How To Automate And Grow Your Twitter Account

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How To Grow Your Twitter As A Blogger

Do you want to diversify the way you promote your blog online, expand your social reach, connect with like-minded people and automate and grow your Twitter account? Then this post is for you!

In case you’re wondering “Why Twitter?”, it’s good to know that Twitter is a great place for bloggers to network and promote their work because the platform is the perfect combination of social networking and marketing.

It’s also one of the most popular social media networks at the moment (with over 330 million monthly active users), which means that you can find not only other people in your niche but also your target audience hanging out there. (In other words, if your readers are hanging out on Twitter, so should you!)

Twitter is a great place for bloggers to connect + engage with their audience and to create brand awareness at the same time. It’s a win-win platform that allows you to promote your blog posts and offers while creating meaningful connections with others in your field (including your ideal readers).

So why not give it a shot? (In case your answer here is the lack of time, keep reading because I have a solution for that!)

Making The Most Of Twitter

Twitter has more than 353.1 million users and 206 million daily active users worldwide, so it is a great platform to share your insights of the daily issues happening around the globe.

Now that you know the huge potential this platform has, you might be wondering how you can use it in your favor, make the most of it and grow your Twitter account.

Unlike other social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter moves really fast. The average lifespan of a Tweet is around 15 minutes which means that if your followers don’t see your Tweet within that time, they’re unlikely to see it at all (except for the “in case you missed it” feature that Twitter has but unfortunately, you have no control over that, or unless someone Retweets it which adds to the lifespan of that Tweet in the feed of certain followers).

By comparison, the average lifespan of a post on Facebook is about 6 hours. That’s a big difference!

So what does this mean to you?

Well, quite simply, it means that you can Tweet a lot more frequently without annoying your followers. In fact, you should be Tweeting more frequently in order to ensure that your content gets seen by your followers.

(Twitter is one of those platforms on which you should promote yourself and your blog more than you think you should!)

According to research carried out by Quick Sprout, the recommended number of Tweets per day is 15. (Compare this to the 1-2 recommended posts per day on Facebook and you might start to feel slightly overwhelmed. But keep reading, because it doesn’t have to be that complicated or take you an entire week to come up with tweets for a day. I promise!)

Keep in mind that even if you do tweet 15 times a day, your followers won’t see all of those tweets because the algorithm picks & chooses only a handful of posts to show to people, and regardless, your followers are unlikely to be on Twitter 24/7.

And because of the lifespan of a tweet is so small, they are probably going to miss out on 90% of your tweets anyways which means that tweeting more is not spammy – just good marketing. (And this way, at least the odds are in your favor.)

What To Post On Twitter To Grow Your Following

Regardless of whether or not your followers actually see every single Tweet you post, you really don’t want to post 15+ self-promo Tweets every single day. It will look spammy and you’ll start to see a dip in your engagement.

The key to growing your Twitter account is sharing a mixture of content including: your own blog posts/products/services, curated content from others in your niche (on topics that your followers are interested in) and general chit-chat/natural posts.

The benefits of sharing your own content is self-explanatory really! Sharing your latest posts, promoting your offers or linking to your other social media accounts will help increase traffic to your site, leads and sales. (Hurray!)

In the same time, you want to share content created by other people in order to grow your Twitter account and following and here is why:

You are connecting with fellow bloggers – by sharing content from other experts in your niche, you are building connections with them (Basically, you’re social networking. Get it?). Who knows – they may even return the favor and share your content with their audience.
You are giving your audience value – by sharing posts that you know your audience will love and find useful, you are actively encouraging people to follow you, as you’re providing valuable resources, insights and discoveries from your field with them.

At the same time, you want to make sure that you’re also using Twitter as a human – which means sharing your own ideas, thoughts, highlights, asking for and offering help when necessary.

This will depend on your personal branding – do you want to be relatable, or aspirational, empowering or amusing?

If, for example, you want to come across as a professional in your field – don’t tweet about your breakfast. Just share little tips, insider information and your thoughts on current events in your niche, but in a personable way.

If you want to use your Twitter account to come across as relatable to your audience, then go ahead and share funny stories, more personal struggles and little snippets of your life.

It all comes down to knowing who you’re trying to reach and figuring out the best way to do so.

Save Time + Grow Your Account By Automating Your Twitter Account

You’re probably sitting there right now thinking that creating 15+ original Tweets each day is impossible. Especially when you’re creating a mixture of your own promotional Tweets and sourcing content from other people as well.

The good news is that you don’t have to come up with original tweets each and every single day! Because your audience will only see around 10% (usually less) of what you post anyways, recycling old tweets will give them a better chance to get seen.

And, because our time is limited and our to-do lists as bloggers are never-ending, I highly recommend considering automating your Twitter account in order to grow your following faster and get some peace of mind.

That’s where scheduling tools come into play and I couldn’t live without SmarterQueue!

To say that Smarter Queue has saved me time (and a whole lot of headaches) is an understatement. At the moment, I have the next two years of my Twitter activity already scheduled and it only took me a couple of hours to set it up.

