Twitter users are fanatic about being the first to know. If your business is in news, fashion, marketing, or another hot trend, you’ll want to get on Twitter asap.
Twitter has a few etiquette rules that make it different from other social media platforms. It also takes considerable more time to gain followers. If you’re planning to engage on this platform, be prepared to do the following 5 things consistently.
Top 5 Twitter Best Practices
Create and optimize your bio: make sure your bio uses all 140 characters and includes hashtags. If you are the only person posting for your company, use the brand name for your handle, but your name and picture in the bio.
Post frequent updates: don’t just market yourself - converse naturally and you’ll create genuine business relationships.
Respect Twitter etiquette: when someone follows you, follow them back (it’s not an obligation, just a common way to get followers); when someone retweets you, favorite the retweet or see if this is someone to follow; when someone mentions you, at least favorite their tweet...even better, take the time to engage with an @name mention back to them.
Respond: be responsive to any questions, comments, and criticisms that come your way. To avoid long exchanges, switch to Direct Messages to resolve any complex issues.
Participate in Twitter chats: build yourself up as an authority by actively participating in Twitter chats. Acting as a valuable resource in the Twitter chat is bound to lead to a guest expert opportunity in future Twitter chats, and it’s a great way to gain new followers.
Even More...
Share your Twitter content with your other networks by re-posting your tweets on Facebook and LinkedIn, when appropriate.
Retweeting relevant content and replying to tweets are great ways to keep an engaging Twitter presence. Positive customer feedback, helpful articles, and interesting posts that align with your business are all good content to retweet.
Retweet interesting posts and engage in conversations with individuals who have built a following and regularly respond to fans. With thousands of followers, a tweet from a high profile Twitter user would definitely raise your profile.
Embed tweets into websites and blogs to drive engagement. Just click on the more button (three dots …) below the tweet you want to embed, and select “Embed Tweet.” Then, copy and paste the supplied HTML where you want it on your website.
Gaining Followers
The more you tweet, the more followers you’ll have.
Follow others. Most will follow back.
Favorite interesting tweets.
Best Time To Tweet
Social media experts recommend that you send the same tweet four times to cover all four U.S. time zones.
Social media scientist Dan Zarrella says that the best time to tweet if you want to be retweeted is on Friday at 4 p.m. EST.
Composing a Tweet
There’s room for 140 characters, but try to keep it to 100-120 characters.
Key message first, then link, then hashtags, opinions and afterthoughts.
Maximum two hashtags per tweet.
Four ways to use hashtags: join a trending topic, get found in searches, add context to your tweet, show humor or emotion.
Avoid excessive capitalization.
Use a URL shortener for all links you post.
When writing a tweet, write it as though it’s a headline. Spend your time on really great headlines with keywords - they will have the greatest impact on how many people share and read your content.
Tweets using the word ‘you’ or ‘your’ generate better response, putting the reader in position as the subject of the content.
See you in the social sphere!
