There are a lot of articles out there that provide advice on how to develop a strategy for Twitter, however once you have a strategy, it can be challenging to implement if you don’t know HOW to act on the tactics. This article discusses several key objectives we all want to do on Twitter and how to go about putting them in to play.

Please note: this post will not define Twitter marketing strategy. Instead, it will show you the best ways to make Twitter work for you so you can achieve your objectives.

How to Find New Followers

  • Look at who is following your competitors. Scan their past tweets and see what they have been tweeting about. If relevant to you, follow them and engage them by responding to one of their tweets or RTing something valuable they’ve posted.
  • Find a link that is a hot topic to do with your industry, enter it on BrandMentions and see who has been tweeting about it. For example, say I was looking for new followers interested in elephants. I come across this article titled “The Last Day of the Elephant Female.” I enter this link into Topsy, and out pops all people that have tweeted about it. If you highlight over the tweeters, it allows you to follow them directly from Topsy.

How to Find Influencers to Engage With

A great tool for finding influencers is Klout. Klout tells you who your most influential followers are. I make an effort to check this once a week and ensure to keep an eye on what they are writing about. Klout also lets you look at who the top influencers are for other accounts. Try typing in a competitor account, review their top influencers and if there are any you want to connect with, engage them!

 

How to Quickly View What’s Relevant in Your Twitter Feed

One of the best ways to quickly determine what is relevant in your Twitter feed and what is being said in your area of interest is by using a social media management platform.  My personal favorite is Hootsuite. Hootsuite allows you to easily filter your newsfeed into multiple streams of your choosing. You can create streams for hashtags, keywords, mentions, etc..  Below is a screenshot of the Hootsuite dashboard. Notice how the first list is the regular home feed, the second is any tweet with the hashtag “elephants” and the third is any tweet that mentions “@DSWT.” This can be customized in any way that is relevant to your account.

 

How to Write Tweets About an Article

Often finding valuable things to tweet about for the week is easy. There is great content out there. The difficult part is coming up with intriguing tweets to accompany the links. One way to get ideas is to enter that link into a site like Topsy and see what others have written about it. Find what tweet has worked well and RT it or modify it and post it as your own!

 

How to Schedule Tweets

Use a social media management platform such as Hootsuite to schedule your tweets for the week. I recommend taking one day a week and scheduling a variety of tweets for the upcoming week. All your tweets don’t have to be scheduled but if you have tweets lined up, it takes the pressure off of you to be posting all day long! I still keep an eye on my twitter during the week and tweet on top of these scheduled posts however it does take the pressure off of my busy schedule. One great feature of Hootsuite is the ability to upload a mass amount of tweets from a csv file. This can be a great time saver. If you want to find out when is the best time to tweet (based on how many of your followers are online and the probability of the highest engagement) try out Social Bro.

Final note: we have assembled a list of excellent web marketing tools in case you are in need of assistance with your campaigns. Also, if you have any questions about this post you can comment below or you can always ask us for a free web marketing consultation.