I’m passionate about social media. I tweet, post, create and engage. It’s what I do personally and for Purple Frog clients. From a personal point of view, I was starting to get frustrated by the lack of interest in my posts. Followers were not increasing and very few of my tweets were retweeted. I realised my activity was not very targeted and the various topics I talk about were getting mixed. Therefore I was not getting the results I was hoping for. Seeing as social media is my favourite subject (after food and drink!) it made sense to separate all activity on this topic from my other activity.
So I created a Twitter account specifically for social media topics. I would not tweet about what I had for breakfast, or what I’m doing at the weekend. All my activity would be focused on social media topics. And the result? 400 tweets later I have 400 followers. I’m engaging with authorities on social media, and my tweets are being retweeted. My Klout score has gone from non existent to 46 (http://klout.com/#/chattingSM) . So how do you go about doing the same?
1 – Write your profile
Let everyone know what they can expect from you. What do you tweet about? What are your interests? Do not have the Twitter egg as your avatar! Make sure you upload a picture.
2 – Follow like minded individuals
I’m following people who tweet about social media. Don’t follow anyone and everyone. Follow people who interest you and tweet about the same types of subject. OK, you may loose some followers if you don’t follow them back, but does that really matter? Do you want lots of uninteresting tweets in your timeline?
3 – Use hashtags
I’ve been religious about using hashtags in every tweet. Depending on the topic I will use the tags #socialmedia, #smm and #digitalmarketing. Do a bit of research to find out what hashtags are being used for your topics and use them. Creating your own hashtags is simple, choose your keywords and put a # in front. So, if you are interested in baking maybe use the hashtag #letsbake or #bakingisfun.
4 – Retweet, reply, mention and thank
This is not about shouting your message out to everyone and sitting back and doing nothing else. It’s important to share tweets, add to the conversation!
5 – Tweet, tweet, tweet.
Obvious? Yes! But it is surprising how many people tweet just once a week. Be as active as possible. Utilise tools such as Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to schedule tweets in advance. These tools will also help you track mentions, retweets and direct messages.
Now that I’ve got the basics done, I’m looking at the structure of my tweets, tweet timing, daily patterns, nurturing relationships etc which will allow me to be more targeted in my activity. Come back and read my next blog to see how I get on!
If you’re interested in what I’ve got to say, you can find me on Twitter @chattingSM
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