When you’re working on a blog for your small business, sometimes the toughest thing is not the actual writing of the post, but finding a valuable and helpful idea for the post. Twitter can be a great source to find that next content thread. Here are 3 quick tips:
1. Search on hashtags and look at the Top tweets
If you’re in the real estate business, for instance, use #realestate in the search box on top and you’ll see tweets with that hashtag. You have a choice to see “Top” tweets, “All” tweets or tweets “With Links”. According to Twitter, you can use the “Top” tweets to quickly find the updates that others are finding interesting, insightful, and helpful in real-time. These are tweets that lots of people are interacting with and sharing via retweets and replies. If you search through some of these Top tweets on some hashtag variations, you should start to see some interesting trends. And interesting trends can spark a brilliant topic!
2. Check which of your tweets are your followers’ Favorites
Whether you’re tweeting your own content or someone else’s, finding out which of your tweets have been marked as Favorites can be a good indication of the topics and titles that others find engaging. A site like favstar.fm keeps track of favorite tweets; just sign in with Twitter and go to the My Tweets link underneath your profile photo. Favstar.fm also allows you to look up other Twitter users and see which of their tweets have become favorites.
I appreciate seeing which of my messages get the Favorites star. Tweets with questions and top tips with links seem to become easy Favorites that people want to reference later.
3. Take a look at your tweets, retweeted
Twitter doesn’t make it immediately obvious which of your own tweets have been retweeted by others. You have to go to the Retweets section on your home page and select “Your Tweets, Retweeted” link to find out. Seeing which tweets have been shared out by your followers can give you good insight into the type of information people find interesting and useful.
By using some simple Twitter features, you can take the pulse of your followers and follow the thread of a topic that engages them. What are some other Twitter features you have used for inspiration?