Transcript: One of the questions we get at Vital is how do I gain more followers on Twitter. And there are three points that we like to touch on. One the first one is be active. And that’s simply if you’re just starting out of Twitter to login to Twitter to look for followers in your industry that are maybe thought leaders who are sharing interesting content and start building a community around them. The second one is to be engaged, which means to remember that Twitter is a conversation that is happening 24/7 every single day of the year which means that if you’re on Twitter and not replying or building engagement, having conversations with your followers and your community online, then your community is not going to grow at all.  To simply engage means to simply just reply use mentions, retweet your followers, and interact with them and see what their thoughts are on the content you’re sharing. And the last point is to add value, and this is the most important point. To add value we talk about finding great content that your followers and your community would be interested in learning about. You can do this by following interesting people, you can do this through your blog, through other blogs and news sources as well, but content we believe is key to building a strong community on Twitter.  So with these three points you’re going to be well on your way to building a great community on Twitter.

 

Transcript: Today I’m going to talk to you about how to stick to blogging, because that’s one of the most popular questions we get from clients who have business blogs is ‘how do I stay consistent with blogging, how to I keep updating, and the answer is really simple: just create a content calendar (also called an editorial calendar). This can be a Google doc, you can make it in iCal, it can even just be a Word doc, it doesn’t matter as long as you’re keeping a log of your ideas constantly. And then, at the beginning of the month what you want to do is sit down, look at your ideas, plan out when you want to write them and then just stick to the plan. So there you have it—blogging: not rocket science. If you have trouble coming up with ideas, just Google “blog ideas” – there are literally hundreds, maybe thousands of posts out there that will give you great ideas for creating blogs that aren’t necessarily writing heavy, they can be lists, they can be how-tos, anything you want. So it’s not something to be scared of, it’s something you should just dive into, but: create your calendar first.

 

One of the questions we often receive from businesses is ‘what should I be posting on Facebook.‘ The one thing I tell businesses to do is post images. You know that as you go through your Facebook stream, the thing that catches your eye is images and galleries. The same thing is true for your business as well. If you’re posting images that reflect your culture, or that show images of products and services that are part of your business, that’s going to catch your audience’s and your fans’ eyes. And it’s shown that images recieve more likes and comments–we like comments and likes because the more you get, the higher up you are in the stream and the more popular Facebook thinks you are . So again, when you’re creating content for Facebook, think images and photographs. This is such an easy thing to start doing today, and I know you’re going to start seeing more likes and comments on your posts.

Today we’re talking about Twitter etiquette: being polilte and cool on Twitter. Our first rule is be helpful. When people ask a question, use your expertise to answer that question. Provide value to your followers. Don’t be sharing spam, don’t be sharing junk: provide things that people are going to be interested in and things that are going to be helpful to other people. And don’t be afraid to reach out to people who you respect and whose expertise you value to look for help for whatever project you’re working on or questions you may have. Our second rule is be polite. This one probably should go without saying, but people sometimes need a reminder on the Internet that you shouldn’t say things on Twitter or in Youtube comments that you wouldn’t say to someone’s face. Our last rule is don’t automate. Everybody’s gotten those auto DMs that say “Thanks for the follow, download my ebook!” or “Follow my blog!”  It’s not real, it’s not interesting, no one cares about it and it dosen’t really work. So don’t do it. This isn’t to say that you should never schedule tweets, that’s okay, but if you’re just spamming people that’s just not acceptable and it’s not cool, so don’t do it. This has been your crash course in Twitter ettiquette from Vital Design Alley Chats.