I've learned a lot over the last five years of using Twitter. I hope the lessons I've learned can help you and your audience!
1. Following People. Make sure that you don’t follow so many people at once that you can’t keep them straight; Twitter is about relationships. Follow up to 10 new accounts per day. Don't forget to show your fans some love, if someone RTs {retweets} thank them!
2. Reply to Tweets. When you’re new to Twitter, it feels awkward to just jump in an start replying to tweets. But that’s what it’s there for! If you see a tweet that you think is funny, you can relate to or you can contribute to… reply! Don’t worry if they don’t always reply back and feel free to reply to people who don't follow you.
3. Make yourself worth following, be interesting. Along with promoting yourself, makes sure you are tweeting interesting articles, tweets from your favorite accounts, questions to get followers engaged and even your favorite quotes. A good mix will make you relatable and not just a person out for publicity.
4. What's a hashtag? They are keywords! You can label tweets with them, search with them and see what is trending/most popular at the moment. Use one or two per tweet, more than that can look spammy. Hashtags are an easy way for people to find your tweets. Most importantly with hashtags is to make sure they are relevant to your post.
4a. #FF/#FollowFriday. Choose to support one or two people per #FF {Follow Friday} tweet, which is more personal.You may consider crafting a tweet for a single person if you wish to compliment or communicate with that person, be it a journalist, executive or potential business partner.
5. Tagging relevant accounts. When tweeting out your articles and promoting yourself, tag/@ accounts that would be interested in what you have written. This is an easy way to get RTs and reach a wider audience. One account per tweet will feel more personal. Too many can feel like spam.
6. Utilizing DM {Direct Messages}. Whenever you get a new follower, DM them a thank you. If you reply via your timeline, that could be pretty boring to followers. A personal message will give you a personal interaction with a new follower.
7. Time to tweet! Start out with tweeting one time per day. Mixing in your favorite news articles, RTs and personal happenings. Move up to three to five times per day and do not forget the weekends! The best time to tweet is between noon to 2pm. Do not promote yourself more than once per hour.
8. Don't use all 140 characters. Leave room for people to RT/reply to you and add their own content. Between 70-100 characters leaves enough room for RT, @usernames and a comment and links.
9. Pictures. Twitter allows you to imbed pictures into your tweets without using any of your characters. Giving followers a visual, can make your tweets pop out in their timelines and make them more likely to be RTed or replied to.
10. Be yourself. People can tell when you are not being authentic and will not follow you. Personal photos and thoughts can go a long way. Always continue to connect with new people and bring value to your followers.
Twitter is all about engagement and being yourself! It is a lot of work, but it is worth it. I've met some of my best friends on the website. Go out there and do it!
