Regardless of whether you love it, or hate it, Twitter can be a great asset to your small business… when used properly!
Today we are going to be looking into 3 reasons I love Twitter, how to get over your fear of not knowing what to post, and lastly: we will end with some actionable prompts that will help you start incorporating Twitter into your businesses daily social media habits.
Let’s dive straight in, shall we?
1. No media? No problem! While other platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and Youtube seem to be chasing short form video content that emulates Tiktok, Twitter remains a space on the internet where you can still survive (and grow!) via posting text based content. Yes, you read that correctly. Although visual assets certainly do help you stand out and create a more varied body of content on your twitter feed, you don’t need to rely on photos, graphics, or videos in order to get your message out there.
2. 240 Characters or less. While most other spaces on the internet want you to write essays to accompany your content, twitter wants the opposite. Bite sized pieces of information in 240 characters or less. Learning how to scale down your characters without scaling down the impact of your message can be challenging, but is something that you will get better at, I promise. With such a low character threshold, creating multiple tweets a minute is actually possible.
3. It’s easy to study. Studying twitter and what kind of posts perform well has never been easier! Follow accounts of businesses and people that you admire and study the content that they are releasing. Which ones get the most retweets, likes and comments? What do you resonate with the most? Find something that works for them, that you feel might work for you, and give it a try. It is one of the easiest platforms to experiment on, because (as we previously talked about in benefit number 1 and 2) the time involved in creating content is miniscule compared to other platforms. Once you start creating content of your own, you can access your own analytics and study which of your posts perform better than others. Invaluable, FREE tools that can help you better understand where you should be focusing your efforts on Twitter.
So, now that we’ve talked about some benefits, let’s address the elephant in the room:
How to get over your fear of not knowing what to post!
The easiest way to get over this fear of not knowing what to post is to be active within the community BEFORE you try to create your own content/start your own conversations within the community.
Sound a bit like a catch 22? Let me try to break it down a bit better.
Twitter is a community that is built of thousands of smaller communities. Groups of people who follow certain pages, or subjects, and are fiercely loyal to them. When I say that the easiest way to get over your fear of not knowing what to post is to be active within the community, I don’t mean that I want you to create new content and shout it into the twittersphere - although, if you feel like you’ve got things to say, by all means give that a go…
No, I’m suggesting that in order to get over your fear of not knowing what to post, you take away the task of needing to decide what to post. How can you do this, you may ask?
By engaging with other people’s content on twitter.
Hundreds of thousands of people, just like you, are trying to create valuable content on Twitter every day; and if they’re doing it properly, they will have created content that is easy to engage with. Content that prompts you to answer with your opinion, or provides enough value that you feel you want to share it with your audience. If you are stuck on knowing what to post on twitter, find accounts that provide value to their audiences and join in on their conversations by following their prompts when they pop up in your feed. This will also help demonstrate the kind of content that provides engagement opportunities, which is really valuable when you move towards crafting your own.
Before you know it, you’ll feel more confident in speaking on the platform, and as a direct result: more confident in starting conversations on twitter!
Actionable task:
Today: I want you to follow 5 accounts within your niche who are regularly active on the platform. What does regularly active on the platform mean? In this scenario, I mean accounts that post a minimum of once a day. These can be competitors, publications, prospective clients, ect. Then, I want you to turn the notification bell on for their posts, so you get notifications whenever they tweet.
For the next 7 days: I want you to work the following into your schedule, at least once per day!
- “Like” one of their tweets.
- Comment on one of their tweets.
- “Share” one of their tweets.
- “Share” one of their tweets, with a comment that includes some of your own input/opinion.
No sales talk, or self promotion allowed! You would never walk into a house party, guns blazing, high-jacking other people's conversations to promote yourself or your services. Don’t be the person who does this on social media. Your goal with this task is to provide value and be a part of the conversation, not steal it.
Challenge yourself to accomplish this in less than 5 minutes. As the week progresses, if you have more time, try to get some additional actions done within your 5 minute window. Good luck!
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