I've just listened to a brilliant episode of Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income podcast with Laura Roeder and I just had to compile a list of the top things I took away from it, as well as some tips from my own input. I hope you can learn some new things like I have today. Disclaimer: Even though I don’t get involved in our social media posting for clients, I like to think that I know a thing or two about Twitter and Facebook. But I’ve got to say, some of these things were completely new to me. This stuff is pure gold.
1. Get the Twitter basics right
Twitter is a bit of a mystery to some, but there’s a few simple things you need to do to get on the road of being a Twit-star. The number one thing to do is get a profile picture up. I mean, who wants to interact with an egg? Make your picture stand out with a lovely photo of you or your brand’s logo. Next is to refine your bio and links. An avenue back to your website is essential for interested followers, as well as a catchy bio. These biographies are fantastic and will hopefully inspire you. The final thing is kind of obvious: start following people. You probably want to start out with industry leaders and people you get the most value from. Following these people will lead you on a path to writing great content yourself. There’s obviously loads more, but these are the fundamentals to getting going.
2. Repeat your content
This might send anyone with half an SEO brain running to the hills, but social media isn't the same as website content. Why should we spend so long putting together completely new posts all the time only for them to be lost into the online abyss after a quick scroll? Less than 20% of your followers will actually see your posts, and this counts for Facebook too. In the podcast, Laura gave a statistic that really hits home. On average, Twitter users log in for a total of 13 minutes per day. It’s impossible for a single post to reach a substantial portion of your audience, let alone all of them. Recycle that content to get the most out of your hard work. There are some great tools like Edgar available to automate this process.
3. Write multiple headlines for your content
This was almost revolutionary for me. Writing multiple headlines is such a good idea in so many ways. Multiple choices of headline will get the creative juices flowing, breed new ideas, and gives you some great short descriptions about the new post. I wonder where else we could publish short descriptions to drive audience to a blog post in 140 characters or less...? Other headlines we had for this article were things like A Guide to Becoming a Twit-star, Pat and Laura Puts Twitter in its Place, How to win the Twitter Game and 5 Must-Read Tips for the Twitter Beginner. Expect to see some of them advertising this blog post on our Twitter feed soon!
4. If you @ someone, only followers of the both of you can see it
I've been on Twitter for six years, and I didn't even notice that this was a thing. How could I miss it? It’s so glaringly obvious now. Anyway, '@ing’ people might not always the best thing to do, because this will only show up in the feed for people who follow the both of you. Not the best idea if you're looking for new followers, unless you’re hoping for them to reply/RT so you can try and convert some of their followers. To speak to someone publicly (so all your followers see it), just add a dot before the @ - i.e. ".@biglemontweets are awesome." I'm feeling a little silly that I didn't know this.
5. Focus on one network at a time
There's nothing more demoralizing than starting a new Facebook page where only your mum likes your posts (thanks though, mums). How can you combat this? Start by using only one social media regularly, and once you have a modest following, announce yourself on a new social network. It might be very tempting to just jump on all the platforms your audience are using, but it'll be much harder to stay motivated and energized to regularly post to the same dozen people on different networks. Take a head start with people that already love you. Long-term fans, early adopters and your best clients will usually follow you and will certainly prevent a daunting and baron social experience. Nobody wants that.
BONUS ITEM (woo!) - Replying to yourself
I've noticed this a lot recently, and it seems to have come about from the way Twitter has styled replies on the Tweet-feed. If you tweet something, and then reply to yourself, it looks like a continuation of your original tweet. This is really handy for cleverly adding to your previous post, without CRMMIN LTD O WRDS IN T MK A PNT. Give it a go! These are just some of the tips they touched on, and I'd definitely recommend you check out the podcast. Major kudos to Pat and Laura. This was my favourite episode yet. Did we (the collective we) miss any? Tell us your tips on Twitter.
