Facebook is a great place to post fewer, larger updates, but Twitter truly shines as a personal place for more frequent updates. You may see a lot of people tweeting about how good their ice cream sundae was, or how hard their history test was, but unless you’ve got a dedicated following who loves what you do you’re not going to attract new fans with those kinds of day-to-day tweets. Remember, in order to build a following you need to provide quality content. Below are recommendations for kinds of tweets that people will engage, PLUS a bonus tip at the very end that will tie everything together.
Quotes
Everyone loves a great quote. I recommend inspirational, funny, and/or relevant quotes to your niche. People really respond to things that evoke emotion so encouragement, humor, and quotes from inspirational people about how awesome _____ is or how it can affect mood, or what it can do for the world, etc. do really well. These are pretty easy to gather. Just do a quick google search for various kinds of quotes, copy/paste the ones you like into a document, and tweet or schedule the tweets as you want.
Question of the day
Looking not just for likes and retweets? What better way to ask compelling questions? These can range from simple things like “who are your favorite bloggers?” to more emotional and personal ones like “what song can brighten your day no matter what you’re going through?” to thought-provoking ones like “where do you think fashion is headed in the next 10 years?” You may not get a ton of interaction if you’re just starting off, but keep at it and use relevant hashtags so more people find your questions and people will start responding.
News articles
Go follow news sources relevant to your niche and retweet articles that you find interesting/crazy/funny and that you think your followers and fans would also be interested in. Remember: your main goal is to add value to your followers’ lives, not spam them links to your content all day.
Memes
Memes are funny. People like to laugh. Funny stuff gets engagement. Humans are very visual creatures, so pictures of any kind do very well in social media. Try your best to stick with relevant memes. Occasional memes not having to do with music are ok, but you really do want to try to keep it relevant to what you do. Googling memes is easy to do, and there are also meme generators like this one so you can create your own. I’ve found that making your own, although it takes a little more time, effort, and creativity, is super effective because you can tailor them to your genre, style, experiences, etc.
Videos
Just like memes and pictures, videos are great for engagement since they catch people’s eye. Get creative and post your own or retweet videos from your followers, influencers in your field, and other brands or bloggers that you think your followers would enjoy.
*BONUS*
You should never automate all your social media posts and tweets, but certain types of tweets like questions of the day and quotes that are more evergreen can be scheduled and automated successfully without seeming spammy or like a bot. Check out Social Jukebox, which is a great tool for tweet automation. As of writing this, the free version gives you two “jukeboxes” where you can input tweets, set which days and times you want to tweet, and it’ll cycle through posting random tweets from the jukebox at the desired times continuously until you tell it to stop. I like to put in 90-120 quotes or questions and set those to post once a day. That way you’ll go 3-4 months without repeating a tweet and it’ll cycle through continuously forever. Over time you can even add more, and if you think of other jukeboxes you’d like to add you can upgrade to the paid version.
Note: Just a reminder, automation programs should be used to aid your social media strategy. They should never become your strategy. Use them wisely. For more resources on how to work social media like a boss, check out my blogging tab!
