Reviewz 'n' Tips

7 Ways to Keep Your Twitter Stream Alive

2011-11-01T09:29:00.000-07:00

The days when Twitter was a revolutionary social media medium are long gone. The micro-blogging platform has already established itself as an important marketing tool for pretty much every serious online (and even offline) entrepreneur out there. I once didn’t realize Twitter’s potential and believed it was nothing more than a time waste.

Anyway, the reason why I believed Twitter was an ineffective way to get people to listen was, because I didn’t know how to use it. As straight-forward as it seems, getting people to follow you and more importantly to trust you, requires more than just tweeting random stuff and sending automated DMs.

Two major components are responsible for your success or failure. Content and engagement that is. This time I'll talk about content and more precisely, where to find content that your followers will like, retweet and discuss. Not talking about self-promoting your own posts (a topic, I will discuss in a later article), but rather finding other people’s articles that are worth sharing.

Create an Email Specifically for your Subscriptions

There are two questions you need to ask yourself before creating a Twitter account. First of them is "What am I trying to achieve" and the second one, which is as equally important is "What my niche is". Knowing your competition, knowing the big faces and also the newcomers in your niche is one of the most important marketing rules. I won't dive into details on doing that, as it is a topic that's been covered numerous times.

The thing is that after having discovered those blogs, you need to start listening to them. The best way to do so is to subscribe to their RSS feeds via email. Using your everyday email though is not a good idea. I have tried it and let me tell you - finding what you are looking for that way can be frustrating as hell. Managing all of the emails becomes a daunting task and finding something specific is like trying to find a needle in haystack.

So if you want the whole subscription process to be effective, go to Yahoo (or any other email service for that matter), create a separate email and use it for all your RSS subscriptions and nothing else. Simple as that.

Take Advantage of Twitter Lists

Twitter lists is a great feature that seems to be disregarded by many. I find that nothing short of strange, since creating a list is probably the most effective way to stay updated on a specific topic without having to read stuff that doesn't interest you at the moment. Most of you are probably following more than a thousand poeple, so expecting to catch all the important information through your Twitter stream is unrealistic to say the least. Not much else to say here. Just log in to your account, find the folks who you know have quality content, create a list and add them there. It couldn't get more straight-forward than that!

Don’t Disregard StumbleUpon’s Potential

Although StumbleUpon is a hugely popular service, it seems like it's being used more for entertainment rather than business. Nowadays pretty much every blogger out there has a Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles set up, However a very small percentage of those folks are taking advantage of StumbleUpon, both as a traffic source and as a way to find information. I definitely don't have a clear explanation as to why that's happening. Yes, building followers is not as easy, as on other service but it isn't mission impossible either.

You can find a ton of great articles, new blogs and websites through StumbleUpon. And to do that, you just need to obey to one simple rule - don't follow random people just to get a follow back. The results you get when clicking the "Stumble" button, hugely depend on who you are following.

In the right side of everyone's profile you can find a pretty neat tool, called a similarity meter. My advice is to not follow anyone with a score of less than 35%. More on the StumbleUpon topic, you can read in my "6-Step Guide to Getting the Most out of StumbleUpon" article.

Keep an Eye on The “Roundup” Articles

The so-called "roundup" posts sum up the best articles of the week on a specific topic. They are normally published on Fridays or Sundays and include posts the author has discovered on other blogs that he or she is following. On some blogs, there is also the option to contact the author with your proposal, which if approved, is added to the roundup post. The good thing about the strategy is that you can pretty much be certain that the included stories are worth the read. The whole point of those kinds of articles is to help the reader, discover new quality blogs.

Dig Deeper into New Blogs you Come Across

All of the above ideas can be a great way for finding quality articles to retweet. Keeping your stream alive however doesn't all come down to that. What you need is diversity. Sharing articles from only three or four blogs, most certainly requires less effort, but at one point or another, poeple will notice what you are doing. Not that it's a bad thing but it just feels like you kinda lack authenticity.

The idea is to keep expanding the number of blogs you are following. Whenever you come across a quality article, spend a couple more minutes on the blog to see whether it's good. If it is, subscribe via your subscription email (which I talked about in the first paragraph).

Check out the Blogging Networks

Yet another way for finding quality content to share with your followers are the blogging networks. Although quite frankly that is a method I'm using quite rarely, if you have more than a few minutes to spare, you can discover some neat stuff.

