“Twitter? I don’t have time for that.”

Well, we have a secret for you – ready?
Twitter Gurus followed by thousands of people don’t actually spend the whole day behind their computers overloading your feed with 10 tweets per minute (or the more realistic 10 tweets a day).

They use many strategies – including:

• Only working on content that’s relevant to their audiences
• Scheduling
• Batching their tasks
• Crowdsourcing from their team, clients and partners
• Consciously interacting with other businesses online

It’s about using the right tools – here are 3 you need to succeed

TWITTER LISTS

Before you start Tweeting, you must have a strategy in mind. Who do you want to interact with? What topics will make your business interesting online? What is relevant and popular now?
Once you’re crystal clear about the answer, you’ll understand what to tweet about, link to and share to be relevant, interesting and reliable.
How?
By creating powerful Twitter lists!
A list allows you to categorise people. It can be private or public. There are different types of people you can add to it so who you should learn from, follow and engage with?

1. People who tweet about a specific topic you’re interested in and this topic only, they can even be well-known experts in that field
2. People you don’t want to follow because they are way too active on social media and you’d rather be able to access their content when you’re mentally ready for it so you don’t feel overwhelmed
3. Influencers in your industry – even if their content might be irrelevant sometimes, as they can choose to share a mix of professional and personal stuff, so you get to know the real person
4. Businesses or organisations producing quality content relevant to your activity
5. Anyone you think is inspiring or useful to follow in your context

To add someone to a list, click on the little gear next to their name and tick one of your lists – it’s done! You can also create new lists on the same popup window.
Here is the link to Twitter’s Help Center if you’re getting lost: Using Twitter lists
To view your lists, you need to go back onto your feed and click the little gear again.
The process of creating lists can be a little bit time consuming initially, but see it as a good investment for your future self – trustworthy sources will save you hours of scrolling through your feed, hoping to find something interesting to tweet about, someone interesting to tweet to, or learn what people are talking about. You are what you share – do it right!

BUFFER

Most people start their social media journey like they start the post-Christmas break diet: it’s ok for a couple of weeks until they get discouraged, usually pretending they can’t find the time to exercise properly – so why keep going?
And feeling frustrated from all the efforts they’ve done so far without getting immediate impressive results.
Well, I’m about to free you some time to go to the gym more often! Buffer is a must-have tool in your community management toolkit essential to boost your contribution to the Tweetosphere.
Buffer free plan allows to schedule 10 tweets at the same time. If you want more, upgrade for the ‘Awesome Plan’ which is £10/month.
So what does Buffer do exactly?
It helps you to master social media! You don’t have to be at your computer all the time in order to have a social media presence: write a bunch of posts at once and schedule their publications at a custom time. Buffer shortens links automatically, and you can add pictures, videos and schedule retweets as well (it’s good to vary your tweets).
It helps you to always get the right username even if you’re not logged into Twitter, thanks to the auto-complete functionality. And you can check the analytics to see how it performed to find out what your community is into.
Enhance Buffer’s power by following a strategic content calendar for your social media channels.

COMMUN.IT

The concept is that you have 140 characters to communicate with your followers (you can use direct messages to send private essays to your friends though) but your Twitter feed is a busy place, where everyone is demanding for attention, so how are you supposed to know who deserve yours?
Commun.it will help you build meaningful Twitter relationships.
They have an algorithm to tell you who are your high-value members, influencers, supporters and engaged members. Knowing who they are, you can choose to thanks people for connecting or supporting you. Top influencers can also be reached in a more personal way, surely it’s worth getting to know them a little bit more.
Some additional features are included in the application, like managing your Twitter lists – you can divide lists into custom categories – setting up Campaigns, which are daily or weekly tweets schedule at a specific time either to thank your new followers or engage with your community. The inbuilt analytics tool measures your social media efforts and creates reports for you.

The perfect social media management combo!

Used together, these 3 social media management tools will save you a lot of time you would have spent looking for reliable content to share, tweeting on a daily basis and engaging with your community.
Becoming a Twitter Guru doesn’t happen overnight but with the right tools, you’re moving forward on the path to success.
But if patience is not your thing, you can always book yourself in a social media and content marketing workshop with us!
The lack of time can’t be used as an excuse anymore for being a social media ghost :).