30 Minute Social Sessions: Twitter - Inner Social Media-ness

What is a 30 Minute Social Session?

30 Minute Social Sessions are my tested recommendations to help solopreneurs take away that confused feeling of where to go and what to do out of their social media marketing. For each session, I’ll show you easy ways to add social media into your already crowded to-do list.

Each session will show you steps you can do for 30 minutes (or less!) to help you grow your social media presence and to get your message heard by the people who want to buy from you.

If you missed the last two 30 Minute Social Sessions, here are the links to review them:

Click here to read how I scheduled these Facebook 30 Minute Social Sessions once a week into my calendar.

How I learned about how to track my site’s traffic with the Google Analytics 30 Minute Social Session that I do once a month.

A timer is your best tool

By now, you should have found a timer that you like to use to track your 30 Minute Social Sessions. This link will take you to my favorite timer. I like to use this one because I can see the time left in the browser’s tab and I don’t need to keep checking the browser page to check my remaining time: http://www.online-stopwatch.com/countdown-timer/

You can use this one or an app on your phone or whatever you have around your home or office. Whatever you use, just keep it near your desk so you can stay on track with your time.

This Month’s 30 Minute Social Session: Twitter

With the latest Facebook changes to my fan page’s updates, it seems my Twitter account has been increasing in activity. If you didn’t get the details about what’s happening with your Facebook fan page, take a look at this article from TechCrunch.

I don’t know if it’s because small businesses were not seeing the same engagement level on Facebook as last year. Or maybe they started using Twitter and realized that it’s not that hard. Or maybe it’s a combination of both.

Whatever the answer is, I have experienced an increase in Twitter activity in the last couple of months.

Because of my research for this Social Session, I will admit that I spent more time in Twitter than usual. I’m talking about those free moments in the day when I’m sitting in the school car line or waiting for my dentist appointment. I usually log into Facebook during that time.

And like everything else in social media – it works when you work it. I’ve seen more engagement and interaction since I started pulling up my Twitter app during those brief moments while I was waiting for life to begin again.

Spending time with Twitter and the bird

One important thing to note here — this 30 Minute Social Session is NOT for people who haven’t signed up for Twitter yet! This session will help those who already have a Twitter presence and you’re looking for ways to increase your engagement with potential customers.

If you’d like to learn how to use Twitter for your business, check out this article from Social Media Examiner. They’ll walk you through everything from setting up your account to how to start tweeting.

30 Minute Blocks of Time

Each 30 Minute Social Session is about taking productive tasks and breaking them down into focused blocks of time. I recommend you schedule these Twitter 30 Minute Social Sessions twice a week into your calendar.

Just like I did with the other sessions, I blocked off the time in my calendar like I would for a client meeting or when I’m teaching a workshop. I tested two different combinations for my 30 minute blocks of time.

Twitter Session 1: Schedule your tweets

This session is about posting valuable content to your followers and showing that you’re active on Twitter. Your messages could be content you created like blog posts or promoting something in your business. Or you could post links to interesting articles that your fans would find helpful, educational or maybe it’s a quote that brings a smile to their face.

For this session, I set the timer for 30 minutes and did the following:

I logged into Hootsuite to schedule my tweets for the week.

I like Hootsuite but you could also use Sprout Social or Buffer. All of these programs will allow you to schedule your posts so you don’t need to log into Twitter every day, every couple of hours just to tweet.

I use the free version of Hootsuite which allows me to add in five (5) different social programs like my Facebook fan page, Twitter account and Linkedin profile.

You can upgrade to a premium version to give you more detailed analytic information and add more than five programs. I use my Google Analytics to monitor my traffic so Hootsuite becomes my easy scheduling program.

To schedule your posts, do the following steps:

Click “Compose Message”
Type your message, include links if you have any and upload any images you’d like to include
Click to select a profile(s) from the profile picker
Click the calendar icon
From the calendar, select the date for the message to be sent
Select the time for the message to be sent
Click “Schedule”

Once all your tweets are scheduled, you can review and revise either the text, links, dates or scheduled time in the HootSuite Dashboard. You’ll see them listed in the scheduled posts stream in each of the social program’s tabs.

If you don’t see the scheduled posts sections, look at the top of your Dashboard and you’ll see the button to Add Stream for each social media program. You’ll just click on that button and add in the scheduled posts stream.

Tips to reach more people

1. Don’t forget to add relevant hashtags to your tweets! If you’re not sure how to use hashtags for Twitter (or any other social program), take a look at this post I wrote about how to use hashtags to help your messages get found by the people you want to connect to.

2. If you want to get your tweets shared, ask for it! Use the phrase “Please retweet” (and yes, spell it out and don’t use RT) before your message. Don’t include the ‘please retweet’ in every posts – try adding it in about 3 times a week.

3. Add images with text to your tweets. It’s like getting extra characters to your posts when you include an image that has text in it.

Twitter Session 2: Increase your engagement

This session is about connecting with more people and finding new followers.

For this session, I set the timer for 30 minutes and did the following steps:

1. I checked my Connect section and viewed my recent activity:

Did someone new follow me? I clicked over to their profile and decided if I wanted to follow them back. I also looked through their tweets and retweeted a post of theirs or commented on one of their tweets.
Did someone share my blog posts or promote my programs? I hit the reply button under their post and thanked them for sharing my stuff. I usually add in a personal note to show that I’m not automating these thank you messages.

2. Run a search for new people to follow:

Use Twitter’s Advanced Search feature to run a search on your key words and see who pops up.
Try using the Discover section to search for hashtags that you use in your tweets. You’ll see real time conversations with people using the hashtag in their messages. Search through the tweets and see if you can find new people to follow.

3. If you use Twitter lists (and I hope you do!), pull up one of your lists and run a quick scan for good tweets to share. If you find several tweets you’d like to share, add them into your weekly scheduled tweets.

What did I learn?

I did these Twitter 30 Minute Social Session twice a week for a full month. During those four weeks, I saw not just my followers increase but my interaction with them improved.

1. The timer stopped me from falling down the rabbit hole. I knew I was in there for my company so I stuck to the steps and didn’t click on random links.

2. The more I did the checklist, the quicker each session was. That’s why the second combo has a few options of steps to do in 30 minutes. It also helped that I was logging into Twitter during those free moments during my day.

3. My engagement with my fans increased. It was exciting to get a positive response when my Facebook fan page was going flat. It was like, OK my stuff is really connecting with the right people. This is what social engagement is all about.

4. I felt more like a part of my Twitter community. Sometimes we get so busy that we just post our stuff and don’t log in again until the next time we do our scheduling. I have days like that but I found when I had my Twitter checklist, I was able to squeeze in an extra 15 minutes (and do some of the steps) and my interactions still continued to increase.

Overall, I felt that my Twitter 30 Minute Social Session was better than I expected. I learned that just a little bit goes a long way. I increased my followers, took the time to thank people for sharing my content and I found some really great posts to share. And all of this for just doing these steps for 30 minutes twice a week!

My Social Sessions Schedule

Since we’re now into our third 30 Minute Social Session, I wanted to share with you what my schedule looks like when I add in my 30 Minute Social Sessions checklists. I usually work a 40 hour work week (more when I’m working on a big project) so below is the breakdown of my time using the checklists from Social Sessions.

I’m spending 2.5 hours on building my social presence a week and using an additional 30 minutes once a month to track my website’s traffic. That’s a total of 10.5 hours for the whole month.