I found an interesting post on Inside Facebook today about using Hootsuite to post to Facebook. Those of you who have been following my blog for a while will know I’m a big fan of Hootsuite (affiliate link). I rarely use it for Facebook but from time to time I need to schedule posts if I’m not going to be around, It’s important to be consistant and Hootsuite scheduling allows me to do this even when I’m with clients or teaching a course.
The disadvantage of using Hootsuite for Facebook according to the article is that Facebook penalises your content as it comes from a third party app. This means posts sent from it are less likely to appear in the ‘Top News’ feed of Facebook users and may get overlooked.
I do use Hootsuite scheduling far more frequently for Twitter, in fact I use it on a daily basis. Unlike Facebook there is no penalty for using third party apps to post on Twitter.
Whenever I mention scheduling it usually sparks a debate. There are advantages and disadvantages but used properly I believe it can help you create an effective social media strategy.
The argument against scheduling
The idea of scheduling makes some people prickle and I think I understand why, social media is social, users value authenticity and interaction, the perception is that if you schedule you don’t care, you are not there to respond. However I don’t believe we should all be chained to our computers or phones all day long to interact on Twitter. Scheduling doesn’t preclude interaction, it just guarantees you are able to reach your audience when they are online even if you are not. Those who schedule must respond and interact live too but if you schedule you can do this when it suits you without loosing your audience. In this respect scheduling tweets actually makes you more social not less so.
The advantages of scheduling
I find scheduling invaluable for many reasons. As I mentioned in my opening paragraph I can’t always be at my computer, If I’m out of the office I’m still able to share with my followers, I’m able to be consistent. If I kept my tweeting to when I had computer access I’d be in danger of flooding my followers streams with my tweets. There is nothing worse than logging into Twitter and seeing it dominated by a string of tweets from a single user. By spacing my tweets out I’m giving people time to digest them. As the tweeter this means followers are more likely to look at the links I tweet . The biggest advantage of all is that scheduling is a massive time saver and it helps me avoid those procrastination moments. I spend time in the morning scheduling and then dip in throughout the day to converse and engage.
How to schedule
Before you start scheduling I’d recommend analysing your followers using a tool like Tweriod or CrowdBooster, this will give you a rough guide to when your followers are online and you can create your content calender around this. Use Hootsuite (affiliate link), Buffer or Crowdbooster to schedule your tweets and assign timeslots during the day to check in on your account and read tweets from others.
Do you love or hate the concept of scheduling? I’d love to hear your opinion so please leave a comment below.
Do you remember what you used to do before you had a mobile phone? It’s a conversation that comes up in pubs, coffee shops and chats over and over again. I can remember what I did, I was a bit more organised, I was always standing around waiting for people indefinitely and I didn’t miss the web because it was still in it’s infancy. However I was without my smart phone for a few days last week and I soon became confused and lost.
There are other items I’ve got used to too, email for example and there are applications I use every day without fail that have embedded themselves in my life the same way the mobile phone has. Here are three that I don’t think I could live without.
1. Hootsuite
Hootsuite (affiliate link) is a social media management tool with so many essential features I often wonder how I got by without it. You can schedule, shorten and measure click throughs on links, easily see your Twitter @ replies and DM’s, search for specific terms, feed RSS feeds to your social media accounts.
It’s not just for Twitter either, you can add Facebook accounts (both profiles and pages), foursquare, Linkedin… and more. I have it open all day on a tab so I can monitor hashtags and search terms, if it disappeared I’d be utterly lost. There’s a free version and a feature heavy paid version, give it a go on the free version and you will never go back.
2. Dropbox
This runs on auto on all my computers and my phone. It’s become so familiar I often forget that I use it but it’s brilliant in so many ways.
Dropbox (affiliate link) allows you to share files with other computers. For someone like me who operates from several machines this is amazing. Install Dropbox on your computer and save the files you access the most to the folder on your desktop. When you update the files it automatically updates them to your Dropbox account. You can install Dropbox on multiple computers giving users access to specific folders or if like me you switch between laptop, netbook and phone you always have access to your files. I find this particularly handy when I’m working with clients on Facebook pages, we open a shared folder and can share images and large files through it.
You get generous space for free and if you invite others to Dropbox and they join you and they get extra space, hence the affiliate link above.
3. Google Reader
I’ve been talking about this a lot on my podcast recently. It really is a fantastic way of researching and keeping up with your favorite websites and blogs. I mine it for information, cool links and other stuff to share on my social media channels every day. It’s also a great way to monitor what people are saying about you, your company and your industry. If you want to learn more about it follow the series I’m broadcasting on my YouTube channel.
From reading this blog you may think that I am a Facebook fanatic. And you may be right! However I do believe Twitter is an amazing marketing tool. As with all networking strategy is key so this week I I’m sharing my pick of Twitter marketing tools.
Tweriod
For those of you who follow the Spiderworking.com Facebook page you will know that Tweriod was featured this week as the ‘Monday Morning Cool Tool’.
