Increasing your Twitter following

[Matt Stephens]

You might all enjoy reading the Buffer blog. Lots of good info.

I do quite a bit of social media management in my role as an inbound marketer, and that blog is one of my regular reads.

It's worth noting that there's been a fair amount of research that indicates you'll get the best engagement with tweets that are under 100 characters.

And use photos when you can, because they occupy more real estate in feeds.

As always, be sure to be constantly engaging with your followers. During Jim McElwain's exodus from CSU to Florida, I gained about 1,500 followers in six hours (and have since lost about 700 of them because UF fans don't care too much about CSU news anymore). A big part of that was working hard to remain on top of the story and using sources to move it forward, but a lot of it was just replying with useful information, even if you've answered the same question 50 times in an hour. Your followers will be appreciative.

Engage, use photos and try to have some fun.

 

[Sports Guy]

Glad you enjoy social networking. I'm more prone to writing an extra notebook on the NFL. Rather inform reader with a story instead of a tweet, but that's my preference.

 

[BDC99]

What does it say about the business that there have been two posts on the Online Journalism board this month, and the one before that was in April?

 

[ADodgen]

Glad you enjoy social networking. I'm more prone to writing an extra notebook on the NFL. Rather inform reader with a story instead of a tweet, but that's my preference.

They're not mutually exclusive. You should be marketing the content you produce, and twitter is a perfectly fine way to do that.

 

[Sports Guy]

Thanks. I do use twitter to promote my stories.

 

[Rhody31]

Last year I started a site that covers a reality show. I live tweet the show and, when I'm up for it, will do it for both East Coast and West Coast viewing. There is a good bulk of my audience on the west coast, but with a second kid in the house now, staying up that late to be up that early is not especially good for my sanity.
Is there a way I can schedule tweets - say, whatever I post at 8 pm will post again 3 hours later?

 

[MNgremlin]

Is there a way I can schedule tweets - say, whatever I post at 8 pm will post again 3 hours later?

Tweetdeck

 

[Rhody31]

Tweetdeck

What is that? An app? Or just a site?

 

[Matt Stephens]

What is that? An app? Or just a site?

Both. You can use it in browser or download for desktop/mobile. We just switched over to HootSuite to better manage all social platforms, not just Twitter.

Rhoddy, I have to ask, what show?

 

[lantaur]

Tweetdeck is no longer available on mobile platforms IIRC.

 

[BB Bobcat]

I interact a lot with followers. They seem to appreciate it but I'm not sure how much it really grows my following.

One thing I would suggest is a policy I created for myself a few months ago: I will happily respond to all reasonable questions but I will rarely respond to comments or observations. It just opens up too much pointless debating. At least among my followers.

Also, make use of the "mute" feature. It's much better than blocking annoying people because they don't know they are muted. They still see your tweets but you don't see theirs or their comments to you.

I also find it useful for other writers who I like personally but whose beats I don't care about. I like for my friends to think I'm following them without them cluttering my feed.

 

[Rhody31]

I've been trying to schedule tweets using TweetDeck, but can't seem to figure it out. My issue is I need to tweet something at 8:05 pm and need to tweet it again at 11:05 p.m. How can I do this without sending the tweet, then copying and pasting it to a scheduled tweet? Is there a way?