well.

James shared an important point as well. Always credit your sources. Not only is it the decent thing to do, but it’s also a good way to get more people to notice your content. For example, when you share an article or your thoughts on an article, tag the author of the original piece as a thank you. That way, you’ll also initiate a dialog between the two and anyone else can join in and contribute as well.

Q5: What do you mean by evergreen content on Twitter?

As our friends from PCMA said, evergreen content has a longterm outlook. It could be information articles, how-tos, fact-based infographics, and anything that doesn’t rely on or change according to the latest fluctuating trends.

Evergreen content is also handy to keep around. For when you have time periods when you have nothing topical or seasonal to share, you can use chunks from your evergreen content so you’re still consistently posting on Twitter. As Jennifer said, evergreen content is a way to ensure you are still useful to your audience.

Q6: What are some strategies to share evergreen content on Twitter?

One common way to share evergreen content is to repurpose them as other types of content. For example, consider cutting down a lengthy blog post into many tweets that you can later compile as a Moment or post as a thread. Or turn your article into a video to reach a wider audience.

Once you create various types of your evergreen content, use a social media tool to strategically schedule your content. Jennifer recommends Agorapulse for its queuing feature. You can create posts in bulk and space them out throughout the year so you have a consistent dream of posts on auto-pilot while you focus on sharing seasonal content in real-time. Similarly, Madalyn recommends Social Jukebox for scheduling.

Another way to make sure your evergreen content remains visible and accessible is to pin it on your profile, as Kathy suggested. You can also cross-post your content across other social media and even share on closed groups, such as on LinkedIn and Facebook that might not find the content otherwise.

Q7: What tools do you use for Twitter management?

Jennifer’s top tool is Agorapulse. But she also balances out her social media management with Tweet Deck and Twitter’s default features like the Media Studio and Lists.

Twitter has been, for a long time, worked on improving its in-built features. And it’s paid off, too. Native Twitter on the web and the mobile app are excellent for searching, listening, and managing your activities. What’s more, features like Lists, Moments, threads have steadily got better over the years.

Our chat members also vouched for Sprinklr, SubSpot, SproutSocial, Buffer, Hootsuite, IFTTT, and MeetEdgar.

Q8: How much of your Twitter activity should you automate?

We speak about this quite a lot as well. Although automation has its uses and is almost always highly beneficial, it’s also a two-edged sword. Unless you’re careful—and watchful—you might easily lose control over what’s happening.

Like Jennifer emphasized, make sure you’re not letting automation take over your real-time conversations. After all, Twitter is all about human to human relationships. That’s what you want to focus on. Use automation as an enabler, but not an alternative to your engagement.

When you start tweeting regularly—automated or not—you’ll find that there’re a lot of people who engage with your content. Acknowledging their comments, responding, and moving the conversation forward takes quite a bit of your time. And that’s good. Because with every reply you post, you’re sharing a bit about yourself and your personality. Don’t replace that with more automated content.

Taylor from GiveWP suggested finding a balance between 50% to 75% for automating content, and the rest for engaging and responding.

Well, folks, that’s all from me this week. Thanks for reading, and for more insights on this topic, check out this Twitter Moment Joana put together. If you’ve got some time to spare on Thursday, join us for the next #TwitterSmarter chat at 1pm ET.

About me, Narmadhaa:

I’m a writer of all things—technical and marketing copy to fill the pocket; haiku and short stories to fill the soul. A social media enthusiast, I’m a member of the #TwitterSmarter chat crew, and always happy to take on writing gigs.

Say hello: Personal blog | LinkedIn | Twitter

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