The 12x12x12 Twitter Strategy: 12 Tweet Ideas That Future-Proof Your Content for 12 Months

When an article publishes on your website, how do you go about promoting it in social media? When we pose this question to a room full of magazine editors from different publications, their answer is typically that they wait for the post to be published and then they promote it. If they’re super savvy, they might also schedule a Tweet (using Hootsuite or CoSchedule) a week later. Valiant effort, for sure, but simply not enough, and it’s usually a lack of Tweet ideas, amongst other things.

Back in 2012, we had been digging deep into our blockbuster report. This is a list of the top articles sending traffic to our site. For many of our publishing partners, these blockbuster posts, which are SEO-optimized, account for more than half of their website traffic.

While digging into our blockbusters, we were taking note of the ones that were beginning to slip. For us, a slipped blockbuster can mean losing hundreds to tens of thousands of search visitors per month.

Amanda MacArthur, our Daily editor decided that one of the ways we might recover this position was to re-promote it through our social media channels and treat it as if the content was brand new again. In many cases, we began to recover those positions. From there we decided that any one post needs to be promoted more strategically than most of us were doing at the time – and from there, her Tweet formulas were born and have been trialed and tested ever since.

Let’s dig into this step by step. Grab a pen or a spreadsheet.

To start, pick the most recent article you’ve published on your blog. Hopefully it’s SEO’d for search and contains evergreen content (content that doesn’t expire with the direction of the wind) because this content performs best using this strategy.

The 12x12x12 Twitter Strategy

Next, begin to think up different ways you can promote your article. Keep in mind, that this is by no means an exhaustive list of every Twitter formula that could exist and in fact I suggest that you test these out and create your own. The purpose of using these formulas is to determine which ones your audience responds to best, and then improve from there.

12 Tweet ideas:

1. The subtitle: Easy, just use the subtitle
2. The subtitle + context: The subhead, plus a little more to make it catchy
3. The excerpt: Interesting statement
4. The summary: What they’ll learn by clicking the link
5. The shout-out: @ anybody mentioned
6. The hashtag(s): Insert extra (related)  trending hashtags
7. The quote: Find a relevant quote and use it
8. The quippy click-bait: Short and sweet
9. The friendly suggestion: First-person request to read/share
10. The question: Ask a related question
11. The engagement: Ask them to comment/give feedback
12. The takeaway(s): Subheads and major points

We’ll run through 12 examples of these Tweet ideas below, and then how these posts would be scheduled for maximum effectiveness.

Below we’ve created examples using a general-interest magazine publisher, Good Housekeeping. The post is titled, How to Fix a Sedentary Lifestyle (Because It’s Never Too Late to Get Moving).

1. The subtitle: Easy, just use the subtitle

Goal: Your title show up in the preview automatically, so find out if your subtitle is click-worthy enough and test which subtitles in your Tweets end up performing best. It’s a great way to test subtitle formulas for your articles.

2. The subtitle + context: The subhead, plus a little more to make it catchy

Goal: Add more context to the Tweet, which often leads to retweets if it’s catchy.

3. The excerpt: Interesting statement

Goal: Make a bold statement from the article to get more retweets.

4. The summary: What they’ll learn by clicking the link

Goal: Give them the facts, and challenge them to keep reading to find out why your statement is so.

5. The shout-out: @ anybody mentioned

Goal: Get your post in front of the people you’ve mentioned and hope for them to retweet the post too.

6. The hashtag(s): Insert extra (related)  trending hashtags

Goal: Get your post in front of other like-minded readers who enjoy similar topics.

7. The quote: Find a relevant quote and use it

Goal: People love to retweet quotes, and retweets send great social signals to Google about your post.

8. The quippy click-bait: Short and sweet

Goal: Forget the small talk, just get them to click and read like the example below. Write something that challenges them to click. For example, if you have a list post, say something like “you’ll never believe what #4 is!”.

9. The friendly suggestion: First-person request to read/share

Goal: This first-person request can garner more replies, retweets and favorites based on the personal nature of the request.

10. The question: Ask a related question

Goal: Inspire followers to engage with you. Ask them a question related to the article and get them to read on.

11. The engagement: Ask them to comment/give feedback

Goal: Get followers to your site and boost its SEO with more post comments.

12. The takeaway(s): Subheads and major points

Goal: Lay it all out there. Some people just want the facts, Jack. Bring on the retweets.

Scheduling Your New Tweet Ideas

Now that you’ve written your Tweets, you’ll want to schedule them. Here’s a basic twelve-day schedule for a publisher that posts one article per day.

Daily Publishing Schedule