My Top 6 Twitter Tools to Boost Followers & Engagement in 2015

One of my New Year’s Resolutions is to blog more (we’ll see how long it lasts...) So here goes for my first blog of 2015!

Many people don’t see the value in Twitter – they created an account back in 2011, haven’t touched it since and can’t understand why they only have 4 followers!

So what do you need to do to grow your account so that it’s a useful asset for you and your business? Firstly you need to be finding & posting great (and relevant) content and secondly you need to be active & visible. Here are some tools I use to help me manage both activities – (I’d love to hear your tips as well!)

Step 1: Finding and posting great content (because nobody will follow you if you last Tweeted in Jan 2011!)

Tool #1 –Twitter Lists

Very basic I know for those advanced users but for you beginners out there, Twitter lists are a great way of keeping up to date with the people you’re really interested in hearing from. As you begin to follow more and more people your timeline can become messy so maintain lists – the user you have added to your list will also receive a notification once you’ve followed them which can be a great compliment, especially if you’ve named your list something like “Marketing Experts”.

If you want a good place to start with Twitter lists you can subscribe to my ready-made list of content & social media marketing experts here: https://twitter.com/chrispalmer90/lists/marketing-tips

Tool #2 – Tweetdeck

Once you’ve created some lists you can monitor them all in the same place by using Tweetdeck – this is a great way of finding content that’s relevant to your line of work and joining in conversations.

You can also use the search bar functionality to conduct basic social listening, for instance if you’re interested in content marketing, type that into the search and see what people are talking about. From time to time you should dip into this feed to find great content to share with your network.

Tool #3 – Buffer

What a great tool, especially if you’re using Google Chrome as your browser. One of the main reasons why many people don’t bother with social media is because they complain they don’t have time – tools such as Buffer solve all of that. By using Buffer and by being clever when looking for content you only need to dedicate 20 minutes per week to social media and you'll have a constant, steady stream of content for your feed.

Buffer recently hit 1.5 million users so you can definitely see it works! In a nutshell what it does is help you schedule your content so you have a steady stream of relevant articles/blogs throughout the week. With the free version you can connect one account per social channel (so for instance your Twitter and LinkedIn accounts) and by using the chrome extension you can share relevant articles at the click of a button.

P.s the Buffer blog is also a great read for tips on content and social media marketing!

Step 2: Being Active!

Tool #4 – Tweepi

“I’m posting all this great stuff but I only have 4 followers”

It would be pointless to use the tools above if nobody knows you’re there, and what’s the best way to let other Twitter users know you’re there? By following them! Tweepi is a great tool you can use to find the most relevant people to follow in your industry and you can also use it to “unfollow” anyone who hasn’t reciprocated the favour.

When finding users to follow make sure you only follow those who are active and likely to follow back and make sure you don’t follow everyone under the sun! I would recommend you identify 10 Twitter thought leaders in your sector and follow 10 of their followers a day and slowly watch your follower list grow.

Tool #5 – Twitfox

This is an automation tool you can use to increase your activity and visibility. Simply login with your Twitter account, type in a keyword that’s relevant to your line of work or business and Twitfox will automatically ‘favourite’ 5 Tweets a day that include the identified keyword. To avoid any mishaps you can also request that it doesn’t include any irrelevant keywords and any specific users (such as competitors).

*NB I would only recommend using this tool on a personal account, not if you're Tweeting on behalf of a business!

Tool #6 – Sumall

And finally to keep track of your account’s performance you can use SumAll which provides condensed weekly or monthly reports on engagement and follower growth.

So there you go, technology nowadays means that the age old excuse “I don’t have time for social” is no longer valid. Tools such as the ones mentioned above mean you can dedicate as little as 20 minutes per week and still see great results that can benefit your personal brand and your business.

I would love to hear your top tools for Twitter, let me know in the comments box and Happy New Year!

Thanks,

Chris