When I got COVID, I cleared off 5 days of work and did nothing. I felt great.
I knew that becoming inactive on Twitter meant it would take some time for people to see my tweets on their feed again, but I also knew that if I forced myself to still show up, I let Twitter be in charge of my life. No, not going to happen.
If you're putting quite some effort to post on Twitter every day, I want to share with you 3 ways that've helped me play the long game and stay sane:
1) 80% of the time, I don’t tweet in real-time
To me, tweeting live 100% of the time can a waste of my ideas and energy.
When you tweet live, do you ever want to go back and edit it? That's because when we tweet live, we’re usually in a hurry. And we put out half-baked content without properly thinking how it fits in with our brand and presence.
Also, do you have days when you’re heads-down building and absolutely have nothing to say? When we tweet live, we’re not saving food (ideas) for Winter. I don’t want to be having 5 meals in Summer and then starve myself in Winter.
This is why 80% of my tweets are content I mindfully write and schedule to share. The other 20% I tweet based on how I feel like sharing that day. I split them clearly like this:
And this is how I balance being valuable + authentic.
2) 80% of the time, I don’t reply in real-time
As a new dad who lives half the globe away from my main audience, I’m never in front of my laptop when my tweets go out (usually morning Eastern time). I like to ask myself:
Do I really need to reply to people right away?
I like to get back to everyone who engages with my tweets, but I usually wait until the next day to do it. You're right, it is not as ideal, but at least for those who care, we can keep the conversation going.
I’m maximizing the value of Twitter (conversations) while staying in control.
3) I take mini breaks from Twitter and no one knows
Lots of people say “Kevon, you’re the most consistent person I’ve met” or “Kevon, you’re always on Twitter!”
Illusion.
Because I save up my food for Winter days, I seem to be always "on".
The truth is, some weeks I’m so busy building or running my products I don’t even get on Twitter that much.
My scheduled tweets still go out and I just turn off the part where I interact with people live. During the COVID week, I didn't get to write any scheduled tweets, so I only had 3 tweets going out and that was fine.
I also sourced two discussions around this topic for you:
- How Marie navigates serious stress when they come up
- How Tobi handles a lot of ongoing things (especially 5 kids!)
Here are some few things to reflect on as you create your system:
- Will you schedule some tweets to take some pressure off having to write tweets every day? How will you do it?
- How's your schedule going on Twitter right now? Do you go on all day long or block time to connect with people? Can you block time?
- Can you take a week off Twitter sometimes? Can you build up some ideas to keep an active presence while you're off?
