twitter Archives - Page 3 of 4

Aug 11 2015

Where Do My Tweets Go?

Are you new to Twitter? Have you been wondering exactly what happens when you send out a tweet? How do you know who will see it?

How Do I Post a Tweet?

First things first: how do you post the tweet? Make sure you’re signed in to your Twitter account. There are a couple of ways to begin posting: if you are on the home screen, you can either go to the box at the top of your timeline and type the tweet in there,

or you can click on the tweet button at the top right of the screen.

A box will pop up where you can type in what you’d like to post.

Then you just click on the Tweet button and you’re done!

Twitter has instructions you can check out here.

What Happens After I’ve Tweeted?

Once you’ve posted your tweet, you’ll see it appear on both your profile page and your Home timeline. What’s the Home timeline, you ask? That’s the feed you see when you sign in to Twitter, where you can look at the recent tweets of everyone you’re following. And that’s also where your followers will see YOUR new tweet appear. Here’s the difference:

This is my profile with a screen shot as I write this:

And this is my home screen as I write this (note that between the time I pulled up the screen and took the screenshot, 5 more tweets were posted. Don’t worry about posting too much with that kind of volume! But tweet frequency, that is another story.)

What If Someone Retweets Me?

Once you’ve sent out a tweet, there’s a chance one or more of your followers will retweet it. Just what is a retweet? It’s when someone re-posts your tweet onto their Twitter feed. Through this feature, they can share your tweet with all of their followers. This is great – it means that something you’ve tweeted struck a chord with one of your followers, and they decided to share it with their audience. They even have the option of adding a comment along with it.

But how do you know if someone has retweeted you? Easy – just go to the Notifications section by clicking on “Notifications” in the bar on the top of your screen. There you’ll see if any of your tweets have been retweeted.

Here’s an example of a notification I got when Tina Gaisin of Fill The Room, and a fellow CAMP member, retweeted one of my tweets.

Here is what a retweet looks like in the timeline. In this example, I follow WQW, and they retweeted a tweet by an account I don’t follow.

To learn more, here is the official information from Twitter on retweets.

Try Tweeting, Try Retweeting

Over to you. Get sharing the excellent information your followers and those you follow are tweeting. Good luck and if you need any help, tweet to me @jenkellyjen or email jen[at]nimblequotes[dot]com.

Try Tweeting Quotes About Work and Goals!

If you’d like more RTs and follows, why not try tweeting uplifting quotes? Nimble Quotes, which has inspiring quotes about work and the joys of going for your goals, offers a 30-day free trial so you can try them out for yourself! You’ll get 1-8 thought-provoking quotes per day, automatically tweeted from your Twitter account. Once your trial is over, it costs about $1/day or about $1/week to continue. Check out Nimble Quotes in action on @jenkellyjen or @newimarketing. Not ready for a trial just yet? Sign up for our newsletter instead.

Aug 04 2015

Tweeting: How Much Is Too Much?

If you are new to Twitter, you may be asking yourself just how much should I be tweeting? How many tweets per day are enough for me to engage with my audience, without going overboard?

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

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.

Jul 31 2015

To Quote or Not to Quote: A Nimble Quotes Twitter FAQ

Over the course of my work, I’ve fielded a lot of questions about quotes and their use on Twitter. I thought I’d take the opportunity to share some of what I’ve learned with you so you can understand how quotes can help you build those Twitter relationships.

Here’s a simple FAQ quotes and Twitter:

Why should I tweet quotes?

There’s a number of great reasons to tweet quotes, but I’m going to start with the most practical: If you seriously plan on increasing your social media presence, you’re going to need to tweet a lot of content. And it should be content that represents you/your brand well, and is helpful for your audience.

Tweeting comes very easily to some people. They can come up with tweets at a snap of their fingers, but they probably have been doing it for a while and may already have a strong Twitter following. You, on the other hand, may not have that muscle yet, and need some help.

Collecting and using quotes are a great way to share clever, insightful and funny thoughts with your followers. When sharing content on Twitter, it can’t be all about you. A good mix of content is helpful for your audience.

I often use a cocktail party as an example. You wouldn’t just talk about yourself at a party, would you? No, you’d talk a bit about what you do, ask questions about what others did, share a joke, and talk about things that were of general interest to the group you were having a conversation with. You may even introduce someone into the group who just joined the party. You get the idea.

