Month: August 2009

How can you effectively use Twitter, how often should you tweet, what should you tweet about, when should you tweet? These are just a few questions that I get asked frequently. In this post I will share with you my best practices and recommendations for effective Twitter use.

First Twitter is a very conversational and casual medium. Consider it like a “big” instant message to the world. Each tweet can only be 140 characters including spaces so you have to be concise and yet persuasive in each tweet to build your following. Here are some of my top tips to consider.

1. You do not need to necessarily use proper punctuation in order to stay in character count. You can drop your period and move to one space at the end of a sentence.
2.  Consider using common abbreviations such as mgmt. instead of management or gGr8 instead of great. However don’t get too cryptic, most people will know LOL (laughing out loud) but may not know LMAO (laughing my arse off). You get the drift, only abbreviate when you need to and when it will be understandable.
3. I recommend, for people really wanting to build a following, that they do between 5 to 10 tweets a day.
4. Space out your tweets. Don’t send out all ten tweets one after another, space them out using a system like TweetLater (now weirdly called SocialOomph). I usually do one tweet the first thing in the morning and then program my tweets out for the rest of the day separating them by at least one hour.
5. Make your tweets be valuable to readers. When you don’t offer interesting information you will not grow your following. I focus on interesting links, cool tidbits, interesting information you may not have known in the field I am tweeting on, and sometimes (but not in every tweet) a link back to my website to a specific page, feature or service. Make sure that tweets you do are more than self promotion. I have found that I really grow my following quickly when I take this focus. Additionally when you take this approach more followers will promote you to a special category where they hang on your tweets versus just being a tweet in the crowd. You will leverage your Twitter power with this approach, I know from experience.

Don’t feel like you have the hang of Twitter? We can start you out, just check out our Twitter services.

Do you have another tip you want to share here? Love to hear what you recommend, just click comments below and leave me yours.

I have an interesting situation that I am watching and it gives some insight into how using Twitter effectively to build your following allows you access to viral marketing on a huge scale.

First, for one client I have set up two Twitter accounts; one for his main business and one for his spin off business and e-commerce store. The spin off business/e-commerce store uses our Twitter Executive program where we tweet 7 to 12 times a day and actively interact with followers. The other account we set up but do not maintain but periodically we copy the same tweet, when appropriate, there just because we are kind but have not been hired to grow this account. Both Twitter accounts were set up on the same day. One has been actively managed and the other has not. Here are the statistical results of follower counts.

As of today the account we actively manage has 72 followers and is following 154 people with 148 tweets. The account we do not actively manage has 8 followers and is following 23 people. Both accounts have been open about two and one half weeks.

What is additionally interesting is that when I look at the bit.ly stats for link clicks for the Twitter account we actively manage, in six days 218 people have clicked links we have mentioned in our tweets to read more. This tells me that we have an active versus passive following. This means when the e-commerce store is finally opened we will have a loyal, link clicking, viral sharing, Twitter base to expose to the client’s store products. That’s the power of Twitter in action!

Just like Facebook Twitter has unspoken rules. Here are a few that I wanted to share with you.

1. Make sure to install a picture on your Twitter profile. Some applications that use Twitter API like TweetLater, will allow you to block followers who are using the default image icon.

2. Try to provide value to followers. I focus on content, cool stories, interesting articles, topics, tips, trend updates. If all you tweet about is what you are eating for lunch or what project you are working on, you mark yourself as a Twitter newbie.

3. Use TweetLater and set up a follower auto responder with a link to your website or a nice comment. Set up to auto unfollow them if they unfollow you. This will help to keep your follower list clean. At the beginning follow everyone who follows you – a courtesy issue.

4. Consider vetting new followers as your follower numbers get to about 300. It becomes increasingly difficult to interact with Twitter followers when your list becomes too large. Periodically using Twellow, I will chop following people on my list who have never tweeted, not tweeted in the last 30 days or who are spamming me with marketing messages, or their make money on Twitter programs.

5. Don’t use Twitter just to market your products and services. Man, there is no faster way to get unfollowed, than to constantly be sending out self promotion messages!

6. Some Twitter API applications allow you to send out the same tweet at different times. Be careful with that. I have one Internet marketing guru who I thought knew what he was doing until I checked out his Twitter account and all 500 tweets he did were the exact same tweet. Go figure! Not sure what he was trying to accomplish but I could not click unfollow fast enough.

7. Spread your tweets out. I tweet heavily in the morning as this is the time I interact with followers with @ and D replies, but for routine tweets I try to space them about 1 to 2 hours apart. I use TweetLater for this. I typically will do between 7 to 12 tweets a day but sometimes more if there is a trending topic and interchange between followers.

8. Do get followers to participate in polls and then share the results. I did a poll recently and found that people are doing about two to three tweets a day on the average. The people who tweet more will have more followers – it just happens!

9. Use bit.ly and create an account and shrink your URLs in your own bit.ly account not TweetDeck so you can see click stats on links you mention in tweets. You will find it amazing to see the real viral nature and impact and sharability of your tweets if you are tweeting effectively and the proof is your link stats in bit.ly. Consider using HootSuite with the installed ow.ly URL shortener and get a tweet interface and link tracking system in one interface.

10. Follow others. To build your own Twitter following you simply have to start by following others and then interact with them. I have a great case study on this that I will share with you on Friday.