The problem here is that not all of the stories that are being submitted on sites such as BlogEngage, Blokube and BizSugar are good. A lot of the bloggers submitting there are doing it just for the backlink they receive, without giving back value. If you don't have too much free time on your hands, you can just take a glance at the "Published" section (each of the above mentioned has it), which is where the top voted posts go.

Don’t Put your Focus on Popular Blogs

The more unique content you share on Twitter, the easier it will be for you to stand out and get people interested. That is the number one reason why I avoid retweeting articles from sites such as Mashable for example.

No, quality is not that problem here. But just take a look at the number of retweets each and every article receives there. In some cases it is over a thousand shares. So if your followers are interested in the social media field, you can pretty much be certain that they've already come across trough someone else's retweet. Everyone knows the big names and if poeple want to read them, they'll do it without you having to retweet. That kind of shares make you rather blend with other Twitter users. That, folks, is the last thing you want.

Final Words

That is pretty much how I find what to retweet, Of course you should always fully read what you are about to share. I have heard of a lot of tweeps, who retweet based on the title only, but a great title doesn't not always mean great content. On the other hand who knows what kind of discussion something you've shared can spark - you need to be prepared to reply!

What Charlie Sheen can Teach us About Marketing

2011-10-27T11:10:00.000-07:00

Reviewz 'n' Tips

7 Ways to Keep Your Twitter Stream Alive

Create an Email Specifically for your Subscriptions

Take Advantage of Twitter Lists

Don’t Disregard StumbleUpon’s Potential

Keep an Eye on The “Roundup” Articles

Dig Deeper into New Blogs you Come Across

Check out the Blogging Networks

Don’t Put your Focus on Popular Blogs

Final Words

What Charlie Sheen can Teach us About Marketing

9 Random Tips on Improving your Writing Skills

Do You Actually Have Something to Say?

Talent and It’s Role in Writing

Practice - It's All about it!

Reading and Writing go Hand by Hand

Don't Consider Length a Decisive Factor

Learn and Apply New Words

Don't Rush Into Editing

Reading out Loud Helps

Be Willing to Accept Criticism

Final Words

How Theatre Can Improve Customer Service

Warm up your audience

Manage your environment

Stay in the moment

Show appreciation

Post Production

In Blogging It’s not Who You Are - It’s What you Do

Reading and Research Were First on the List

Then it was Time to Set Some Goals

I Tried to be as Specific as Possible

A bit of Prioritization Followed

I Focused on Reaching the Goals

I was Always Trying to Look at the Bright Side

Your Turn

Top 7 Twitter Tools To Cover All Your Tweeting Needs

Twylah – Giving Your Tweets A Longer Lifetime

Buffer – Posting Great Content At The Best Times

WhoTweetedMe – Who Is Tweeting Your Blogposts?

Klout for Chrome – Learn Who Is Influential At A Glance

TweetDeck – Engaging With Followers Fast And Easy

Triberr – Building your closest Twitter tribe

TwitSprout – Closer Insights Into Your Twitter Performance

My 31 Days to Build a Better Blog

Main Takeaway Tips

What I achieved

Best Days of Building a Better Blog

Hardest Days of Building a Better Blog

What would I do differently?

Going Forward

7 Myths Surrounding the Twitter Universe

100 “Targeted” Followers is Better than 10,000 “Non-Targeted”

Going for Quantity Equals Neglecting Quality

Retweeting Your Own Posts is Bad

Engaging with Others is What Brings the Visits

A Couple of Tweets per Day is More than Enough

Tweeting Ten Times an Hour Equals a Ton of Traffic

Tweeting Quotes is a Bad Idea

Your Turn

Managing your Online Blogging Reputation Across Languages

The Who, The What, The Where

Are You Talking About Me?

Time To Talk

4 Reasons Why You Should Be Writing Every Single Day

It Builds your Writing Confidence

It Improves your Writing Speed

It Improves your Article’s Readability

It is The Most Effective Cure Against Writer’s Block

Conclusion

5 Tips for Lawsuit Free Blogging (Or Doing Anything Online)

Copyright? Copywrong!

Beware of Confusion

To Criticize or Not to Criticize, That is the Question

Not Music to My Ears

Don’t Ignore It

5 Easy Ways to Improve your Writing Efficiency

Research is a Good Thing but Don’t Overdo

Start with The Title and Subheadings

Feel Free to Skip a Paragraph