The same applies on Twitter. You know how I mentioned discussing a variety of subjects discussed at a cocktail party? This is a great way to could apply to your content on Twitter. Share quotes, share your latest blog, share articles from your industry publications, share blogs from colleagues writing about issues that affect your industry, share industry conference details, and then promote yourself. 80% of the content you share should be about other people. Only 20% should be promoting yourself. That’s a good “base ratio” to work with. Gary Vanerchuck referenced this curation philosophy in his

Quotes are also helpful in breaking up the monotony of talking about work. There’s more to life than that! I’ve noticed (no stats on this yet, we’re working on it) that quotes get an enormous amount of engagement on Twitter. It’s like the quote is saying “we don’t need to talk business all the time.” It can give us an appropriate and safe way to connect with others online with out sharing too much too early.

With a library of quotes, you can then have time to come up with content that is original, more artfully produced and more you. This helps you engage with people better online.

Is there a right and wrong way to use quotes?

Absolutely! For one thing, all of your quotes should be attributed to the person who said/wrote it.

Tweeting another person’s statements/observations without attribution might appear like you’re taking credit for that person’s words. Your source might not appreciate that. And this is not exactly the impression you want to give to potential fans, clients and colleagues.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with attributing a quote. In fact, it makes your tweet more powerful because of your source’s authenticity. Think about it: whose business quote is more impactful? A random entrepreneur nobody’s heard of, or Henry Ford’s? The latter, for sure!

Also, always remember to hashtag your quotes. This can really help spread your tweet far beyond your usual social media circle. (I’ve spoken about ) To get started, some common hashtags used with quotes are #quote, #quotes, #QOTD, #QuoteOfTheDay

Which ones should I use?

Try to find quotes and categories of quotes that reflect who you are as a brand, a company, a person. This goes for both the message and the person saying it.

Once you start looking for quotes, you may be as amazed, as I was, about the depth and breadth of quotes. All kinds of topics have fabulous quotes. There are hundreds if not thousands of quotes about business alone, not to mention sales, entrepreneurship and real estate.

The quote itself should communicate the same ideals and values that you yourself treasure. Hard work, integrity, dedication, etc. You may even find quotes that say what you always wanted to say but could never find the right words. You can also use quotes that express your personality: funny, irreverent, or upbeat.

The quote’s source should also be someone you respect. Just a few weeks ago Donald Trump made himself a public spectacle, and as a result many people (myself included) would now rather not quote him at all.

Where do I find good quotes?

There are a lot of places where you can find great quotes online.

Wikiquote is a publicly available database of crowdsourced quotes (meaning anyone can add to the database). One danger of that though is that because it’s crowdsourced, it’s hard to tell if the quote is attributed to the right person.

Brainyquote is another great database. Each quote listed there has a share button that makes it easy for you to post it on your social media feed.

And there’s Nimble Quotes, of course. What differentiates Nimble Quotes from the other two is that you decide which genre and categories of quotes you want, and we do all the tweeting for you based on a schedule that you pick. No manual tweeting!

Sounds good? Take it for a test drive!

Jul 24 2015

5 Simple Ways to Develop Relationships on Twitter

When you look at social media, do you feel like the awkward person at the party? The one who stands in the corner of the room while this other person draws all the attention? Well, you don’t have to be ashamed. A lot of people feel that way. But that doesn’t mean you have to stay that way.

When you as a brand are trying to develop a relationship on Twitter, I’m not talking about the creepy stalker kind or the faux-familial kind. I’m just talking about developing a close connection with other people online—customers or otherwise. But even this needs a lot of trust between you and them, and this needs to be built up over time.

But every great journey begins with a single step, and I’m going to show you a few ways you can start off on the right foot.

1. Offer great customer service

If customers have any issues, they’ll try to reach out to you in any way they can—and that includes Twitter. And since Twitter is such a public venue, it’s in your best interest to provide them with the best possible customer experience online. Customers will remember brands that treat them well, and will want to re-engage with them. So you’re setting the right tone for your long-term relationship by making customers happy from the get-go.

