WHAT you tweet makes all the difference.
Do it well and your followers and influence will grow. Do it badly and you will never get any traction because people will first ignore and then unfollow you faster than new people follow you.
Even those wise enough to join JustRetweet and use the Retweet sharing function that encourages others to share your tweets do not clearly understand what kind of tweets will work.
Yesterday I wrote What NOT to Tweet on Twitter so today I am continuing with what TO Tweet – with tips in order of importance.
Before I write about actual tweets, fix this huge omission that far too many Web site designers, website owners, and bloggers are making:
Put your Twitter Username on your Sites AND Your Blogs
ideally in an obvious place near the upper right corner and make
sure the word Twitter in text can be found using a Ctrl-F search.If your Twitter Username is on your sites, people like me will include
it when we share your content, follow you, and use it to contact you.Don’t make us use a search engine trying to TRY to find it!
I am amazed at the number of people – even SEOs and bloggers and people who work in social media agencies – who do not have their username on their site and blog and do not include usernames in their tweets. That makes no sense.
When tweeting from other sites and apps:
Include Twitter usernames in your Tweets!
If you have a tool in your blog that makes it easy to tweet your posts – and you should – make sure you put suggested text in the tool and INCLUDE YOUR TWITTER USERNAME!!!
Look at the tweets in your Twitter stream. Which ones sound interesting enough for you to click on their links or retweet to your followers? They will give you ideas for what YOU should be tweeting. What do YOU click on? Tweet what YOU would click on.
If you are sharing a link DESCRIBE what
the user will find if they choose to click on it.
No one wants to click on a link when they have no idea where it goes – and anyone who tricks them into clicking on a link that is NOT what the text said it was will be unfollowed or even blocked or reported as a spammer – so never do that.
When you Retweet always check the link
to make sure it works BEFORE you reshare it.
KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE:
The key to having an effective Twitter account is to intentionally build an audience interested in what you share. That could be your niche or a specific location – or both. (I HIGHLY recommend BOTH as I explain in Why Your Location IS a Niche.)
This is especially important if you have a local business. You need to follow and interact with people in your geographic location and share with them:
What THEY are interested in –
NOT what YOU want them to do for you.
Share what is happening in your area – events and activities or maybe even sales of interest. Locate the best local blogs and add their blog feeds to your Twitter stream.
NEVER Just Keep Tweeting Your Own Content
OR even worse – about your company over and over again.
And finally, Twitter is ultimately about relationships. While you can automate some of what you do, what really matters is interacting with real people. That is true whether you are a blogger, or have a business, or run or work in an agency.
HOW TO USE TWITTER EFFECTIVELY:
- Reply to people who tweet at you. (Use the @Mentions link and search for your username without the @ symbol or set up alerts to find tweets sent directly to you.)
- Retweet content that interests you. You can do that directly on Twitter or using your favorite Twitter management applications or by joining us on JustRetweet or all three.
- Send tweets to those who share something you want to know more about – maybe ask them a question or thank them for sharing.
- Make it a point to know who is interested in what and introduce people who have similar interests.
- When you share LOCAL INFO put LOCATION first in your Tweet.
- Online Events: Be sure to include TIME w/ time zone, hashtag, and ideally a link to additional information explaining how to use Tweetchat or at least a link to Tweetchat with YOUR hashtag already filled in on their search.
- Physical events: Put location FIRST in at least some of your tweets and last in others. Include TIME including time zone and best link to additional information. Event hashtags are nice to share info about an event but not that helpful when someone doesn’t even know about the event yet so use hashtags for niche, location, or keywords in some tweets.
- Do NOT keep tweeting the same tweet over and over. You will bore your followers and Twitter may block or filter them. Do send DIFFERENT tweets with varying information – If you need to reach many people send tweets to specific individuals throughout the day. Use a tool like CoTweet to schedule them if you send more than just a few at a time.
I have done a lot of posts on how to use Twitter because Twitter is the most useful social network for connecting with other influencers and reaching really busy people who have gatekeepers or assistants. You can sometimes connect with them on Twitter when there is may be no other place you can reach them directly.
For more Twitter Tips
Read and APPLY Our Twitter Best Practices
AND Follow @TweetSmarter
and visit their Twitter Tips blog.
You do not have to remember where they all are. I have created a comprehensive Twitter Best Practices post and will add these latest two to the other links there. You will find everything from How to Tweet videos for newbies to advanced Twitter strategies there.
And don’t forget to join us at JustRetweet
where influential bloggers want to meet and follow you
and share your content to send you more traffic.
Gail Gardner
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Do you think that using a software like TweetAdder is good? I think it’s good to start having some follower when you create a new account
Hi Jeremy,
NO! I personally know a few bloggers who have had their Twitter accounts permanently suspended for using that specific app. There may be parts of what it does that are safe, but there is definitely something it does that will cost you your account. I would never take that risk.