And that’s all possible because of three Smarter Queue features (that you can try for free here!):

The Categories Feature – it allows you to categorize all your tweets into multiple categories, making sure you’re covering all grounds. I’ve divided my tweets into the following categories: My Blog Posts, Supporting Others (where I tweet content by other bloggers in my niche), Quotes, Blogging Tips, Affiliate Promo (where I tweet about products and services I love using my affiliate links – because why not monetize my Twitter account as well?), Social Media Promo (where I ask people to follow me on my other social media accounts such as Instagram) and Product Promo (where I tweet about my ebooks and courses).
The Schedule Feature – it allows you to create a weekly schedule where you get to decide how often you want to tweet each day, at what times and what type of tweets. (As shown in the picture below.) I use this feature to cover all my categories, spread them out and mix-up my Twitter feed. Based on this schedule, and the tweets I add into each category, Smarter Queue allows me to be consistent with my tweeting, while constantly mixing up my feed (so even if you tweet a blog post every Monday morning, that post is going to be different each time).
The Recycle Feature – it allows you to recycle the same tweet (forever, or for a limited period if you choose) without having to manually add it to your schedule each time. This is the feature that made me fall in love with Smarter Queue because it’s the only Twitter app that does this (to my knowledge). Before SQ I was using a free scheduler where I had to manually input each tweet. So if I wanted a blog post to be tweeted 10 times in a month, I had to go in and copy-paste the same tweet 10 times for a single month. (When you have 30+ blog posts, this quickly adds up to hours and hours of boring copy-pasting.) But with Smarter Queue, I write the tweet once, I set it as evergreen and it recycles each day to fit a different time slot from my schedule. This way, I was able to quickly schedule years worth of content within hours! (And adding promo tweets for new blog posts takes me a few minutes! I still can’t believe it!)

Want to save even more time when automating your Twitter account? With SmarterQueue’s amazing evergreen feature (where if you mark a post as evergreen it gets looped and added back in the queue after it’s been posted) there is no need to keep writing the same Tweet over and over again!

Alongside its other amazing features (and brilliant analytics that help you track the growth of your account), Smarter Queue is the ultimate social media scheduler for bloggers and the most efficient one I’ve tried so far (and trust me – I’ve tried a lot!).

>> If you want to test it out for yourself and see what all the buzz is about, you can get a FREE month of Smarter Queue by using this link! <<

More Tips To Grow Your Twitter Account

As well as posting regular and engaging content on your Twitter feed, there are a number of other things you can do to explode your Twitter account and grow your following.

My journey to reaching 9k followers on Twitter has not been easy (you can follow me here) but I’ve learnt a few tricks that I want to share with you, in case you don’t know what else to try:

Engage with your audience – growing your Twitter account isn’t all about what you post. It’s also about engaging with other people. Make sure you reply to other accounts, retweet interesting Tweets and just have real conversations with other people on there.
Try out Twitter chats – depending on your niche, you may find Twitter chats are a great way to make new connections and find new accounts to follow.
Promote your Twitter account on other social media channels – some of your daily Tweets will be promoting your Instagram and Pinterest account. So why not do this the other way around? Share your Twitter account in Facebook Groups and add a link to it in your email footer.
Follow accounts you love – no one likes those people who have thousands and thousands of followers but only follow 3 people back, do they? So don’t hesitate to follow back accounts you love, reach out to other people in your niche and surround yourself with people that you have something in common with.
Create polls to keep your audience engaged – Twitter polls are an amazing way to connect with your followers and ask them to interact with you. If you’re new at it, check out this great post on How To Make Twitter Polls Work For You.
Create lists and keep in touch with your followers – sometimes it’s hard to keep engaged with your followers and the people you follow because Twitter is so fast-paced. That’s why I like to create lists (either private or public) where I add people I want to keep in touch with. (For example, if I follow 20 new accounts each week, I add them to a list and make sure to go in interact with their tweets, share some of their posts and so on. Most often than not, those people follow me back because they can see I’m not just playing the follow-unfollow game, but I’m genuinely interested in their content.)
Tweet about current trends – Twitter trends and top hashtags get a lot of attention and eyeballs. Why not use them to your advantage as a way to get discovered by some new accounts? Keep in the loop with current affairs, check out trending hashtags, and if relevant, join the conversation!
Do more research – the best way to keep growing is to keep learning. Find out what works for other people, experiment on your own account and keep researching ways to make a bigger impact on Twitter. You can start off with this great post on 15 Ways To Grow Your Twitter Following.

And there you have it! My best tips on how to automate and grow your Twitter account, to increase your social reach and impact.

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Do you want to diversify the way you promote your blog online, expand your social reach, connect with like-minded people and automate and grow your Twitter account? Then this post is for you! #twittermarketing #twittertips #socialmediaforbloggers

Grow your blog with Twitter account. Twitter marketing for bloggers and social media tips to help you increase your pageviews. #twittertip #twitterforbloggers

Do you struggle with Twitter? Realise you could get much more traffic from the network but unsure how to go about this? Read this post for 8 of my best Twitter tips for bloggers. Essential Twitter Tips for Bloggers and Small Businesses. #twittermarketing

Are you promoting your blog on Twitter yet? Let me know why or why not in the comment section below! And don’t leave before you check out my other social media tutorials.