The Twitter To-Do Checklist For Social Media Marketers

During the past few weeks, the future of Twitter seems to be hanging in the balance. The stock of the social media microblogging platform is falling, and their active user base numbers don’t seem to be painting a good picture either.

Nevertheless, with the fast paced changes we often experience on social media, you never know whether or not Twitter will blow up again in engagement and user base growth. In fact, it’s quite difficult to future proof your SMM strategy.

If Twitter works for you or you manage an up and coming brand that wants to increase their presence on the platform, you might be noticing a downward spiral of consistently dropping numbers.

To help you avoid this and to further give you tips on how to get the most out of the social platform today, we’ve decided to create this To-Do checklist for you to follow.

The checklist consists of three parts. The first part is focused on the actions you need to take each day to increase your engagement rates and followers. These tips are especially valuable for any new and growing brands.

The second part is built around the content you need to post itself, while the third part is all about reviewing the data, drawing the needed conclusions and adapting your SMM strategy. Without further adieu, here’s the Twitter SMM To-Do checklist for marketers.

The Twitter To-Do Checklist

This checklist is designed to guide you through a day’s work in the life of a social media manager. Based on the Twitter social media platform, it has the purpose to help inspire and give insights to aspiring marketers. In addition, it is also meant to help current social media experts structure their workflow better. Yet, you might want to take only a few parts of it, rearrange it or create your own checklist. At the end of the day, social media marketers all have their own strategies and workflow and what works for some, often doesn’t work for others.

Part #1 – Increasing Natural Engagement via Active Users

• Find New People to Follow

In case you want to keep your ‘following’ numbers at bay you might want to skip this step. Nevertheless, actively adding new followers will greatly increase your chances to boost your own following and further attract currently active users on Twitter.

• Re-Tweet/Like Tweets of Active Users

Re-Tweeting is a double-edged sword. You certainly don’t want your feed to be filled with retweets with your original content and posts being overshadowed by your multiple retweets.

Yet, engaging within your industry is always a nice way to increase your own engagement. Nevertheless, instead of simply trying to find the latest news or events happening within your industry to retweet, find active users within your industry that have made a comment on such news and events with an included link and retweet. That way, you’ll increase your chances of getting noticed within your industry. Plus, individuals always tend to like and appreciate receiving recognition and interacting with a brand as a whole.

• Attract Small Start-Ups Looking for Attention

Whether you are a small startup looking for attention, a media brand or anything in between, adding new and upcoming accounts of startups within your industry can help you get a huge boost in engagement. StartUps with active Twitter accounts usually look for any attention they might get and appreciate even a like on a Tweet. To find and target active users to follow, you can:

1. Check the most popular hashtags in your industry
2. Check the most recent followers of your competitors
3. Check people who have retweeted posts of your competitors

By doing so, you will ensure that the people you are targeting are currently active users on Twitter. A mistake most make is to search for a lot of individuals in a related industry and follow them. But instead of shooting for quantity, you should rather focus on the quality of the ones you add to your network in a sense of them being currently actively engaged within your industry on Twitter.

If you want to find active experts within your industry on Twitter, you can still try the methods above or perform a Google search of those experts, find their Twitter accounts and check to see how active they are on the platform before adding them. Note that you might want to add some experts in your industry even if they are not prominently active.

Part #2 – Content Planning, Research and Scheduling

• Research New Trends

One of the first things on your Twitter To-Do list when it comes to content should be to research the new trends. Checking out the most popular hashtags is not necessary, but seeing the hashtags that are trending within your specific industry is a must. Even if you are not planning to engage with those hashtags via content, a few likes on tweets from active users can do wonders. Plus, knowing the most recent current events in Twitter is a must.

• Add Latest News/Events from your Industry

Speaking on current events, make sure to add the latest news and events from your Industry to your content strategy for the day. You might skip this part if you are posting only one or two tweets per day, but for most profiles with 2 to 10 plus tweets per day, having a few related to big news or events within the industry increases your current relevancy.

• Check to See What People are Actively Engaged With (within your Industry)

Checking out the trending hashtags and researching the latest current events should be good enough. Nevertheless, make sure you scour Twitter for any conversations that are happening within your industry. If there is a Twitter argument somewhere you might want to send a reply or two. This will naturally increase your reach of people that are active on the platform within your industry.

• Prepare and Schedule or Check your Weekly/Monthly Content

Last but not least, don’t forget your weekly/monthly content. Of course, there are marketers that don’t fancy the preparation of tweets in advance. Nevertheless, some content, such as videos and major images, just have to be scheduled. If you need to schedule something, do it. Furthermore, make sure to check the content you have scheduled on a semi-daily basis. That way you will ensure that all of your scheduled tweets are still relevant and you’ll be able to throw a second look for review on what you have coming up.

Part #3 – Data Review, Analysis and Adapting

• Perform a Daily/Weekly/Monthly Review of your Performance

A common mistake most starting marketers do is to neglect the importance of a review. Keeping track of the performance of an account can deliver amazing insights on what your audience prefers. Usually a weekly or even a monthly review will suffice, but for faster moving projects with regular daily posts, checking out the daily performance is also necessary. Plus, when reviewing your engagement on a daily basis you’d be able to see what percentage of the engagement has been received in the first few days.

• Check what your Competitors are Doing

Competitor insight is of great value on any social media platform and even in business as a whole. Seeing the engagement of your competitors, checking out their content strategies and analysing their target audience can give you a huge boost and can further help you with your own SMM strategy on Twitter.

• Analyse the Data and Tweak your Post Frequency/Time

Even though this can fall under adaptation of your strategy, it is so important that it is worth mentioning on its own. One of the two biggest factors for the success of tweets, outside of the content itself, are the post frequency of an account and the time at which you send out your tweets based on your core audience and current engagement. Make sure to use the data to your advantage.

• Adapt your SMM Strategy and Try Different Content/Tactics

Last but not least, make sure to adapt your SMM strategy whenever you feel like you should. Don’t forget to test and try out different content or tactics even if your current ones are doing wonders for you. What’s more, make sure to rinse and repeat!

And if you need a helpful tool to analyze of all your data, give you insights on your own strategy and your competitors and help you track of up to 50 accounts, sign up for a 7-day free trial of Locowise today!