tweeting Archives - Nimble Quotes

Tweeting can sometimes feel like talking into the wind. No matter how often you post fantastic sales, tweet web links, or choose quotes to attract new followers, you still don’t get very much engagement or interaction.

Getting interaction on Twitter isn’t impossible—other social media personalities do it all the time! Perhaps it’s time to review your approach. Here are a few best practices that some of the most popular Twitter personalities like Grammar Girl and Ann Handly follow:

Reach out to followers

Don’t just stay in your corner of the Internet! Step out of your cave and interact with people on Twitter (that’s what you’re there for, after all). And the first people you should talk to? Your followers!

Every time you get a new follower, reach out to them and give them a personal greeting. This creates a good first impression and will make them more open to interacting with you in the future. If you missed your chance to greet them, respond to one of their own tweets and join in on a discussion.

Reward followers who respond or reach out

Did your follower reply to you or give you a mention? Or did a follower retweet one of your quotes?

Fantastic! Show your appreciation by retweeting something if theirs, as well! Publicly thank them for their effort. They’re guaranteed to appreciate it. If you can get this cycle of mutual appreciation going, you’ll quickly have a dedicated following.

Don’t spam

But don’t abuse your access to your followers. People aren’t on social media to be sold to. They want a pleasant online experience where they can chat with cool people and maybe learn something new.

Spamming people with offers, sales, or other things will just turn them off. Remember the golden ratio: 20% promotional, 80% non-promotional.

Choose quotes that pop

If you’re struggling for content, choose quotes that appeal to your target audience. Talking to business people? Choose quotes from prominent entrepreneurs or managers like Bill Gates. You can even try quoting movies and films, as long as they’re relevant to your topic.

One thing that really makes quotes pop is having a matching visual image. If you choose quotes that are intellectually appealing and post them with images that are visually appealing, it’s more interesting to readers and may get you a lot more interaction.

Join Twitter chats

A Twitter chat is a pre-arranged chat on a specific topic, which is formed around a particular hashtag. The hashtag links all of the participants’ conversations together to form a pseudo-chat room on Twitter.

This is a great place for you to interact with new people and possible get new followers. You can provide helpful resources like blog links or answer questions. Just make sure the topic is relevant to you, and that you actually do know what you’re talking about. And if you don’t, you can always ask questions. The Twitter crowd can be very helpful!

Try out these tips, and let me know what kind of results you get! Better yet, tweet me and we can have that conversation online!

Reach out to me on Twitter at @jenkellyjen and let’s talk! I look forward to hearing from you!

In this blog post, I mentioned using quotes as part of the content you tweet. Try out Nimble Quotes, our content as a service. Choose quote categories, timing and hashtags. Then sit back, relax and interact with your audience without the time consuming task of searching for your next quote to post. You’ll see 1-8 quotes per day being tweeted from your account automatically as if you tweeted them yourself. Pause, change and personalize at anytime. 30-day free trial, no credit card required.

Tweeting Three Times a Day is OK

I know what you’re thinking, “Three times a day? Isn’t that too much?” The answer is no; it could be just the right amount. “But,” you say, “If I sent out three emails a day to my audience, that would be crazy!” That’s true – three emails per day is too much from a company. But we’re talking Twitter here, not emails. And you have to think of Twitter as a type of broadcaster.

The Difference Between Emails and Twitter

Have you ever agreed to be on a retailer’s mailing list, and then instantly regretted it once you started getting a bunch of emails every day from them? We feel this way because receiving too many emails tends to get irritating fast. They clog up our inbox, it isn’t the right frequency for the medium and this can make us feel inundated.

Twitter, on the other hand, doesn’t work like that – it’s like a broadcaster, an announcer that gives us short, 140-character updates. We go on Twitter expecting to see news and announcements from the people and companies that we’re following. We dip in, we dip out. We don’t stare at Twitter for hours at a time. Neither do the people who follow us. So frequent (relevant, helpful) tweets are just fine. It’s not irritating when a company tweets (relevant and helpful information) multiple times per day – in fact, it’s recommended.

6,000 Tweets per Second

Just to put some context around “tweeting too much” this number might amaze you. “Every second, on average, around 6,000 tweets are tweeted on Twitter, which corresponds to over 350,000 tweets sent per minute, 500 million tweets per day and around 200 billion tweets per year.” Learn more about Twitter usage statistics here.

The More You Tweet, The More You Engage

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Being on Twitter is all about engaging with your audience. And the more (helpful, relevant) tweets you send out, the more opportunities you have to do just that. If you’re sharing good content, that is relevant and helpful to your audience, you’ll tend to get more RTs, favorites and replies. These are all opportunities to start conversations with your followers – the first step in getting to know them.

If you need further proof, many online sources recommend tweeting 3-5 times per day. Check out what Buffer has to say about this topic. A key idea in the article is to view your schedule of tweets as an experiment, and to be comfortable with and open to iterating based on what your analytics say.

The Recommended Frequency of Posting on Social Media

Just like Twitter, other types of social media have a recommended frequency of posts. Generally, it’s recommended for a business to post twice a day on Facebook – more posts than that, and the likes and comments will decrease. LinkedIn’s recommended posting frequency is once per business day. This makes sense, given that LinkedIn users are busy professionals that use the service during work hours.

Do keep in mind that the world is a 24hr place and not all your connections, friends and followers are in your time zone.This is something to considerif you decide to just narrow your window of postings to the business hours in your time zone.

Nimble Quotes can help you with content to post on Twitter no matter how many times per day you choose to tweet. Select from 1-8 thought-provoking quotes per day that are automatically tweeted from your Twitter account to supplement your other content. Check out Nimble Quotes in action on @jenkellyjen or @newimarketing. You can also click here to try us out for a 30-day free trial. After your trial is over, it costs about $1/day or about $1/week to continue. Not ready to try us out just yet? Sign up for our newsletter instead.