Looking to improve your Twitter profile? Here are all the tools that journalists need to maximise Twitter potential!
When entering the world of journalism, acclimatising to the numerous social media platforms can be a daunting prospect. Twitter has become an essential platform for journalists as it is a fantastic means of engaging with other people within your field and publicising your own work. However many journalists are unfamiliar with all the different ways in which you can improve your Twitter experience. This article will offer five vital tools to make the most of the platform that all journalists need:
Twitter analytics
Twitter analytics is extremely useful for journalists as it can gauge how your audience is engaging with your various content. It allows you to see how often your profile is visited, how regularly you tweet and how many impressions individual tweets receive amongst other useful statistics to summarise your monthly progress. This is crucial as journalists can therefore identify and tailor which form of content receives higher engagements and organise their content accordingly to increase their reach. For example, the website quickly helped me learn about the importance of hashtags when publishing a story as it increases the widespread visibility of the tweet.
Buffer
Buffer is incredibly helpful as it allows you to schedule and edit future tweets. When working for various publications such as Interhacktives and Islington Now, Buffer has helped me to organise tweets in order to promote different pieces of work. Not to mention, when you are working for publications in other timezones, Buffer allows you to schedule tweets so that your content is produced at the optimum time for overseas audiences. This tool can be used across all social media platforms too! Buffer is sadly one of the only recommended tools that will cost you a monthly fee, however most publications and universities will offer you this for free.
Nuzzel
After being introduced to Nuzzel in recent months, it has helped me to sift out the irrelevant parts of my chaotic Twitter feed as it strictly includes articles and features that people you follow read and share. This gives a condensed feed of topics surrounding your interests and niche. The app can also create daily newsletters containing 5 stories based on these preferences, which can be sent out to your subscribers. Nuzzel also provides the “Best of” section, illustrating which journalistic pieces that fellow Nuzzel users have been clicking on the most on that particular day. It is a real must for all journalists and gets you straight to the articles that you want to read and share!
TweetDeck
TweetDeck is another useful tool for journalists who manage numerous Twitter accounts for different publications as it allows the user to manage and read different accounts across one screen. Furthermore, you are able to construct Tweet collections, which is extremely useful when you want to compile a list of reactions to an event to be used for a future story! Check out this month’s piece on TweetDeck to find out even more about all its functions.
Twitter lists
Finally, the use of Twitter lists has become a lifesaver for organising your differing interests. For example, I have recently added a list with over 100 accounts relevant to the latest news in Islington in order to create a feed strictly focused towards my work for the Islington Now. You can simply find this on the left side bar on your home page and make as many types of lists as you want – it is super easy and quick to make. This stops certain news stories being missed through your enormous timeline!
