13 things all bloggers should do on Twitter

About a week ago I had a Twitter milestone, I passed 20k followers.  Twitter has always been my biggest referrer of traffic and it’s definitely the network that I found the easiest to grow.

Twitter was the first social media account I set up when I started my blog, so it has been going for around three years now. My account has a reach of around 173k, with almost 920k impressions.

Twitter can be difficult to get your head around, it’s such a fast moving platform and it really helps to have some tips and tricks to help you make sure you are getting the best out of it.

So, what should you and every blogger be doing on Twitter?

• Share your own content

Twitter is a high volume, low value platform. Due to the speed it moves, at each tweet has less of a shelf-life than statuses on some slower moving platforms. This means you can afford to share the same content more frequently than you would elsewhere. Each time you tweet something, a significant proportion of the people who follow you won’t see it, so share your own content. A lot.

• Share the content of others

Sharing the content of others is so important. Firstly, it’s how community is built, how you will develop relationships and how your content will be shared in return (although never share with the intention of just getting people to share your stuff. Do it because it’s a nice thing to do). Sharing quality content that’s useful, will also help establish your position as a go-to source for great information. Add value to your followers. The more likely your followers are to click on your tweets and links, the more chance you have of clicking through to your blog.

• Use Twitter lists

In my opinion, Twitter lists are vital. Typically people follow a lot of people on Twitter, so if you’re looking at your entire feed all the time, chances are you will miss most of the things you actually want to see. Setting up lists means you can view content from certain people. You might have a lists of brands, friends or people who interact with you; even all of them. This just makes your feed much more manageable.

• Search for Twitter lists

Why not utilise the lists of other people? When you set up a list you have the choice to make it public or keep it private. Imagine not having to do all the leg work yourself, find interesting new people to follow and interact with. Here’s how you do it, pop this text into google site:twitter.com inurl:lists <your search term> and the search results will bring up all the public lists on your search terms. Useful for brands to use too.

• Automatically add someone to your Twitter lists

You can use IFTTT to automatically add people who mention you in a tweet to your Twitter lists. Be careful if you run a lot of giveaways and have your @username in the sharing tweet, as this will mean you add lots of compers to your list.

• Use Twitter keyboard shortcuts

Speed up your Twitter experience by knowing Twitter specific keyboard shortcuts.

n = New tweet
g + l = Twitter lists
g h = Homepage
m = new direct message
gm – dm folder
gp = your profile
gc = interactions
gr = mentions
gu = search box for user profile
f – favourite – when you have opened a tweet
t – retweet – when you have opened a tweet
r – reply when you have opened a tweet

• Upload videos to increase engagement

Have more to say than 140 characters? Then use video in your tweet.  You can tweet out a video of up to 30 seconds.  Tweets visually enhanced by photos or videos tend to get more attention.

• Upload up to 4 photos for each tweet

Tweets with photos do significantly better than ones without, but have you ever added more than one picture?  You can actually add 4 pictures to each tweet.  Once you’ve uploaded one photo, simply click on the photo icon again to pick another photo.

• Join Twitter chats

Twitter chats are a great way to find a large number of people interested in a particular niche, all on Twitter at the same time. There are Twitter chats for everything imaginable, so you’re bound to find your ideal reader there somewhere! So use chats to help create great relationships.

• Analyse your tweets for free

Most, if not all, bloggers use Google Analytics or Jetpack to monitor their posts. However, did you know you can access free stats on your tweets right from your own Twitter account? You can find your reach/impressions and lots of other stats without having to go to another paid service. Find out which tweets have done well and do more of that!

• Engage with potential readers

Using call to actions in your tweets can really help engagement increase. Tell people what you want them to do, respond to you? retweet your tweet? People are significantly more likely to respond if you ask them to do something. Simply putting Please RT in a tweet means it’s SIGNIFICANTLY more likely to be retweeted than if you don’t.

• Chat to brands

Start building relationships with brands on Twitter. Share their competitions, chat to them, answer their questions, get to know them. Getting to know them will make make future interactions so much easier and hopefully more favourable.

• Use Twitter cards (It’s FREE!)

From Twitter ads – Creatives – Cards. Create a new card – upload a picture, write the copy, save. Then you can tweet this card out whenever your choose and they are so much more eye catching!

Which of these things do you do? Anything new to try?