Madalyn Sklar

How to Become #TwitterSmarter

Tweet
Share
Share
Pin3
Buffer1
4 Shares

text based graphic with same text as in post

Every week on the #TwitterSmarter chat, we bring you a guest from the business and marketing industries to talk about a Twitter-related topic. We’ve often discussed ways to incorporate this social platform in your broader marketing strategy. This week, our guest was the tattoo-wearing social media evangelist and founder of the chat, Madalyn Sklar. With over 25 years of experience in digital marketing, naturally, Madalyn spoke about ways to be more effective on Twitter. Here’s a summary of our chat.

Guest: Madalyn Sklar
Topic: How to become #TwitterSmarter
Format: Eight questions directed at the guest. Everyone’s welcome to share.

Q1: What are some ways to boost your presence on Twitter?

One of the best things you can do to boost your Twitter presence is to engage and engage often. Ideally, as Madalyn said, at least 5 times a day. The more you tweet, the more eyeballs you get for your tweets, and when you publish tweets throughout the day, you automatically increase the chances of your tweets reaching audiences logging in at various times. Use social media management tools to help you organize your tweet schedules.

Have a look at your notifications tab every day and respond to those who engage with your content. If people are replying to your tweets, react to their reaction and keep the conversation flowing. Engagement is the driving force of Twitter—use your notifications and mentions to find interesting threads and interactions that you can contribute to. It’s a great way to involve your community and grow it at the same time.

Madalyn has a free Twitter Secret Sauce course that covers the essentials of growing your presence on Twitter. Check it out here.

George also pointed out how Twitter Spaces is rapidly becoming the next big thing on Twitter. Participating in Spaces and hosting your own are both excellent ways to be spontaneous and build yourself a genuine audience that appreciates you for who you are.

Q2: How can you optimize your Twitter profile for higher visibility?

First of all, audit your profile every now and then. Make sure your profile picture, header banner, and bio are current and relevant to the type of audience you’re trying to resonate with. If you’ve got a pinned tweet, think about whether you want to update it.

Header photo: This is an extension of your profile photo. Use this space to communicate who you are, what you do, and why. You can customize the banner to suit your brand’s colors, taglines, and logos to help establish your branding. Your header photo should be 1500×500 pixels.

Profile picture: Ideally, this should be your professional headshot or, if you’re managing social media for a brand, its logo. This is a key part of your branding, so try and use the same image across all your social media channels. This will help people from one platform to find you on another as well.

Twitter bio: Tell the world who you are and why you’re interesting in 160 characters. It’s tough, but it’s worth it. Be short and snappy, but don’t be so vague that your profile visitors get confused. You want to be set the right expectations and also inspire intrigue.

Pinned tweet: This is the first tweet people will see on your profile. You have to make it count—if you’re running a new campaign or have a new article that you want to drive attention to, use that as your pinned tweet. Remember that a pinned tweet is the first impression for a new visitor, and so it should represent who you are.

For more cool tips, ideas, and resources on how to spruce up your Twitter profile, join Madalyn’s Twitter Spaces conversation, #TwitterAudits—every Saturday at 1 pm ET. Along with her co-hosts George and Dhariana, Madalyn reviews bios in real-time and suggests ways to get the most out of your profile. You can also have a look through some of the resources in this Moment.

Q3: What are your top tips for increasing Twitter engagement?

Use images in your tweets—we all love pictures. As Madalyn explained, tweets with an image consistently perform better than tweets without an image. Users engage 5 times more with a tweet when it incudes an image.

Twitter polls are an easy and effective way to interact with your community and get engaging conversations going. It’s also a great way to listen to what your audience wants from you and to collect feedback.

Apart from those two, of course, the next best thing you can do is to participate in chats and Spaces conversations. You’ll easily find ‘your kind of people’ and grow your network. Here’s a list of popular Twitter chats that Madalyn’s put together.

As for Spaces, it’s an ideal channel for you to voice your opinions and get instantaneous feedback and reactions from your listeners. Join Spaces that interest you, and don’t be shy to jump into the conversation.

Q4: Twitter can be time consuming. What are some time-saving strategies?

Twitter is an awesome tool to grow your audience and brand. However, it requires a lot of time and effort. That’s why Madalyn suggests using social media management tools to help manage your Twitter account.

