Recently I’ve had quite a few friends ask me how to get started on Twitter. Below is a list of basic Twitter tips and tricks that I use:
1. Build an audience: Follow People
If you follow someone on Twitter, they will typically follow you back. Not always, but typically. This is a quick way to build an audience.
As your following grows so will your list of who you are following. Every couple of months you may want to trim this list back. Pruning people that aren’t active or aren’t talking about topics you are interested in.
If you are following a lot of people, you will need tools to help you filter out the noise.
2. Organize people into Lists
As the number of people you follow grows you will quickly find it unmanageable to read everyone’s updates. Twitter provides a concept called a List that you can add people to. Rather than reading everyone, you can use lists to read only those people who you are really interested in.
For example, you could create a list called Customers and add people that you do business with.
Lists can be public or private. People can view and follow your public lists, but private lists are only available to you.
Example uses: I have lists for analysts and competitors — yes, I follow them too. This way I can quickly see a focused group of people to see what they are talking about.
3. Tweet like a pro – Hootsuite and other tools
How do you manage all of the updates if you are following thousands of people? Short answer is: you don’t. Instead you use specialized software that allows you to better manage lists and the people you follow.
I used Hootsuite (hootsuite.com). This is one of many tools that allows you to more effectively manage Twitter. With Hootsuite you can manage multiple Twitter accounts as well as other social media, such as Facebook, create different views and filters for content, and there are a number of other tools for controlling how you consume the Tweet-stream.
One of my favorite features about Hootsuite? Scheduled updates: the ability to schedule when your tweet gets published.
4. Re-tweeting and Commenting
Re-tweeting content is one of the ways that Twitter enables information to spread quickly.
For example, when Joe says:
“Here is a really good analysis of ABC”
you can re-tweet that:
“RT @Joe Here is a really good analysis of ABC”
This is important because Joe will get notified that you re-tweeted him. People like to know they are being read and their information is being valued. Re-tweeting is an important component of Twitter as you can also re-tweet people that you don’t necessarily follow or that don’t necessarily follow you.
When you re-tweet someone you are essentially re-broadcasting what they said to your followers.
In addition to re-tweeting, you should also add commentary on other people’s tweets. For example:
“@Amy has a really good analysis of ABC http://abc“
This is important because Amy will get notified that you mentioned her, similar to a re-tweet.
5. Repeat yourself
Twitter content is in-the-moment and people typically aren’t going back in time to see what you’ve posted. For important content I will tweet a message multiple times at different times of the day. For example, 4-6 AM CST to target Europe, 10-12 AM to target East/Central timezones, 4-6 PM to target West coast timezones. I will not repeat content the same day but will spread it out over a week.
Again, tools such as Hootsuite, makes this really easy as it allows you to schedule tweets. I’ll spend an hour each week scheduling out tweets over the upcoming weeks.
6. Help your content get found: Hashtags
When you tweet something your effective reach / audience is your follower list. If you use a hashtag (the right ones) you are broadening the scope of who sees your content.
For example, let’s say you are in the marketing industry. People in this industry may use the hashtag #marketing in their tweets. People will follow this hashtags much like they follow a person. So while re-tweeting and commenting is people focused, hashtags are a tool you can use to reach an even broader audience.
7. Content length is important
Twitter posts can be up to 140 characters, but if someone re-tweets you it adds the text “RT ” plus their Twitter handle.
For example this Tweet is 136 characters:
“Telligent’s social business platform helps customers build world class communities to better support their customers http://ow.ly/8EKC3“
If someone re-tweeted it, then end get cut off:
“RT @robhoward Telligent’s social business platform helps customers build world class communities to better support their customers http://ow“
This would have been a better tweet using only 94 characters:
“Telligent’s #socbiz platform helps customers build world class communities http://ow.ly/8EKC3“
Always try and write tweets like headlines. Small, compact, and designed so that someone can re-tweet the full content. Typically I’m trying to use ~90 characters to make room for re-tweets.
Why is this important? I’ll find interesting stuff that I want to re-tweet and very often I either have to edit down the original message (not ideal) or I don’t re-tweet the content because the original message can’t be condensed.
8. URL shortening
As it relates to shortening your content there are a number of great utilities (this is built in to most Twitter tools) that will shorten a URL.
For example, the URL to a recent article I wrote for CMSWire is way too long:
http://www.cmswire.com/cms/social-business/the-community-is-correct-91-of-the-time-013714.php
Using a URL shortener this becomes something like:
9. Format your tweets
This is more personal preference, but I believe that if you want people to click on links (drive behavior) you have to make it as easy as possible.
My tweets always follow the same format:
Content Hashtags Link
Content is always first and the link is always last. Why? I don’t want people to have to work to find the URL and the Hashtags, e.g. #social, are tools to help get the content discovered.
10. Have a message / focus
95% of what I tweet about is technology related, sometimes about Telligent, sometime not.
Of that 95% I try and tweet about 80% of the time about industry related topics and the other 15% is about Telligent. The remaining 5% is personal-stuff (just for some added flavor) and that typically is reserved for weekends.
Happy tweeting!
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