It goes without saying, Twitter is a great way to reach a wide range of people with quick, sharp and easily digestible content. However, the vast Twittersphere is often an easy place to lose content – with many posts quickly disappearing into oblivion once tweeted.
Many businesses and individuals make the mistake of trying to create a huge amount of content to give them something to shout about on Twitter.
Of course, creating shareable content is important. But more often than not, businesses fail to use their content more than once on Twitter. This is a missed opportunity - content can and should be repurposed over and over again. Here’s why:
Reach More Followers
You may have 10,000 followers, but only a small proportion of them are going to be online at the time you tweet. Therefore, don’t assume that your followers will see your tweet. You may have to send it, or at least repurpose it, a few times before a significant number of your followers see it.
Many people use Twitter by simply glancing at their latest tweets feed – which often will only show tweets that are just minutes old. If you sent a tweet several hours ago, chances are it has slipped miles down a followers’ feed by the time they next log on. According to recent research by Wisemetrics, a second tweet on the same topic gets about 86% as much engagement as the first tweet. The sixth tweet is still effective enough at almost 70%.
I know what you’re thinking, this could come across as quite spammy? And does it really work? Well go and check out the Twitter feeds of Jeff Bullas and Kim Garst who are two social media marketing heavy weights and check out just how often they promote the same content over and over.
Explain your News in more Detail
It’s actually against Twitter policy to simply copy and paste the same tweet multiple times. Repeating tweets means rewording and editing the original. If you have news to share, this may mean that you focus on a different aspect of that news the second time around.
For example, if your first tweet announced a new product, your second tweet could focus on a unique feature of that product, and your third tweet could focus on the problem it solves. Multiple tweets on the same topic enable you to explain your news in more detail – creating a more substantial social campaign.
Reiterate your Viewpoint and Become an Expert
If you’ve seen a news story that is important to you – tweet it! But don’t stop there, you can add your voice to that news story by tweeting various opinions about different aspects of it. If you were writing a blog about a news story, you should have various components to that piece. Why not break that blog up into bite size chunks suitable for Twitter? This will not only increase your chances of being heard, but will also position you as an expert on a certain topic.
Test your Headline Skills
Repurposing content in different styles is a great way of figuring out what your followers really respond to. You can easily experiment with a number of headlines to see what garners the most attention from your followers in the form of retweets and likes.
Often it is a punchy tweet that attracts a user to retweet rather than the content itself. It’s actually surprising how many people retweet or like a tweet without reading the content it links to. Using a dull headline will often mean that your tweet – and its content – will go unnoticed.
Hit Different Time Zones and Post at Different Times of the Day
If you have followers in different time zones, it’s important that you tweet content when each group is likely to be online. A tweet at 9am UK time, for example, probably won’t be seen by your followers in New York. Therefore, you’ll need to repurpose that tweet five hours later when your US followers start to wake up and scroll through their Twitter feeds.
Use a tool such as Tweriod or if you’re a Buffer user use their inbuilt optimal timing tool to schedule your tweets and ensure that your posts will be seen at key times in the day in your main target markets.
Guest Post by Lewis Crutch: Lewis is the co-founder of TweetPilot, a suite of tools to help you follow, unfollow, engage and discover on Twitter.