Twitter can be a great way to develop relationships, get your brand in front of a huge number of potential customers and to share your content and your industry knowledge. Twitter can also be a massive time suck that takes away from time spent running your business. Naturally, it can often seem that the best way to deal with that is to outsource your Twitter account and get someone else to deal with it.
If you’re at all familiar with me, you know that I strongly believe that totally outsourcing any of your social media is a huge mistake. You can’t build rapport when you’re not doing the building, you can’t showcase your expertise when it’s someone else doing the research and the writing. It applies 100% to Twitter. While there are some things that you can (and maybe even should) outsource, you need to be heavily involved in the day to day tweeting.
It’s possible to just set aside a couple of times a day to go through and reply to tweets, to check your feeds and see if there’s anything you can reply to, and to retweet anything you see that is worth sharing. If you’re not sure what sort of things you should outsource, here’s 9 things that a Virtual Assistant can do to help you stay active on Twitter without spending your day monitoring it.
- Setting Up Your Profile
Your Twitter profile is the face you show to your potential clients, so make sure it represents your brand. A Virtual Assistant can set up your profile so that it works in with your branding and appears both personable and professional. - Scheduling Tweets
There’s no reason why you can’t make up a list of tweets once a day / week / month and give them to your Virtual Assistant to schedule to go out at preset times so that you’re constantly sharing without actually having to be constantly there. - Share Your Blog Posts
A Virtual Assistant can go through your old blog posts and retweet them or share points from posts that will educate or inform your followers of something industry related. - Tweeting Information On What You’re Doing / Where You Are
For an electrician: We’ll be working in Sandgate today, so if you’re in the area and want an obligation free quote, call on XXXX XXX XXX before 4pm
Or
For a painter: We’re painting a lovely house in Redcliffe this week, check out the colour scheme! (and attach a photo of the scheme, or a wall etc) - Finding People For You To Follow
Following the right people is a key ingredient to using Twitter effectively. Your Virtual Assistant can do searches for popular tweeters in your industry, monitor hashtags and select the most retweeted people to help make sure that you’re reaching the best possible audience. They can also make private lists for you of key participants who you might want to engage with on a deeper level. - Maintaining Your Lists
Your Twitter lists are most effective when they’re current, so it makes sense to regularly review them. Like anything else, this is time consuming, so it’s worth getting your Virtual Assistant to regularly look at your lists and add or remove people as necessary, to check out lists made by others and subscribe you if they’re relevant and to even consider breaking them up into smaller lists if they are particularly large. - Monitoring Your Twitter Feed
A Virtual Assistant can keep an eye on your Twitter feed and notify you of tweets that should be replied or, or acknowledged whether they are or aren’t relevant to your business or industry. They can retweet tweets based on predefined criteria and keep an eye on any developing topics or trends. - Monitoring Mentions Of Your Company Name
Your Virtual Assistant can keep an eye out for mentions of your company name, products or staff members and reply when appropriate, notify you if an urgent personal reply is needed, retweet or favourite when appropriate, and generally ensure that your business responds quickly to client queries. - Monitoring Mentions Of Your Industry
In the same way your Virtual Assistant monitors for mentions of your company name or products, they can keep an eye out for tweets relevant to your industry and notify you of any that are important or that you might want to respond to as well as retweeting any that fit within a predefined scope. They could even make a list of articles that you might want to read later so you don’t risk missing out on anything.
These are 9 quick and easy ways a Virtual Assistant can help you make the most of your Twitter account and to let you be active without being overwhelmed. You still get to create the content and develop the relationships while maximising the use of your time.
