It’s not a secret that social media is like the little black dress of marketing, branding, and public relations; you must have it now in order to complete your personal brand’s wardrobe. Without it and without using it properly, your personal brand will get lost in the noise of the crowded social media landscape.
Twitter is one social media platform where you can easily find yourself swimming in the dark. I felt the same way when I first joined the Twitterverse and never thought I would catch onto the trend. I never thought it would evolve into the networking machine that it is today. Feeling I needed to explore and master this landscape in order to grow my personal brand, I began to dig deep. There are multiple Twitter tactics you can use to grow your personal brand, but I thought I would give you a crash course on the five tactics that I use to grow.
Click through to see the 5 tips I have for Twitter to help grow your brand.
1. Engage:
When I began to devote time to my personal Twitter account, the engagement aspect was second nature for me. I began to follow people who I felt had something important to say, who were interesting, and who were professionals in my industry. I started to favorite tweets, respond to tweets, and retweet tweets. It is important to know that if you want people to listen to you and acknowledge you, then you must listen to them and acknowledge them. If someone mentions you and follows you, respond to them and thank them. If someone has great content, then you should retweet. The more I began to experiment with this, the more people began to engage with me. Another form of engagement is to find weekly chats and join in on the conversations. It’s important to join chats that are relevant to your brand’s voice. You can also engage with hashtags, but be careful to not over use. One to two hashtags are ok. Also, make sure that you are using appropriate hashtags when engaging and not hashtags that could group your content with content that is sensitive, offensive.
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2. Craft:
Rich content is one of the most important components of engagement and personal brand growth. Content comes in a variety of forms. When you only have 140 characters to work with, you have to be creative with your copy. When creating your content, it’s important to pick topics and make goals to start from. You want to have a content strategy. Words can sink ships and build empires, so you need to choose your words wisely. Adweek gave 5 examples of corporate Twitter fails in 2013. This shows the power of words, so you must remember why you are doing what you are doing, who your audience is, and what you want to achieve. I don’t always tweet original content. I like to mix it up. I enjoy finding interesting articles and retweeting them with my thoughts. Make sure that the content you are retweeting falls in line with your brand, however.
3. Capture:
Images have become an integral piece of brand building. According to Rocket Post, 40 million photos are uploaded to Instagram each day. Seeing the importance of images, Twitter decided to add inline images to tweets in 2013. You no longer have to click a link in a tweet to view the image, rather you can scroll through your Twitter feed and see the images. Buffer experimented with inline images and saw that their tweets with inline images received 150% more retweets, 18% more clicks, and 89% more favorites. You want to capture high quality photos that speak to your brand. Just like copy, you want to make sure your images are brand appropriate. Images can also help you if you are having a difficult time with copy. Let your photo guide your copy. Sometimes all I need is to look at a photo and the copy flows. Here is an example of a tweet where I used the photo to spark my creative copy while creating some social for White Whale. I found a focal point in the photo and started there. You may want to create a folder that you can have archived photos that could be great fodder for content to place on twitter. Think of it as a roladex of photos.
4. Manage:
It can become difficult to manage your Twitter account without proper organization. You don’t want to spend twelve hours a day staring at your Twitter, and you want to tweet at appropriate times. It’s crucial to manage the time you tweet and the value of your tweets so that they do not fall to the wayside. After months of experimenting and researching, I have learned that the prime time to tweet is between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. Depending on where your audience is located, you can tweet before and after these times. Sites like Buffer can help you figure out the most optimal time for your audience. You also do not want to tweet more than 14 times a day because people will stop listening. Scheduling tweets can help you to organize your time, and keep you from over posting. Create content or find articles that you want to share throughout the day and schedule them. Two of my favorite programs for management and scheduling are Tweet Deck and Buffer. You can schedule tweets, monitor notifications and trends, and see your top tweets. If you are looking for a great way to organize how much time you spend a day on social media, PR Daily offers a great 34 minute a day social media management guide.
5. Stay Consistent:
Once you have established your presence on Twitter, you need to keep your brand’s voice unique and remain active. You probably spent countless hours developing your brand’s voice. A tweet that does not line up with your brand’s tone can confuse your audience. It can also mean that your brand does not have a cohesive mission. Knowing and committing to your voice will keep your audience engaged. Your voice is not the only thing that needs to stay consistent; you need to make sure you are staying consistent with the time you spend on Twitter. If you are active seven days a week, then you need to stay active. You don’t want to drop off the Twitter map especially if you have established consisted activity. Your followers will expect this from you.
I hope that my 5 point crash course on Twitter has helped. The social media landscape is constantly changing. If you don’t keep up with new trends you can find yourself lost. It doesn’t take long, but a couple hours of research a month can keep you in the know. There are multiple resources available, and guess what, they all have Twitter accounts. Some of my favorite resources to comb through are Rocket Post, Mashable, and Social Media Today. Find your favorites, follow them, and learn from them.
