If you're an individual or a brand who handles their own tweets, you don't want to get sucked into a time sink with Twitter. Yet you do want to have an active and professional-looking presence there. Maybe you've already tried to save time on Twitter but have drifted back to old habits. This article is for you!
Here we'll cover "how to look super-professional and active on Twitter while spending barely any time doing so". In addition to the obvious common-sense stuff, we have some specific strategies - "recipes" so to speak - so read on for these nuggets!
But if instead you want a highly interactive experience where you're getting known by others and you want to network with other people through Twitter, this is not the article for you. Here it's all about being active on Twitter and having an excellent presence there while spending barely any time on it.
The basic strategies
Here we have the most basic common-sense strategies; in the next section we'll move on to the less obvious things
- Don't tweet every day unless you really have something to say - 2 - 3 times week is enough
- Use the desktop app, not the phone app (delete the phone app if you have it), and turn email notifications off
- Do not even log into Twitter unless you already have something you really want to say or share. If you have a few spare minutes, do not use it to browse Twitter, no matter how tempting it is. Do anything else instead for those few minutes - preferably a movement break if possible.
- Aim for your basic level of Twitter usage to be, get in there, tweet the item you want to tweet, and log out. Keep in mind that this is only your minimal baseline and remind yourself it's OK to do no more than that. But if you literally have 1 or 2 extra minutes when you're on Twitter, try the recipes below.
Recipes for saving time on Twitter
How to do RT's of other people's tweets without spending any time hunting for those tweets
Tweeting only your own stuff can look self-centered. You probably want to occasionally retweet other people, but the problem is that this can easily wind up as a big time sink if you're not careful. Instead of scrolling down your feed endlessly to look for these types of tweets to RT, be proactive! Use Twitter lists to solve this problem.
This next bit just needs to be done once. Go to "Lists" and set up a new list. You can name it whatever you like (e.g. "Great tweets" or "retweetable"). You can make the list public or private, it doesn't matter too much. Then find 5 or so people to add to that list who tend to tweet stuff that works well for retweeting. For example, people who tweet inspirational quotes and other relatable things that you'd feel comfortable retweeting. You can always add more people to this list later as you happen to come across them.
Now, just before tweeting your stuff, tweet something from your list. Then tweet your own item. That way, you'll be alternating between someone else's tweet and your tweet, so you don't look self-centered. You can adjust the ratio as needed - 2 of your tweets, 1 of someone else's, for example. But doing it in this order (other person's tweet first, then yours) means that your own tweet stays on top of your profile longer than their tweet, since you're hopefully not logging in every day.
How to increase your follower count without spending much time
It's good to have some sort of strategy for increasing your followers but make sure it doesn't take up a lot of time. Your strategy will differ depending on what your goal is and what you're trying to do.
My strategy is once a week, follow a few people in my field, the next week, go through my follower list and unfollow those who didn't follow back. Then rinse and repeat. This way I'm only following people who are also following me. This is why I don't follow celebrities or big brands since they'll never follow back.
Again, this following strategy isn't a one-size-fits-all strategy - depending your goals, do it differently and do what works for you.
The bottom line
Keep a mantra in mind to remind yourself that Twitter is not a big part of your priorities. This is assuming Twitter is not a critical or central part of your strategy of course. For me, the reminder is that writing, and to a lesser extent coding, are the most important things I can do for my business. So I'll say something like:
"Writing is the most important thing for me, and any time I spend on Twitter would yield better rewards for my business financially if I spend that time on writing instead".
Find a mantra that reflects your situation and remind yourself of it.
Time is finite, use it wisely for your business.
If Twitter is in fact a central part of your business's raison d'etre (e.g you're an influencer whose Twitter profile is a bigger platform for you than even your website), then you will need to be far more interactive than what I mentioned here. This article is not for people that situation, it's for people who want to minimize the time spent on Twitter while still maintaining a professional-looking presence there.
With the tips and tricks mentioned above, you'll save lots of time on Twitter and still have a professional and active presence there.