2. Curator of great information

“Curate” in this context involves sharing information that your customers will find valuable. This includes both your own content and other people’s. Articles, reports, pictures, insightful quotes, etc. Whatever your customer might find interesting. Your goal here is to have them follow you because you always share interesting and relevant things.

3. Thank everyone who RTs or promotes

People on Twitter don’t need to share or promote your content. So when they do retweet you, you absolutely must thank them. It shows them you appreciate their attention (and you should), and encourages them to do it again.

4. Participate in conversations that aren’t about you

Remember my engagement tip from last post? Don’t be afraid to go beyond your own feed and participate in other people’s conversations. If you’re a lawyer and someone on Twitter is asking for legal advice, for example, jump in with a quick tip or suggestion. Just make sure you really do have expertise in whatever they’re asking (and that it’s related to what your business actually does).

5. Ask questions and share results

Turn the tables and ask your own questions! It’s a great way to know your followers and gives plenty of opportunities to start one-on-one conversations, which is a huge step towards building relationships. If you use the right hashtag, you may be able to attract even more answers!

Although it might seem intimidating or confusing at first, Twitter is a lot like that party I was describing earlier. You want to make connections. The standard social norms apply, of course: don’t be creepy or salesy, don’t lie, be nice and polite, etc. But really, if you want to develop relationships on Twitter, you just need to do one thing: talk to people like they’re people.

Sign up for the Nimble Quotes newsletter to receive the newest tips on how to start Twitter conversations and enhance your online experience.

Jul 17 2015

Engagement on Twitter: You Can Do It Too

One of the best and most important uses for Twitter is engaging your audience. In fact, Twitter is probably the best social network at engagement. It allows you to start, find and participate in other people’s conversations without coming off as intrusive (in most cases). And you can reap the benefits of engagement (and maybe even start enjoying yourself) if you can just master the basics.

But I’m getting ahead of myself! Let’s take a step back.

What is “engagement,” anyway?

“Engagement” in this context can be summed up in one word: interaction. It involves listening and talking to customers on your social media network (Twitter or otherwise) in a genuine and timely manner. They talk to you, you talk back. Hopefully they’ll return the favor.

What do I get out of it?

A lot! Engagement on Twitter can mean a lot of things. Good customer service engagement increases customer satisfaction and loyalty. Brands that excel at starting Twitter conversations are more effective at their social media marketing than those that don’t make the attempt. In fact, Twitter released a whitepaper that said 70% of users felt more confident about a SMB after following and reading their tweets.

If you do it right, Twitter engagement can supercharge your digital marketing efforts. The Social Media Examiner released a report that said 90% of all marketers surveyed indicated that social media generated more exposure for their business.

So that begs the question: “how do I do it right?”

The Right Way

There are a few common best practices that make for great Twitter engagement:

Timely replies – Twitter’s a very fast-paced platform, where a single tweet can disappear in minutes. As a result, conversations get obsolete very fast. In fact, a survey by Convince and Convert found that 32% of respondents expect a response time of 30 minutes after posting a complaint on social media. So when you see someone mention you on Twitter, jump on it as soon as you can!
Keep your brand personality – “Brand personality” on Twitter isn’t just your avatar or your account name. The way you interact with people on Twitter should be the same as how you interact with customers in real life. Keep it consistent. Are your tweets funny? Clever? Insightful? Considerate? Stay true to your brand!
Stay relevant – If you’re posting under your company account (and not a personal account), keep your tweets relevant to your industry. Only participate in related conversations. If your brand is a bakery, don’t jump into a conversation about dogs (unless you’re making a dog-themed cake).

The Wrong Way

As you start exploring Twitter conversations, you may be tempted to do some pretty awful things. Things like:

Selling yourself – There are lots of brands that use Twitter as their own advertising space. That’s a big no-no. People are going to run away from your Twitter feed if it only contains links to ads and self-promotional things.
Getting into arguments – You’re going to encounter angry customers on Twitter, or people who just don’t like you. That’s only to be expected. But do not get into an argument with them online. Always be professional, because Twitter never forgets.

The Best Advice

Now, all this may sound intimidating, but don’t worry. I’ve got a tip that will simplify everything for you. Ready?

Act like you’re talking to friends.

Stay pleasant, stay true to your brand and before you know it you’ll find that engaging on Twitter can actually be a whole lot of fun!

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