This is the graph of my mention reach from the last six months.  A nice number considering I don’t have millions of Twitter followers of a TV program. But the truth is you can gain fair exposure using Twitter just by consistently posting high quality content. The tool I use to manage my Twitter metrics is called SumAll, it’s free and very practical. Aside from that, I only used my blog and the Klout Chrome extension to achieve these results. Let’s dissect the process I used to  gain TV-like exposure during last semester:

1. Become quantitative about social media. Join SumAll and Klout to measure your progress. I also like Sprout Social  very much. The key is to install a small number of high quality apps to manage your Twitter analytics.

2. Choose a niche and become an expert curator. Sure you post great content, we all try to. But try to complement your efforts by curating the top news and content of your niche. In this way you become a source and people start trusting you more because they know you are on top of things.

3. Prefer higher Klout scores. Sure you can engage with any reporter, but is best to create relationships with the most active members of the platforms you want to use as distribution channels.

4. Only follow people, forget about brand accounts. You want to build relationships not follow bots. Also, try not to follow more than 500 accounts so you can engage with them.

5. Tweet catchy content. This is content that has wide appeal, includes provocative infographics, and is concise.

6. Post high quality guides in a consistent basis. This makes people trust you more and then you’re more likely to be retweeted.

7. Rinse, repeat and keep improving. It’s really not that hard to get exposure on social media and, contrary to popular belief, you don’t need millions of followers to make your voice heard.