Speed Twitter

The worst thing about Social Media is how much time you can spend doing it. So I want to solve this problem first, I have mentioned the solution in blog posts elsewhere, but never in such detail.

So here goes, this is what you can do and it will take you only 5 minutes to decide if this is for you or whether you want to outsource it.

My previous article on the subject covered Time management and Twittter. So lets get specific. I manage to send 5 to 10 tweets at a time in 5 to 6 minutes, sometimes less, sometimes more. I try and find 5 to 6 minutes in the Morning, Afternoon and Evening. Admittedly, sometimes this is not possible, meetings phone calls, webinars, family all contrive to make this not happen. So I do not rigidly apply this rule, sometimes I ignore it completely. For some accounts I have my colleagues do it for me, as a result this has become a service if you have the same problem. Let me first tell you exactly what takes the time and how you can minimise the time…

Basically I have a set of target key words that are right for each Twitter account I have. I will search for each keyword followed by the word news, forum, promotion, blog, video in Google Yahoo or Youtube (50% of all searches occur there). I save the search as a bookmark, so all I have to do very time is click a link. I have become very familiar with some subject areas – some would say expert

I will find content. I ignore my 5 to 6 minute rule if I find something particularly appropriate and I want to make something of it. I.e. write a blog post. If I write a blog post, then I have certain Twitter accounts rigged up to automatically Twitter the new blog post. More on this later. But this tends to be where I break my rule the most.

Producing your own blog post based on what you find out there is an advanced marketing strategy that sits nicely on top to of Twitter marketing with even more benefits. A blog is a bit more permanent. You can do more with a blog post, you can include pictures and videos.

For instance you can make a video of you reading through someone elses blog post particularly if you disagree with it. This is great for when you discover a high volume area or something controversial. I know this is not for everyone – but price wise it is – get your self a flip camera from Amazon – £79.99 brilliant video quality with excellent sound – buy the mini tripod and carry case too.

Back to searching for content to Twitter. Everyday there are 20 hours of video uploaded every hour, to YouTube, apparently. There is daily news that changes by the hour. There is always content out there, even if it is not bang on subject. This is a way of finding content. I suggest you try it as this will start to work for you.

You can lift the headline of what you find and twitter the link. That is the fastest way. You can change the headline and add add a comment if you wish, this will position you as someone who knows what is going on – and has an opinion – such a difference. It will also get you on top of your industry and fill you full of whats new and happening – making you the go-to guy for your industry. So this will help in more than one way.

If you have the time set up a blog at blogger.com and pick on stories you like randomly. You want to add about three stories a week to a blog. So that would be one in 20 stories has to be outstanding. More about the benefits of this later…