Content Sharing and Repurposing – Twitter

Last week, we started a series about content sharing and repurposing. If you missed it, be sure to take a look at the Content Sharing and Repurposing Starting Point article.

As we dig into specific strategies we’re starting with, what on the surface, might seem like an obvious one: Twitter. But I hope you’ll look at Twitter in a new way when we’re done.

The simplest thing to do once you have a new blog article is to share a link to it on Twitter. Most people know to do this. That’s the obvious part I mentioned.

However, let me share a few benefits in case you don’t do this, or question why you should bother with Twitter in the first place.

First, love it or hate it, Twitter is extremely popular. Some of the best advice I can give you is to be where your best prospects and customers are. With millions upon millions of people using Twitter, is it possible some of your best prospects, customers and even joint-venture partners are already there?

Second, not many people realize that Twitter Search is a very popular search tool. And this makes sense. Twitter is “now” so if you’re looking for information on something and you need up-to-date information, Twitter is worthwhile to search.

Third, every time I post a link to a new blog article on my site, I immediately get hit (in a positive way) by about a dozen search sites or tools indexing my new content.

Is anyone paying attention to anyone else on Twitter?

One of the complaints you often hear about Twitter is that most people aren’t paying much attention to what anyone else is saying… they’re promoting their own stuff. And if you follow even a few hundred people, you know it’s difficult to keep up with the stream of tweets that flow through every hour.

That’s OK, because here’s how I see it…

I realize that not everyone who follows me cares about what I say on Twitter. Some just like to, what I call “collect people.” But go back to the benefits I outlined earlier.

When someone is doing a specific search about my area of expertise, I want them to easily find me and my content. I want my content to be indexed so that when people are searching on some other search engine, my content is showing up on the first page.

Bottom line… I want my content to be easily found. It’s great if that content is on my blog, but it doesn’t do much good if people don’t know my blog exists. By making sure I’m sharing it in the social media channels, I increase the odds of it being found.

Twitter isn’t just about talking

Here’s where we get to what many people miss about Twitter… it’s a great listening tool.

I have a couple of searches setup in Twitter (through TweetDeck) that show me every tweet with particular keywords. When appropriate, I can jump into that conversation and point people to relevant blog articles that deal with what they’re talking about.

Let’s say you have a blog about Alzheimer’s Disease. You’d obviously be sharing links to new blog articles on Twitter.

While people searching Twitter on this topic might find you, you would also want to setup a search for alzheimer so you’re aware of what people are saying on this topic.

(Side note: Doing a search on the singular alzheimer in this case will also automatically pick up the plural version of the word. Keep that in mind no matter what search you’re doing.)

So, you see tweets about alzheimer, now what?

If appropriate, jump into the conversation. If you have enough space to share a solution, do so. Maybe your solution is a year-old blog article you wrote that covers that specific issue. If so, share it. An old article may be the new piece of information someone else is looking for.

A bonus benefit of monitoring these conversations is that it’s likely you’ll get ideas for new articles. This happens to me a lot. After all, if people are talking about something in your specialty area, perhaps you should be, too, if you haven’t already.

There’s so much more I could say about Twitter. Especially the importance of developing true relationships with people and not using Twitter (or other social media platforms) just to sell, sell, sell.

But in the realm of content sharing, I just wanted to explain how you can be using Twitter to share your content with more people.