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Maximize Twitter in Just 15 Minutes a Day
You can integrate Twitter into your job search activities and you can do it in 15 minutes a day (after some learning-curve time for setting up your account and reviewing the basics).
It’s disturbingly easy to spend hours watching and responding to your Twitter stream—it’s as easy as spending hours applying to positions online, or as easy as spending far too much time Web surfing. We like the concept of spending 15 well-planned, solidly productive minutes a day on Twitter, at least initially, because it imposes a strategy and discipline that keeps you focused on the big picture—your job search—rather than the procrastinator’s playground of the Web.
These nine steps will make your 15-minute-a-day Twitter approach simple, swift, and strong:
- Know what you want to accomplish and track your progress. Monitor your momentum and value. Twitter provides instant feedback: You can tell if you are reaching your intended audience by the number of @replies, DMs, and retweets you receive. Who needs Nielsen research?
- Know your limits. What’s your attention span? Should you be tweeting at work? Do you get lost Web surfing? Are you easily distracted? Don’t let yourself get sidetracked dreaming of tweets while you are taking care of other things. Bookmark or star favorites online, and keep a notebook or file of topics and themes that you would like to tweet about later.
- What’s your best time to tweet and how often? When are most of your targets online? Are you going to break up your tweet times during the day? Are you going to tweet once a day? Of course, you’ll have a better chance of having your tweets seen if you tweet several times throughout the day or schedule tweets to be sent later. (If you are in an active job search, your Twitter time may be fundamentally different than using it for your job or for fun.)
- How will you schedule your tweets? You don’t need to be online to tweet. You can do so from your mobile device, or jot down what you want to share and tweet later.
- Find and create content. Tongue tied? You’re not alone. That’s often what halts people in their tracks as they begin to use Twitter. If you find yourself on the verge of tweeting about what you had for lunch, take the advice of Heidi Richards Mooney of SpeakingWithSpirit.com, who recommends getting up from your desk and getting a breath of fresh air.
- Find and follow people. Be selective about whom you follow. If you have too much information in your stream, you’ll miss much of it and risk overwhelm. Use Twitter Lists or Twitter APIs to organize and review your stream by follower, topic, and more.
- Share the glory. Maximize your time—and develop your community—by making it more about them and less about you. Don’t spend all your time creating your own tweets; participate in the community dialogue and disseminate ideas and news from others by retweeting.
- Don’t share too much! Don’t populate your entire Twitter stream with retweets or @replies. With too many retweets, people will think you don’t have anything to say, whereas too many conversational @replies will make people feel left out—neither of which are great impressions for a prospective hire.
- Give of yourself. Join @JobAngels and other philanthropic groups and give back when you can. Watch for opportunities to offer a tip, insight, job lead, or helping hand.
Although much of the power (and fun) of Twitter is in its spontaneous conversation, there will also be times you’ll want to schedule tweets to go out later. SocialOomph, formerly TweetLater, allows you to do just that. Set up an account (it’s free); then schedule a few tweets of an informative nature to go out throughout the day.
The Twitter Job Search Guide: Find a Job and Advance Your Career in Just 15 Minutes a Day is available at Amazon.com, in all major bookstores and from the publisher (www.jist.com or 1.800.648.JIST). The authors are three of the career industry’s most renowned leaders. They possess extensive career and personal branding expertise and social media savvy and have empowered thousands of people across the nation to find good jobs more quickly.
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