Madalyn told us how she uses Buffer to schedule articles and other forms of marketing content that she thinks would be useful to her community. Scheduling tweets for throughout the day and week helps to break up your feed, and avoid clogging it up with back-to-back tweets.

She also uses Hootsuite for social listening and Twitter lists. The app shows multiple feeds (or streams) in a single screen so you can be across a broad range of lists simultaneously. Learn more about social listening here.

Agorapulse is another crowd favorite within the #TwitterSmarter community. It’s a complete social media manager and you can schedule tweets, keep up with your messages and notifications, and monitor your activities across multiple social channels in the same place.

We often talk about the value of using evergreen content in your Twitter strategy. According to Madalyn, Social Jukebox is a great tool for repurposing your best and most relevant content.

Q5: How can you stay organized using Twitter lists?

Twitter lists are a great way to organize your various interests. A list is a curated group of accounts—you can create a private or public list. A lot of brands create private lists of their competitors so they can monitor their activities without having to open up each profile every time.

You can also subscribe to other people’s public lists. For example, check out Madalyn’s list, #TwitterSmarter guests. It includes all the people who’ve ever been a guest on our chat. You can subscribe to this list and you’ll see new tweets from these people even if you’re not following them. You can also create a list of leaders in your industry, speakers at an event you’re hosting or participating in, or just a list of govt. accounts you want to stay updated on.

Here’s Madalyn’s step-by-step guide to creating Twitter Lists.

Q6: Share some best practices for hosting engaging Twitter Spaces.

Hosting Spaces conversations is a great way to gain exposure to your brand. Each week, Madalyn hosts three spaces:

  • #AllThingsAudio every Wednesday at 3 pm ET
  • #TwitterSmarter after chat every Thursday at 5 pm ET
  • #TwitterAudits every Saturday at 1 pm ET

Join in on these Spaces to learn about hosting a space and being an active participant.

When you’re hosting a Space, it’s important to keep your listeners in mind. Offer content that they’ll want to listen to. It’s rather easy to lose track and ramble on so make sure you stick to the topic. Have a look at this article for great tips on hosting a Space.

When you’re setting up your room, you get 70 characters to name your Space. Use this area to provide a clear and concise name so that your audience knows what to expect.

As a host, it’s crucial for you to speak. But remember that a Space is all about conversation. So open up the floor for other people to chip in with their thoughts and opinions. If you’re doing a panel discussion or interview and you don’t want listeners to interrupt the flow, set a dedicated Q&A slot for the end of the conversation.

Q7: How does Twitter video help you stand out?

Still heavily underutilized, videos are a great way to increase brand awareness and connect with your audience. Videos also grab more attention than a text-only tweet or image tweet, so they also improve your engagement rates.

As Madalyn explained, compared to photo tweets, video tweets are six times more likely to be retweeted. We all love GIF-based tweets, but videos are still likely to get three times more retweets.

Above all, as Bernie pointed out, videos are a good way to showcase your personality to your audience. People love connecting with other people, and video is a perfect medium for letting your audience get to know you better.

Q8: How can you leverage Twitter Communities to spread your message?

Twitter’s latest feature, Communities is a cross between Facebook Groups and Reddit, as Madalyn put it. It’s a place to bring a community together and discuss things that matter to them. Madalyn recently launched her own Community titled, Get TwitterSmarter w/Madalyn.

The Community brings together the whole #TwitterSmarter chat community and anyone else who’s interested in learning more about building a successful brand on Twitter. Join us here.

You can also browse through this Twitter thread for some cool resources about Twitter Communities.

Well folks, that’s all from me this week. Thanks a lot for reading through and for more great insights from our chat with Madalyn, have a look at this Twitter Moment that Joana put together for us. If you think this summary is pretty good, you’ll love the real-time chat. Join us every Thursday at 1pm ET on #TwitterSmarter. We also hang out on Twitter Spaces at 5pm ET to continue our chat. Catch you there!

profile picture

 

About me, Narmadhaa:

I write all the things—marketing stuff for the bills; haiku and short stories for the soul. A social media enthusiast, I hang out with the #TwitterSmarter chat crew, and am always happy to take on writing gigs.

Say hello: The Opinionated Copywriter | LinkedIn | Twitter

Tweet
Share
Share
Pin3
Buffer1
4 Shares
Previous Post Everything You Need to Know About Twitter Advanced Search Next Post 5 Social Media Growth Hacks