Twitter is the bluebird app we love to hate. As much criticism as the app garners at times for its structure and community, the numbers don’t lie: Twitter is very popular. So, naturally, Twitter is a place every aspiring content creator should familiarize themselves with and use to expand their brand. After reading this post, you should easily be able to conquer Twitter as a content creator.

The first thing to do on Twitter, like any social media platform, is to create an account. These accounts can be connected to your email, phone number, or both. I recommend both for security, if possible. During this account creation process, you will be asked to choose several things that are integral for your success. The most important and first step is to select a username that is catchy, simple, short, and embodies your brand/podcast/channel perfectly. If you have a longer name, like the famous “Welcome to Nightvale” podcast, its recommend to use that full name as your Name on Twitter, but the username (the name following the “@” symbol) should be shorter and requires no spaces, and is easier to remember, such as “@NightValeRadio” for that previously mentioned show.

After you’ve selected an appropriate username for your account, you’ll want to select a profile picture and banner. Profile pictures are the small standard avatar, so all rules of the previous YouTube blog apply here. In general, however, use a small image that is simple, but recognizable, and distinctly represents your brand, such as a logo. The banner, however, is a longer, larger image that requires a different structure than a standard profile pic. It’s common to use a graphic depicting the entire name of your podcast or the brand, since you have extra space to work with, and the text is not negatively impacted by being in an uneven frame. However, more niche and interesting options also work, such as fan art or a photo of your podcast’s main hosts.

Now that you’ve determined your username, profile picture, and banner, the last bit of set-up is writing a bio, short for biography. For some reason, Twitter bios are more discussed and memorable than bios on other social media platforms, but they’re also often less serious and professional than others. Regardless, for a podcast, I recommend the Twitter bio being a description of the show, a funny joke about the show, a quote from it, or some other memorable phrase that can be associated with your podcast. Following this sentence or so, I recommend adding a link to where your followers can check out your podcast.

With your bio written, your profile is complete, which means you can begin tweeting from it. This is an easier task than it seems, but perhaps it comes more naturally to people with social media as a part of their lives. Twitter is infamous for its character limit, meaning messages must be concise and short. This also suggests that you should make far more frequent posts than you would on YouTube, Instagram, Reddit, or Facebook since your posts are shorter and quicker. I recommend your posting strategy for Twitter be as follows: Up to three times a day, you should Tweet something fun and related to your podcast’s themes and identity, especially in ways that your followers can interact with, such as questions or funny memes. The most important tweets, however, are the posts you make announcing new blog uploads, new merch releases, or any other non-daily but important announcement your audience may care for. These should be short, snappy posts with a link or image of what matters, such as: “Hey guys! Just uploaded a new episode of the podcast w/ @Markiplier as a guest, check it out here (INSERT URL HERE).”

If you follow those simple steps to account creation and tweet writing and work hard to figure out what tweets your followers respond well to, you should have no problems reaching Twitter success for your show! Since we’re already discussing Twitter, I’d like to ask all of you who you follow on Twitter, and why? Please, leave your answers in the comments below. Thinking about why you like or follow certain accounts can help you gauge what kind of personality and content works on the platform. If you learned anything today or enjoyed what you read, please share this with your friends so we can all be a little bit smarter and nerdier together! As always, I’d also appreciate comments and suggestions from you! If there’s anything you’d like to see in a future post here, let me know!