Last weekend I signed up to HootSuite and thought that now would be the perfect opportunity to explain how I make Twitter work for me and for my blog:
I have been on Twitter for about a year now and have always used it as a social media tool for this blog. It is a dilemma that, I believe, many bloggers face, the dilemma of whether or not to open up a personal social media account to your blog readers. So far, I have chosen to use Twitter for my blog and keep Facebook for my personal use*.
However, keeping my Twitter account professional doesn't mean that it can't also incorporate a personal twist:
- as I meet more bloggers, more of my followers become friends;
- my blog can be pretty impersonal at times (I'll be the first to admit that) and Twitter allows me to be a little more frivolous without it encroaching on my blog; and
- it also helps to engage and interact with others if you give your Twitter feed a little bit of the personal touch.
Just last week, I read Christen Rochon of Divas & Dorks' post on IFB, Twitter Content, Frequency and all that Jazz... in which Christen writes that she has "tried to limit [her] tweet frequency to the following categories, Informational, Epithetical, Resourceful and Basic Banter".
With this in mind, I decided to give some thought to how I tweet and then to share these thoughts with you:
- Keep it personal: I like to ensure that some tweets are about my day - what I've been doing or where I've been - maybe mentioning a company/friend/other blogger.
- Mentions: I like to engage followers/those I follow - it helps to get a blog noticed and to maintain interaction with other social media users.
- New blog posts: as a way to promote blog and new posts.
- Interacting: I endeavour to respond to tweets and to engage in conversation with followers, etc.
Do you use Twitter or Facebook or both to promote your blog and to engage with readers? Do you use a social media platform like HootSuite? If so, which one and why that one? If not, thought about it?
Finally, techie post: hit or miss?
*My Facebook account remains my personal account and, as much as it feels stupid to admit it, there are still friends who do not know that I write this blog.