It's nothing new that Twitter is one of the best platforms out there for bloggers.

Previously, I’ve talked about social media myths, a one-stop guide to the basics of this platform and some of it’s latest important updates. Now, I want to talk more in-depth about how you can intentionally curate a Twitter feed to align with your values as a blogger and as a person.

The most successful Twitter profiles have a mixture of three things: their own content, other people’s content and other personal updates, from motivational quotes, to GIFs and more. They also always share content that is completely in line with their vision, because this platform is there to represent who they are. Think of Instagram but instead of images, it’s all about the words.

If you use your Twitter feed purely as a personal account, you might not want to curate it at all. But to market your personal brand whether you’re a blogger, small business owner or neither - Twitter is a really useful tool that can be used to curate a connected brand and introduce it to new audiences.

Plan Your Content

When it comes to social media, it really is all about the planning. But before you jump right into planning what updates you’re going to share, you’ve got to think about something else first - your schedule.

There’s no point pulling together your content until you know how much room you’ve got to play around with, and that’s where your schedule comes in. You've got to decide how many tweets you’re actually going to schedule to go out every day and then you’ll know how much content you need to plan.

You also need to make sure you’re not just sending out updates as and when you please. Head over to this post and go through the five minute tutorial to create your own unique social media posting schedule. This will give you a list of times that are completely individual to your audience, depending on when they’re most active on the platform. That means your tweets will be seen by as many of your followers as possible.

Once you’ve done that, then you can get onto planning your content. Think about what you want to share and write down some specifics. If you’re a beauty blogger, you want to make sure you’re tweeting about the latest launches and beauty tips. If you’re a food blogger, you want to be tweeting recipe after recipe. Or if you’re a designer, you want to share inspiring images and your own work.

What helps me is having a specific order that I use every day in terms of what tweet goes out when. You can look out for a post on that soon!

But if you’re struggling to find things to share on Twitter, here are a few pointers:

Start with your blog posts, but remember this is what you should share the least of. The more you tweet, the more room you have to share more of your own content.
Your blog feed. Wherever you keep up to date with your blogs, you want to make sure you’re bookmarking ones to share on Twitter. I use Bloglovin’ and I know all the posts I like are potential links to share. You could even create your own category called “Links to Share” so you know exactly where they’re going to be.
Head to Pinterest. For every category that you blog about, pop each of those words into the search bar on Pinterest and look through the results. Any articles that stand out to you, pin to a secret board ready for you to share.
You can do this with Google too - simply typing in a topic idea or category will bring up a wealth of resources for you to share.

Just like using an editorial calendar for your blog, planning content for Twitter means your account stays active at all the right times with consistent updates.

Define Your Values

Make sure your values align with what you’re sharing and vice versa - never share anything that doesn’t fit into your brand’s message and ethos. Don’t get involved in things just because they’re popular. Write your tweets in a similar way - use the same tone and voice that you use on your blog to help define your values.

I share lots of content on social media from blogging tips to recipes and outfit inspiration. For me, it’s as much a personal platform as one to promote myself on, which is why there’s a mixture of both. One of the main themes that embodies ABOH is positivity. This means you’ll never find anything negative on my Twitter feed, which is a huge way of defining my values.

Focus on sharing specific things that relate to you, who you are as a person and your blog, too. Think about everything you’re sharing and what interaction it encourages. And when you look at your analytics and discover which tweets your audience loves the most, create more of them.

Lizzie is great at this. She creates content for freelancers who love to travel. Her Twitter feed is the perfect mixture of freelancing tips and travel articles.

Make Decisions

You've got two main decisions to make - the the type of content you want to share and the way in which you want to share it. Think about it: when you go on someone’s Twitter profile for the first time what do you do? Scroll through their feed, to see, at a glance, whether they’re worth following or not based on their latest updates. This means it’s important to have a really clear representation of what kind of account you’re running and what content they can expect to see. Having a clearly defined, consistent feed means people will be much more likely to hit that follow button.

The tweet you pin to the top of your Twitter profile is really important. If you don’t know how to do this, here’s what you do:

Find one of your favourite tweets
Click the three dots
Click “pin to your profile page”

This is the first tweet potential followers will see when they head to your profile. This is the one thing that can encompass everything you and your brand is all about. Make it one that represents who you are, what you’re doing and why you’re doing it in one tweet.

You could always promote something, which is fine for a certain amount of time. But otherwise, let your words do the talking. Here are some great examples.

🙌https://t.co/FWEyXYDor8 pic.twitter.com/Jq3OWhnKGT
— Sophie (@theprivategirl) March 29, 2016

It's up to YOU. pic.twitter.com/sxbMXQgL9H
— Hey, Sweet Pea (@heysweetpea) May 12, 2014

The best thing you can do for your business today is RISE, show up, and fight. Even when it hurts. #ThePowerIsYours pic.twitter.com/tR6NY1pHZF
— Regina Anaejionu (@byReginaTV) March 22, 2016

As a blogger, you definitely want to share your own published blog posts, but also behind-the-scenes, work in progress and a few personal moments. Have a line at how much personal content you want to share, but definitely don’t omit it altogether - people want to know who you are!

Schedule Your Updates

We've already touched on this but it definitely deserves its own section. The average lifespan of a tweet is around 18 minutes - that means in order to be consistent with Twitter, it’s important to post regularly without being spammy (hence not just sharing your own content). Withholding content to tweet ‘later’ makes it easy to forget posting them altogether.

There are many different tools that allow you to schedule tweets and they’ll be posted directly for you too - I use Buffer and Hootsuite for both my blog and in my day job too. Both are brilliant platforms, although Buffer is my favourite, especially for the analytics it gives you access too.

Plus, with Buffer, you can sync your own personal schedule. So when you’ve been to Followerwonk and calculated your optimal posting times, it allows you to sync those with Buffer to automatically input your own schedule. Clever, right?

A Final Note

It might take some time initially to get going with this platform, but it’ll be so worth it once you get going. If you’ve ever struggled with content ideas for Twitter, I really hope this sparks some inspiration and gets you thinking more about your own feed. Let me know if this was a post you enjoyed and if you want to see more like this in the future!

Do you find it challenging to curate content for Twitter? Let me know in the comments which of these pointers you'll be trying out!