Hello, Daily Kos community! My name is Cara Zelaya and I am Daily Kos’s Social Media Coordinator. One of my main tasks as Social Media Coordinator is to ensure that I help our community be successful in promoting your diaries on external social platforms. Our incredible Daily Kos community's writings are often some of the most viral posts we have. I’m here to help you take your already great content to the next level when it comes to readership and engagement.
Today we are starting with my personal favorite: Twitter. Twitter is an incredible way to share and read editorials, news, and essays. It’s increasingly the place that people go to to get their information and to seek their messaging when discussing issues and current events. It’s also a huge activism hub!
If you are more of a reader of Daily Kos, Twitter is an excellent place to follow and reach high-profile people directly. Twitter allows you to closely follow some of your favorite candidates and topics. It's also a great way to help support your favorite community writers—by tweeting their content and elevating it to another audience outside the site. Basically, anyone who is already a part of our community on Daily Kos would thrive on and love Twitter.
(If you’re a complete novice to Twitter, have no fears! The official Twitter help guide is massively helpful and thorough.)
This is by no means an all-exhaustive list of tips and tricks on how to be successful with your diaries on Twitter, but it is a starter guide to get you excited and on your way to sharing your incredible writings with your external non-Daily-Kos communities.
With that in mind, let’s get started:
1. Do not fear tweeting out your link multiple times.
So you’ve spent hours working on a great diary to share on Daily Kos. Now what? You share it!
There is an all-too-pervasive idea that oversharing content that you have spent hours working on is somehow burdensome to others. Dispelling that notion is vital. Ultimately, if you are spending the time to write out something, it’s because you hope that others will read it.
You are your own best promoter. Your ability to encourage others to read your writing is unparalleled by anyone else.
Think of it this way: Your followers on Twitter follow you because they value you and, usually, your opinions. You are doing them a favor by making it easier for them to have an opportunity to read your writings.
2. Ask your friends/family to read your diary and to share it as well.
The Twitter algorithm is a fickle friend and foe. The posts that tend to end up on timelines (whether they follow you or a specific hashtag) usually have some engagement. This is where your strongest social network comes into play: your friends and family. Individually private message out your diary to close friends and family who you believe would enjoy what you have written and ask them if they would like and retweet the diary.
If your diary might not be something that your friends or family would be comfortable sharing (some people don’t particularly want to engage in political/current events conversations), a simple “like” does plenty and still helps. This also works long-term in encouraging your closest networks to feel like they have a part to play in your writing. Your community will be excited and thrilled to be involved, and will be more on the lookout for your future diaries.
Be sure to do a public thank you to people who share your writings. A simple @ reply saying something like “Thank you for sharing! I’m glad you enjoyed it” goes far, and also increases the visibility of the tweet.
3. Consider doing a thread, after your initial tweet.
Threads on Twitter allow you to keep pushing your tweet to the top of people’s timelines. It’s also a way of creating a longer-length pitch for someone to click through and read your diary. Twitter has created a great how-to page on how to start a thread here. But this blue box specifically covers most everything you need to get started:
Now that you know how to start a Twitter thread, let’s go over best practices on how to use them.
Let’s say that you wrote a diary about a particular candidate that you are supporting in the Democratic primary. It is a heartfelt piece with relevant details from your life that bolsters the narrative that led you to arrive at this decision.
Let’s start your thread:
Sample first tweet: “My latest at @dailykos: [Headline here]”
Sample second tweet in the thread: “Writing this diary required me to truly reflect on why I’ve chosen to support @nameofcandidate. In the end, their convictions and values resonated with me. #TuesdayThoughts”
Third tweet: “That being said, we all come at these decisions in a different way. Have you chosen a primary candidate to support yet? I’d love to hear your thoughts and keep the conversation going!”
Space those tweets some time apart. Thirty minutes to an hour should be plenty. Those tweets can stand on their own but also benefit from the additional bump of an added tweet.
4. Hashtag relevant topics. Tag people and platforms.
If you notice in the first sample tweet above, I encouraged you to tag @dailykos in your opening tweet. Why? The Daily Kos name has strong recognition and carries weight. Showing that your writing is being hosted on a known platform is more likely to encourage someone to click through and read your diary. Tagging @dailykos also ups your chances in being retweeted by our official Twitter page, which has a following of over 277,000 readers. That’s pretty significant exposure!
Similarly, if you were writing about a person with a significant following, like, say, President Barack Obama, tag them in one of your tweets as well. Do a little research here to ensure that you have the correct account of the person you are referencing. But a simple search on Twitter’s search functionality will sort that out for you.
Trending Topics is a helpful Twitter feature that can be used to find appropriate hashtags to further share your diary into high visibility. Often specific news might align with what you have written about. However, even if a topic is not trending, using a relevant hashtag will still help visibility.
Daily hashtags that can often be used are things such as #MondayMotivation, #TuesdayThoughts, #WednesdayWisdom, #TBT, and #FridayFeeling. However, think of what you are writing about. Is it about the #election? #2020? #Trump? All of these are great hashtags to add to your promotional tweet.
5. Do not feed the trolls. Do engage with genuine readers.
Unfortunately, you may get trolls @ replying to you on Twitter. The chances of that happening will increase the larger the readership your diary gets. Sadly, this is just part of the process of writing and sharing your writing. Do not be discouraged by that; simply do not engage. Those kinds of people or bots are only trying to get attention from you and your readership. It’s best to simply leave them in all their miserable negative energy.
But for every troll, there will be good people who are tweeting/commenting something constructive or kind! Do engage with those folks. They are likely to follow your future writings and become your advocates in the future.
Have you used any of these strategies before? Any further recommendations you think I left out? Sound off in the comments below! I’d love to hear your thoughts.