How do you build personal two-way relationships with your fans, without letting your social media life take over all your time? The key is to have a set of habits that you repeat over and over, without having to constantly stop and think about it.
Here’s how to make interacting with your fans easy.
Check @replies, @mentions and DMs Twice Daily
Check your @replies, your @mentions and your DMs once in the morning and once in the evening. Respond to anyone who’s talking to you or talking about you.
Once you’re done, don’t check it again until your next scheduled check time.
Don’t make the mistake of constantly checking your messages or your @replies throughout the day. Not only does this suck up time, but it breaks your concentration from other work.
Check your direct communication just twice daily. It’s enough to make sure you get back to everyone in a timely fashion, but not so much that it distracts you from other things.
Say Hi in the Morning
When you sign on in the morning, say “hi” to your Twitter feed. This lets people know you’re online and gets active users started on interacting with you.
Schedule Some, Do Some Live
Try to do a mix of live posting and scheduled posting.
If you do just scheduled posting, your tweets can come off a little clinical. It doesn’t have the spontaneous feel that a lot of Twitter users look for.
On the other hand, doing just live posting can be incredibly distracting. You’re constantly logging on Twitter, which keeps you from doing other things.
The best way to do it is to have a mix of both scheduling and live posting.
Message Active Fans Directly
Get in the habit of messaging your biggest fans directly.
If you don’t reach out and build a personal relationship with the people who’re following you, there’s a good chance they could lose interest in time.
But if you take the to drop them a “Thank You” note directly or to acknowledge them publicly through an @reply, they’ll follow you much more avidly.
Identify active fans and reach out.
Look for Ways to Systematize
Look for ways to systematize whenever possible. If you notice yourself doing something routine over and over again, look for a way to automate it.
For instance, if you find yourself checking your Twitter stats at the end of the day every day, why not sign up for a tool that will email you all the stats at a certain time every day?
Interacting with your fans doesn’t have to be hard or time consuming. These tips will help you take the stress out of managing your social media, so you can be self-expressed and connect with your audience.
How do you check your twitter stats. I’m wondering if I’m missing a big chuck of what Twitter does for you?
Hey Lisa – great question. I automate some of my Twitter tweets, mainly due to my large following. I feel I need to push out a lot of content and scheduling it out according to my editorial calendar really helps me. Having said that, there are different applications out there which will allow to you both schedule and measure you impact via analytics. Some free, some paid. I am sure you have used Hootsuite and another freebie is Buffer. Both can be upgraded to a paid version for a monthly fee – which allows you access to additional features. My personal favorite is SproutSocial. SproutSocial is a complete social media dashboard. They are somewhat pricey, but where they really excel is in the reporting department. Twitter is all about engagement. If you are not actively responding and connecting with your followers, you are not going to have any impact, i.e. convert them to clients or customers. Sprout provides you with an amazing set of tools which make engagement easy, as well as follow-up. You can also assign this task easily to a VA. Their reports don’t just keep tabs on your followers, it also tells you how effective you are being engagement-wise – and that is what you need to know when you are trying to build your network in Twitter.
I hope this helps!
Happy Mother’s Day,
Lisa