Creating a Social Media Plan {day nine}

Welcome to Day Nine of the Write 31 challenge!  If this is your first time stopping by, head over to Day One to get started from the beginning, and now on to Day Nine…

Today we’re going to work on putting together a plan for using Twitter effectively. The goal today is to create a rough draft of your Twitter plan and then put it into practice over the next couple of weeks. Then on Day 29 we’re going to put all of the pieces together so you have one master social media plan. So don’t feel like you should have a perfect plan for Twitter by the end of today! Today should be about getting the plan started.

Sharing Your Content

Twitter is a great place to share the content, blog posts, products, services, you are offering to your followers. The tricky thing about Twitter is that the feed moves really quickly so what you share on Twitter is only relevant for a very brief amount of time (we’re talking less than a minute!)…but that means you can share things more than once. When I finish writing and scheduling a post, I schedule several tweets to share the content. This way I don’t have to think about it the day the post goes live because I’ve already scheduled the post to be shared. I use Buffer for this but you can look into other services such as HootSuite.

Sharing Others’ Content

If you didn’t get the message yesterday, it is very important to share other people’s content on Twitter! A good rule of thumb is to share other people’s content more often than you share your own. What I do to make this happen is use a scheduling service (again I use Buffer, but there are other options) to make sure I always have a steady stream of content from other people. Every day I spend some time going through my BlogLovin feed or browsing my Twitter lists and when I see content I think my readers will like I add it to my scheduled feed. This ensures that I am constantly sharing other people’s content…right now my feed is filled anywhere from 5-7 days out and my goal is to keep it that way!

Engaging with Others

Twitter is a social media platform…please note the social part of the name! Twitter is not just about sharing content from yourself and others…it’s about engaging with people! I have found Twitter to be a great place to connect with brands, other people in your niche, or people with similar interests…I love tweeting at 9pm on Thursday nights because there are others watching Scandal!

Making a Plan

Download the SM Twitter Printable and then we’re going to use what we’ve talked about over the last three days to put together your Twitter plan.

Tasks to Complete Daily – This is going to look different for each person because everyone has different Twitter goals. Use this space to write down everything you would like to do related to Twitter each day and then try completing the various tasks over the next few weeks. Then when we put the final plan together you can pick out the tasks that were most effective. Here are a few of the things on my daily task list for Twitter…spend time adding to my scheduled feed of other people’s content, checking my Twitter lists, responding to notifications, finding and following new people.

Best Times for MY Audience – If you do a search you will find quite a few different articles, infographs, blog posts, and suggestions about the best time to post on Twitter. But here is what I find difficult about that…when it says the best time to post is 1-3pm do they mean Eastern time, Pacific time, or do they mean 2pm in the land down under?!?

Here is what I recommend doing…keep track of when you are sharing content during the next few weeks and then track the engagement. If you share your post on Twitter at 9am, 1pm, and 4pm, which one gets the most clicks, retweets, and favorites? Once you start to track when the best times are for YOUR audience, you will find it easier to schedule your tweets. Since this can be time consuming, my Buffer service comes with a report of my top performing tweets so I use that to see when my best times are to tweet.

Growing my Twitter Following – Use this space to jot down any ideas you have for growing your Twitter following…you can find ideas from the posts from the previous few days and any other posts or tips you’ve read about Twitter. Throughout the month, jot down more ideas and then at the end of the month we’ll settle on a few to try.

As I mentioned earlier, what you write down on this printable is simply your rough draft…we’ll be finalizing details towards the end of the month.

If you have any questions about this, please feel free to leave them in the comments below or email me at girlonthemoveblog01 {at} gmail {dot} com

What questions do you have about Twitter? Do you use Twitter chats or lists?  I’d also love to make sure we’re connected on Twitter, so leave a link to your Twitter below!