Lina Duque Speaks about Twitter at Ellevate Toronto Event
At a recent Ellevate Network, Toronto event, we were fortunate to have Lina Duque speak about “Building a Strong Online Presence to Enhance Your Career.” In front of an engaged audience of nearly 40 people at Brookfield Marche, Duque shared some tips based on her experiences using Twitter successfully. One of the things I liked most about the event, was that the speaker provided some case studies to demonstrate the points she made during the presentation. Because of her emphasis on the importance of using hashtags, I made a small tweak to my Twitter bio.
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To drive engagement, Lina Duque recommends doing the following:
- Use photos.
- Tag people in tweets.
- Use photo tagging.
- Use hashtags.
In my situation, whenever I use photos in status updates, they are seldom of people, unless I am promoting an event. At Ellevate Toronto events, I have to be more intentional about getting people’s names so that I can tag them, as well as use hashtags. When you tag someone in a photo on Twitter, or you use their Twitter handle in your tweet, they are likely to retweet, therefore, increasing engagement.
Tip: If you are interested in discovering which of your tweets got the most retweets and likes, you can use the Riffle by Crowdriff browser extension. You could also visit My Top Tweet to get the information.
Using Social Media Effectively
A best practice for social media platforms, and not just Twitter, is that you have to decide why you are using the platform in the first place. And you have to know who you are trying to engage. Your reasons will also dictate which platform is best for you. At the very least, you should have a presence on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+. Many people believe that Google+ is a ghost down, and whether or not that sentiment is accurate, Google owns that social media platform, and if you want to show up high in searches, you better have a Google+ account.
People always want to know what to share as a status update, and that’s a question Duque frequently gets. She recommends that you:
- Share news trends.
- Share your news and successes.
- Respond to others and ask questions.
- Engage in conversations.
That’s good advice, and you will never run out of interesting things to share. For me, I seldom share the news, I tend to share evergreen content – information that you can use anytime. To find content, I set-up Google Alerts on topics that I am interested in. Additionally, there are certain journals and magazines that I like, so I add their RSS feed to Feedly, and I share content from there. I also use content curation sites such as Prismatic and Scoop.it. I am mentioning these resources because there are a lot of places where you can find good content to share on Twitter and other social media platforms.
Once you have your content, how can you share it without spending all day on social media. The trick is to schedule your content to share. Duque recommends using Buffer. I use both Buffer and Hootsuite. Research studies have shown that certain times are best to share your content on each social media platform, and Duque was wonderful enough to share those times with the audience – a good piece of information to have. It’s worth noting that both Buffer and Hootsuite have an auto-scheduling feature, so it chooses the time to schedule your content based on the kind of content that you are sharing. Another important tidbit from Duque is that you have to be consistent when sharing content. It makes no sense to have eight updates one day, then you are silent for a month. Remember that consistency pays!
You can also create graphics to share, and an easy way to do that is to use tools such as Canva, BeFunky, and Fotojet. I am grateful for these tools because they are graphic design tools for non-graphic designers – they make it very easy for you to design top notch graphics. If there are quotes that mean a lot to you, create an image with the words, because if the quote touches you, more than likely it will have that same impact on others. This is also the perfect way to start building your personal brand because you can add your name, logo, or website URL to the image. I brand my images using theinvisiblementor.com.
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So You’re on Twitter, Now What?
Lina Duque is a master at using Twitter effectively. She makes connections by engaging with people. If you want to engage others, talk about topics that matter to them. One of Duque’s tweets landed her, her biggest client. She recommends that you can create a mini case study, then tag important people. This is something that I now want to do, but I have to give it some thought, so I have a big impact. Another tip from the speaker is to take a current topic in the news and put your own spin on it. An important point that Duque made that I hadn’t given much thought, is to create your own hashtag. I have now created my hashtag — #theinvisiblementor. The hashtag is also my brand and my URL.
If you want similar results as Lina Duque, you have to engage with influencers and top tweeters. Think about who you are trying to engage with on Twitter, who has a similar audience? Look at that person’s followers and follow some of the people who are your target audience. When choosing, only select people who have a complete profile and are active on Twitter. Spend 15 minutes each day doing that, and in no time you will have an engaged audience.
Other Ways to Build Your Online Presence
In addition to building your online presence on Twitter, or on any of the social media platforms for that matter, it is important to get published on high traffic websites. If you are an Achiever Level member of Elevate Network, this gives you the opportunity to pitch to the Huffington Post. If your membership is at the Entrepreneur or Executive Council level, you can also pitch to Forbes Woman.
You could also conduct a Google search such as, “How to write for Forbes Woman,” to find journalists to target. Another option is to publish on LinkedIn’s publishing platform is also another option.
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It was a great event and Lina Duque had a lot of information to share with the audience!
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