Twitter is an important professional networking platform for the Digital Humanities. But it’s not exactly self-evident how to make it work in your favour. This part explains long-term Twitter Strategy. This involves a few elements which might not seem so important at first but will be to keep your Twitter presence active and at a steady growth rate, without having to constantly put in lots of effort. This includes scheduled Tweets and using analytics and reflection to determine how to best cater to the interests of your followers.

As some of you might remember, I did a Twitter Engagement Experiment at some time in autumn last year. Now I wanted to share my most important learnings, so you can make your Twitter presence more effective with just as little work as you want to put in. Actually, this was all just meant to be one post but it got so crazy long that I decided to make it into a series of digestible short posts.

Twitter Growth/Strategy advice for long-term improvement

14) Use the schedule feature to get out “engagement prompts” regularly.

For me, this has been a 30min session once or twice per month where I prepare “attention-grabbing” posts, following the CareerConversations three step formula (click here to get it) – I won’t spoiler what it is because it’s her method, please get it from her site – but you’ll clearly see it reflected in the structure of my posts once you know it.

This took some tweaking to adapt it to my needs but it really works for me now and has proven a low maintenance way of keeping my audience engaged and growing the account naturally, even if slowly, but with very little effort on my part. I love that!

15) Find (and then subsequently serve the interests) of people who are willing to retweet your content.

These are really the fans you should cultivate because this sort of engagement (them essentially vouching for you and sharing your content as noteworthy with their own followers) is really the one (mabye not the only one but the most important one) which is most useful to you.

Sorry to sound so attention-seeking and opportunistic here. But really, if you’re using Twitter, you want to be seen, you want your content to be shared and in order for that to work, you need to invest some time and energy into actively promoting Twitter growth.

Sadly, silent readers aren’t useful to your Twitter strategy ;(

16) Are you on the right platform? Or maybe your audience is on something other than Twitter!

Some DH people have been doing experiments with different platforms. More on that in one of the next posts. So mabye take that into account too. I, for one, will be staying on Twitter because it works sufficiently well for me.

17) Use the analytics features.

For example, to learn about which of your Tweets seem to do better than others. Then do some digging, or maybe launch some Tweets just to check what it was that worked: content, formatting, time of day, whatever.

Was it more relatable or “remarkable” like Seth Godin says about the purple cow: Is is something that people want to remark on?

18) Maybe think about getting a coaching session by CareerConvo’s Stefanie!

She’s very sympatheic and competent and shares lots of info for free on her Twitter and Youtube, even more if you become her Patreon. Many of the tips she gives certainly aren’t unique (the general Twitter know-how can be found with most other Twitter Coaches too), however, she really knows how to apply those tips to Academia and Science.

I wouldn’t do all that she has ever recommended (like making a video abstract for your papers). But hey, maybe that would actually work, I’m just finding the idea a bit weird – but overall, I value what one hour of coaching can do for you. I didn’t have a session with her (and I think you could also get some more “insider content” by becoming a patreon if you don’t want an actual coaching session) but I was in this career development programme for female researchers at my uni and I’ve learnt a lot.

Before, I was always very opposed to paying like 100€ for one coaching session but now I’m thinking it can make sense every once in a while if you have a good coach. For example, I took voice lessons – or rather we had to stop due to lockdown – with Julia Breckheimer near Frankfurt and it was just great. I would do that again any time. Great investment in myself, I found.

So maybe, if the info from this series of posts isn’t enough for you or you need help applying it to your own profile or field or research, consider booking CareerConvo’s Stefanie!

So, that’s it for today. Stay tuned for the next episode.

Best,

the Ninja

Other posts in The Ninja’s “How to better promote your content on Twitter” Guide

1. Improve your Twitter Strategy: The Ninja’s “How to better promote your content on Twitter” Guide. Part 1
2. Retweet Bots and Hashtags: The Ninja’s “How to better promote your content on Twitter” Guide. Part 2
3. Bio Engineering, Tweet Structure or How to lure your audience: The Ninja’s “How to better promote your content on Twitter” Guide. Part 3
4. Long-Term Twitter Strategizing: The Ninja’s “How to better promote your content on Twitter” Guide. Part 4