Knowing when your followers are online will help you target them more accurately. You can discover this with trial and error, sending out tweets at different times of the day and measuring which get the most click thrus but Tweriod makes it a lot easier. Tweriod analyses the behaviour of your Twitter followers providing you with a report telling you when they are most active online. With this data you can make sure you are tweeting when the most people are there to see them.
This is a great tool but I wouldn’t recommend tweeting exclusively at optimum times, Tweriod isn’t able to distinguish between influential or brand advocate tweeters and regular followers and you don’t want to loose an already captive audience. However if you discover that the majority of your followers are online at a time that you don’t usually tweet you can easily adjust your Twitter behavior to accommodate them.
Hootsuite
As regular blog readers may have noticed I’m a massive advocate of Hootsuite (affiliate link). Hootsuite allows you to manage your Twitter account but it also has lots of great marketing features.
Once you have used Tweriod to discover when your followers are online you can schedule your Tweets using Hootsuite and target them at these optimum times.
Using the search function you can target potential customers and find new people to follow. To find out more about this feature have a look at my video: How to find customers on Twitter using Hootsuite.
You can measure the effectiveness of your Tweets by counting click thrus from the inbuilt link shortener.
Finally you can use the ‘old fashioned’ RT method at the click of a button ensuring that those you are ReTweeting never miss a mention.
Bit.ly
Bit.ly is probably the most popular link shortening service on the social web. Link shorteners allow you to take a really long web link and make it small, the advantage being that you can add it to a tweet and still have plenty of your 140 characters left for comment. If you are not a Hootsuite convert yet Bit.ly is a great alternative to the inbuilt Ow.ly. It integrates easily with lots of other social media tools including TweetDeck. Just like Hootsuite it allows you to see how many click thrus a specific shortened link gets. You can also customise links to make them more memorable, very handy when sharing a link verbally.
Klout
Who are your most influential followers? Who is most likely to get content shared or get links clicked? Klout measures the reach and amplification of each Twitter user and gives them a score. You can check out your own Klout score as well as that of any Twitter user. It’s a great research tool and an interesting way to benchmark yourself against you competitors.
The real benefit of Klout is that you can determine who from your brand advocates has the widest reach on Twitter. What can you do to reward them for sharing your content and how can you encourage them to share more? Don’t leave people with low Klout scores behind though, these could be the influencers of the future.
Some of these suggestions may seem a little cold but it is important to have a strategy and know how to measure your efforts. I believe as long as you are transparent, human and yourself there is no harm using a few tools to assist you to market efficiently on Twitter. Do you agree? Do you have a Twitter tool that you can’t live without? I’d love to hear what you think so please do leave a comment below.
There are many advantages to re-tweeting, it’s a great way to pass on useful, helpful or even amusing tweets from other users that might interest your followers.
If you follow someone who tweets great content that is interesting to both you and your followers it can be a great way to remind them you are there, if they don’t follow you back yet it could encourage them to do so.
If you are generous with your re-tweets others are more likely to re-tweet you as well, spreading your message accross Twitter.
It is important to think about what you are re-tweeting however, it’s not a good idea to re-tweet a message that is not valuable to your followers as although you may be attracting the attention of the original Tweeter you could be alienating some of your existing followers.
Re-tweeting can be quite confusing as there are two options available. The ‘old fashioned way’ and ‘the new twitter way’. There are advantages and disadvantages to both:
1 Re-tweeting the old fashioned way
The original re-tweet option this can be time consuming when used directly from Twitter on the web. Here’s how to do it.
Find something you want to re-tweet:
Copy and paste it into your status update box:
Before the user name add RT(space)@:
Send the tweet
The advantage of using this re-tweet method is that the tweet will show up in the @replies of the original tweeter, meaning they will easily see that you have re-tweeted them.
If you are using a client such as Hootsuite to access Twitter, this form of re-tweeting is often integrated into the software making it alot less time consuming and easier.
2 Re-tweeting the Twitter way
A quick and easy way to re-tweet from the web application
Find something that you would like to re-tweet, hover your mouse over the bottom right hand side of the tweet until the ‘re-tweet’ symbol appears:
Click the re-tweet button.
A dialogue box will appear to check that you want to re-tweet the post to all your followers, click yes
The tweet will then appear in the streams of all your twitter followers as being re-tweeted by you.
The disadvantage of this is that unless the person you are re-tweeting checks their re-tweets on a regular basis they could miss your tweet. The other disadvantage is that some Twitter clients don’t show this kind of re-tweet in your stream meaning that you could be limiting the audience that the re-tweet will reach.
Hootsuite is a great tool for managing your social media. This week’s video blog shows you how to integrate your Twitter lists into your Hootsuite Dashboard and how to create a search column to keep on top of the latest tweets in your area of interest.
In my last post about shortening links I mentioned that alot of people accessed twitter through third party software.
As you can see from above I’m loving Hootsuite at the moment but here are some links to other solutions. Feel free to enter your favorites in the comment box below:
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