What you want is TARGETED followers NOT all followers. For example, if you are primarily involved in real estate for the Charlotte area you need to grow a geo-targeted Twitter account specifically for Charlotte. I explain how to do that in Twitter Local.
growmap would love you to read ..Top Small Business Books – My Picks for SmallBizTrends 2012 #BizBookAwards
I am just starting to get into the whole social media aspect of marketing my business, so this article comes at just the right time for me. I can see the potential marketing power, but it would be interesting to read some personal experiences.
Just now entered into the twitter, so your post will be very useful for me to refer, thanks for the tips….
Agree with the tips you mentioned. It always been better to interact with your followers, especially if the account was meant for business. Tweet something useful for your followers to keep their trust intact, unless if the account was personal.
Agree with all your tips. I’d add perhaps interacting with influencers. When you interact with people from your niche you get your name noticed and they will be more likely to retweet some of your content. I, for example, try to interact with people from the travel world; people who are constantly tweeting about hotels and trips.
Another way is guest posting on a blog whose owner is a big influencer. They will automatically tweet your content AND give you credit for it.
My two cents. 🙂
Another great guide on using Twitter 😀
I haven’t used Twitter much with my business as I’m not a “social guy” but I can see its power. Perhaps I should change my attitude and give it a try soon. Thanks for sharing your experience!
Great Tips: You are absolutely right that Twitter is one the latest method to promote blog with unique content and attractive themes.
Thanks for the tips are great. Now Twitter is one of the great methods to promote my site too
You live and learn, added a twitter widget to my blog 5 minutes ago.
Thanks for pointing that out.
Nik
Nik would love you to read ..Job Burnout, What can You do about it?
Regarding your point about making your Twitter handle obvious – If you are using WordPress you can use the free plugin WP-Twitter badge. This plugin places a Twitter follow tag on the right side of your site.
It will stick to the page even when someone scrolls.
You can see it in action by following the CommentLuv link below 🙂
Joe would love you to read ..Act like 90% of other Small Business Owners and You’re In Trouble
Thanks for the tips as they are great. Now Twitter is one of the great methods to promote a site.The main tips from my point of view is to interact with the people who answer you and build good relations with them. Any business starts with good relationships.
Third party apps are certainly the way to go. Using Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to get everything setup for the week makes life so much easier. It will also adhere to the rule of providing your username.
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Great tips! I am cluless when it comes to twitter. But I know it’s a tool that will help my business. I have to just sit down and be patient and learn the ins and outs of it. Thanks for the info!
Good post.The point about Retweeting content that interests you is important.If it interests you then it will interest the people that follow you.Just retweeting just anything will turn people off
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Great post.
“When you share LOCAL INFO put LOCATION first in your Tweet.”
When I started adding LOCATION to my posts I started gaining more local followers. Makes sense as most people are interested in what is happening locally.
We have our Twitter link at the top-right hand side of our website as a little slide out with our Facebook and RSS links. Great post, I hope more people make their Twitter profiles prominent on their website!
Hi,
Thanks for sharing this wonderful article. It helped me gain a lot of info.
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Thanks for sharing the tips, I have a lot of twitter followers on various websites but never really knew how to utilize it
Thanks for sharing this awesome post i use some retweet exchange sites for getting retweets for my posts and also i get traffic from them and thanks for sharing the Just Retweet site.
This makes sense to me. Basically what you are saying is that people tend to like decent content and not necessarily super optimized search engine stuff. Natural-ness is the way to go, it seems, to get the best traffic.
very useful information man i am nowadays trying to establish in twitter and make some followers these tips are useful i will use these and hope they will increase my followers 🙂
Recently only i tried this, really i think this can help boost a site’s traffic and profit as gud..
We should remember that we need to be extra care of our tweets.
Think twice b4 u post……
Thanks for the great information! I’m very new to both the blogging world and Twitter, so this information is very handy.
This information makes a lot of sense. In my short time on Twitter, I’ve noticed that I click on certain posts fairly regularly, whereas I pretty much ignore posts by other people almost always. I guess it comes down to doing the same thing that you should do with your blog: ad value.
Thanks again!
~Barry
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I think the most effective way is to not to focus too much on SEO and not to write to get Followers. I think the best example is look at the industry honchos, they just are not technically perfect in their tweets all the time, they tweet what they want to..
So i guess the few steps for an effective tweets are, Dont tweet to get backlink advantage, don’t add url shortner to each and every tweet of yours, dont use # tag every where, dont use automated softwares to get more followers, let it be natural. Tweet what you really feel like tweeting!
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Great tips. I love twitter for networking. I agree that building relationships on there is the most important thing to do. You can really do a lot of business across different genres if you make great twitter friends.
As a professional, you should always be careful of the information that you are posting. I may affect your business in a good way or a bad way.
Really a great post! really helpful tips as well!