Building a Tweet Content Strategy For Your Job Search

I’d like to share my tips on Building a Tweet Content Strategy For Your Job Search.

When I discuss using Twitter with job seekers one of the most common objections I hear is, “I don’t know what to Tweet about.” As a result, many job seekers are not using Twitter.

As you probably know, Twitter is one of the most popular, social networking websites on the internet and more than 20 million people visit Twitter every month. These visitors include hiring managers, human resources and recruiters that work for the companies that you want to work for. So.. I recommend that every Job Seeker uses Twitter.

In an earlier blog post, I reviewed 5 ways job seekers can use Twitter for their job search. Today’s post will provide tips on the actual Tweet publishing; what to write about, where to get ideas and how often to publish them.  This is often called a Tweet content strategy. (Note: There is a video version of this post, available here.)

What Kind Of Tweets Should You Publish?

I recommend that job seekers publish a mix of a different Tweet topics. Here are some specific examples

• Thought Leadership Tweets, which are tweets that demonstrate your knowledge or opinions on topics, key trends and events related to your industry or profession. Example: “Bootstrap Market Research Tip: Use free SurveyMonkey tool, then add links to your survey on LinkedIn groups visited by your target audience.”

• Share information about Industry or Professional News including links to relevant industry articles. Example: “Just read thought provoking article on search marketing trends from SEM today http://tinyurl.com/abcde”

• Provide links to your own blog or online content  Example: “My Blog: Just shared my views on Sales Closing best practices. A must read. http://tinyurl.com/abcde”

• Retweet interesting content from the users you follow  Example: “RT @alibrownLA: When you nail down your marketing message it becomes easy because then you use that in everything you do. (Fully agree!)”

• Quotes that are business related.  Example: “A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way. – John C. Maxwell”

• An occasional personal anecdote and/or something humorous that happened to you  Example: “Getting a great start to Monday with extra strong Starbuck’s coffee and the Wall Street Journal.”

• An occasional Tweet about a current event, movie or television show. (But stay away from politics or any controversial topics)  Example: “Just saw District 9. It definitely was worth the wait and the critics were right- I loved it!”

The bulk of your Tweets (70-80%) should have a business theme, but it’s nice to throw in something more personal or fun from time to time, to show you are human and have some diverse interests.  However, don’t publish anything that you would not want a recruiter, hiring manager or your mom to read.

How Do You Get Ideas for Tweets?

There’s writer’s block and now there’s tweeting block!  There are some days we need to take action to get ideas for our online content. Here are a few ideas to stimulate your tweet writing…

• Watch the news or read the daily newspaper
• Read recent posts on industry specific blogs.. Use Google Blog search or Technorati to find them
• Read magazines, online and offline, related to your industry or profession
• Go to the websites for companies that you want to work for and read their press releases or company blogs
• Go to Social Bookmarking sites like Digg and Delicious and peruse the front page stories
• Join LinkedIn or Yahoo groups related to your profession and read the daily discussions and news postings
• Attend networking events for your industry or profession
• Sign up for email newsletters for your industry and profession. One website I love is called Smart Brief. SmartBrief.com lists hundreds of alerts you can receive daily.

How Often Should You Tweet?

One thing to keep in mind, is that the tweets you publish will not only be listed on Twitter, they will also come up in search engine results on Google, Yahoo and Bing. So, it’s in your benefit to publish tweets on a regular basis.

I recommend publishing at least 1 Tweet per day and a maximum of 5 Tweets per day. The tweets should be published at different intervals throughout the day- not all at the same time.

When you publish too many tweets, it can actually be a turnoff for your followers. They may stop following you.  So, minimum of 1, maximum or 5.

Tweet Scheduling

In closing, I also want to mention that there are a number of Twitter tools and applications out there to help with managing and scheduling your Tweets. These include Tweet Deck, Tweet Later and my favorite,  Hootsuite. (You may want to refer to this article “80 Twitter Tools and Applications”)

Is there a best time to tweet? Many studies have shown that the lunch break, 11-1, is the best time to ensure that your Tweets are read. Here are a few links to Twitter time studies: “Twitter study reveals interesting stats about usage“,  “4:01, The Best Time To Tweet” and “Good and bad times to tweet“.

For more helpful tips on using Twitter as a job search tool, download the free “Tweet Sheet”: A one page, desktop reference guide for job seekers with tips and tricks on how to find a new job using Twitter. Leave the nest, fly around and start to tweet, with help from the Tweet Sheet! Click here to download yours!

For even more information on Twitter for job hunting, check out the free offer from Tweetajob.com. Sign up for a job seeker account and get a copy of the free ebook, “How To Use Twitter For Your Job Search”. Go to Tweetajob.com.

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