Creating a Social Media Workflow on Twitter

Being active on social media is great, but do you have a social media workflow to help you? Do you even need a social media workflow? Creating a process and following it every time will make you more efficient, and it’ll help you remember to check every box.

Your process doesn’t have to be set in stone; my method for managing Twitter varies by month. It’s a work in progress to find the best way to connect with your audience through Twitter.

Creating Your Social Media Workflow on Twitter

State Your Goal for Twitter

One of the most important pieces of your workflow begins before creating or posting a single thing. It’s finding your goal for Twitter — your reason you started an account in the first place. Without setting a goal, you’re unable to focus on the content you should be sharing and the way you go about creating it.

Some possible goals can be:

• Conversions
• Website visits
• Increase engagement
• Follower growth
• Building your brand

It’s possible to have multiple goals, but don’t set too many or you may become overwhelmed and burnt out, which is never a good thing.

Develop Your Content for Social Media

There’s one little thing you need to figure out at this point: your content. Just kidding, that’s a massive thing. It’s the elephant in the room kind of thing. You need great content in order to stand out on Twitter, which means this is a crucial piece of your workflow.

Who will develop it? Who will design the images? How often will you release new content? All questions you need to answer. But before you begin to panic and wonder why you thought it was a good idea to get on Twitter, let alone read this article, there’s a very handy little idea called curating content.

There are so many great people releasing great content, so why not share some of theirs? With attribution, of course. This helps build relationships with other content creators, and helps you provide a steady release of content to your audience.

Schedule Your Tweets for Best Results

For the best results, you need to be pushing content regularly. And because we’re busy people, the best way to do this is through scheduling. There’s a wide range of apps available to do so, which can make it a difficult decision; I’d recommend trying a few out to see what’s important for you and what you’re looking for. (I’ve used a number of them and have settled on Buffer.)

Along with this is finding the ideal schedule for you. Because Twitter is less analytically driven than Facebook is, timing matters a little more and the lifespan of a tweet is short. So you’ll need to be posting more than other channels, but that needs to be balanced with how much content you can develop and curate.

I used to be tweeting 6–8 times a day, then realized that I wasn’t able to keep up and was pushing out less-than-stellar content. I’ve since then dropped down to posting only three times a day, but my engagement has gone up because I’m able to focus on great content and avoid burnout.

Manage Your Engagement for Lasting Relationships

Twitter is a beast, but it’s a relational beast. It’s not enough to simply share content. You have to interact with people, too. Thank your followers, those that share your work or add you to Twitter lists, and ask questions. (You don’t need to thank each one, but focus on the ones that relate to your industry, content, etc.)

I’d argue that engagement should be a higher priority than your follower count. With engagement through hashtag use, Twitter chats, and discussing content, you’re able to extend your reach and meet new people. Be relational!

Utilizing a social media workflow will help you get the most out of your social media efforts, especially when it comes to creating a consistent presence on Twitter. It doesn’t need to be a hard and fast plan that never changes, but you should stick to it until you see a reason to change.

How do you utilize a social media workflow for Twitter?

— Hannah

(@hjmoyer)