twitter tips

[andrei_4R]

Can you share your tips about how to use twitter properly?

[1weekSEO]

Can you share your tips about how to use twitter properly?

I wrote an article (http://ezinearticles.com/?Twitter-Basics---How-to-Make-Twitter-Work-For-Your-Business&id=3241684) on the basics of twitter, hope this helps?

[RedEvo]

Simple, add value to the big conversation. Givers gain, just like BNI.

d

[SusanBryant]

Interact and engage. Enter in to conversations and don't spam!

Treat it as you would a networking group- enter i to relevant conversations, be entertaining and people will engage with you and will want to find out more about your business.

Hope that helps,

Susan

[MASSEY]

I dont even use the twitter i set up and it gets spammed. I think im in some popular persons box.

Its mainly half naked girls that drop tiny url links to porn sites :rolleyes:

[CaterTrade]

That's a good tip Massey! There's nothing wrong with half naked girls. :)

[maxine]

Just be yourself, show your personality, respond to people, by all means tweet out links to blogs but too much self promotion will turn people off.

There's loads and utterly loads of articles about using twitter "properly" but my advice is not to be overly analytical about it and just jump in with it and follow the flow :)

[anne_lee]

Follow people and let them follow you.

Follow me in twitter too :D

[Lloyd Morgan Productions]

Let people know what youre upto, share things of interest, and network. Im relatively new to twitter, and think it is a great networking tool.

@LloydMorganProd

[deniser]

It's not a bad idea to get into it on a local level first - chat with other people in your locality about mundane things like the traffic and the weather. You can then expand to other people in the same field as you. And when you've got the hang of it you can start to target your customers.

It helps to tweet on a personal level first and then throw in the odd business promotion; that way people won't see it as spam as they will have got to know you, the person, first.

[efficiencycoach]

I could probably write a book on how to get the most out of twitter, but will keep it brief here.

To do well with Twitter you need to have a high level of visibility, provide interesting and relevant content & be the whole person. Even the corporate tweeters like vodaphone & orange are still chatty and personable - they don't pump out articles and offers all day.

Always engage with your followers - and by this I mean ask questions in your tweets, thank people for RTs, talk to people based on their tweets.

Until you are very established on twitter, NEVER sell your stuff. Talk about what you are doing in your business, but don't sell.

Do target your followers - find lists relevant to you, and follow the active people on these lists. Each time you find a new person to follow, do say hello and state why you are following them. You will be amazed how many people do follow you back.

You may find these articles I have written on twitter handy:

The secret to building up a targeted following on twitter (http://business-efficiency.theefficiencycoach.co.uk/index.php/marketing-sales/social-media-marketing-sales/the-secret-to-building-up-a-targetted-following-on-twitter/)
How to use tweetdeck or hootsuite to help you win business on twitter (http://business-efficiency.theefficiencycoach.co.uk/index.php/marketing-sales/social-media-marketing-sales/how-to-use-tweetdeck-or-hootsuite-to-help-you-win-business-on-twitter/)
How to use automated tweets to market your business on twitter (http://business-efficiency.theefficiencycoach.co.uk/index.php/marketing-sales/social-media-marketing-sales/how-to-use-automated-tweets-on-twitter-to-efficiently-market-your-business/)
why succeeding at twitter is just being like at a speed networking event (http://business-efficiency.theefficiencycoach.co.uk/index.php/marketing-sales/social-media-marketing-sales/why-succeeding-at-twitter-is-just-like-being-at-a-face-to-face-speed-networking-event/)

Good luck with your tweeting - come and find me: @efficiencycoach

[anne_lee]

I could probably write a book on how to get the most out of twitter, but will keep it brief here.

To do well with Twitter you need to have a high level of visibility, provide interesting and relevant content & be the whole person. Even the corporate tweeters like vodaphone & orange are still chatty and personable - they don't pump out articles and offers all day.

Always engage with your followers - and by this I mean ask questions in your tweets, thank people for RTs, talk to people based on their tweets.

Until you are very established on twitter, NEVER sell your stuff. Talk about what you are doing in your business, but don't sell.

Do target your followers - find lists relevant to you, and follow the active people on these lists. Each time you find a new person to follow, do say hello and state why you are following them. You will be amazed how many people do follow you back.

You may find these articles I have written on twitter handy:

The secret to building up a targeted following on twitter (http://business-efficiency.theefficiencycoach.co.uk/index.php/marketing-sales/social-media-marketing-sales/the-secret-to-building-up-a-targetted-following-on-twitter/)
How to use tweetdeck or hootsuite to help you win business on twitter (http://business-efficiency.theefficiencycoach.co.uk/index.php/marketing-sales/social-media-marketing-sales/how-to-use-tweetdeck-or-hootsuite-to-help-you-win-business-on-twitter/)
How to use automated tweets to market your business on twitter (http://business-efficiency.theefficiencycoach.co.uk/index.php/marketing-sales/social-media-marketing-sales/how-to-use-automated-tweets-on-twitter-to-efficiently-market-your-business/)
why succeeding at twitter is just being like at a speed networking event (http://business-efficiency.theefficiencycoach.co.uk/index.php/marketing-sales/social-media-marketing-sales/why-succeeding-at-twitter-is-just-like-being-at-a-face-to-face-speed-networking-event/)

Good luck with your tweeting - come and find me: @efficiencycoach

Im using tweet deck but not so good with it. but thanks for this tip.. This help me a lot too..:D

[Shopping365Group]

Interesting to read the comments here. Have been considering signing up to twitter but was thinking we would use it just to let followers know about new products and link popular events with our products. Wasn't thinking about being personal and chatty at all.

[efficiencycoach]

Interesting to read the comments here. Have been considering signing up to twitter but was thinking we would use it just to let followers know about new products and link popular events with our products. Wasn't thinking about being personal and chatty at all.

If you want to get the most out of Twitter you need to engage with your audience. Unless you are engaging with your audience it is very difficult to use twitter as an effective 'broadcast' channel.

The quality of your followers really makes an impact. 500 followers who talk with you, look out for your content is worth far more than 3000+ passive followers.

[bianca_dee]

How do you get people to follow you in Twitter by the way? :)

Is it just by simply giving out your username?

Thanks for these helpful discussion about Twitter. It would really help

[efficiencycoach]

How do you get people to follow you in Twitter by the way? :)

Is it just by simply giving out your username?

Thanks for these helpful discussion about Twitter. It would really help

Hi Bianca, I originally wrote a response to a very similar question on the Everywoman forum. I have reproduced the answer here:

To get more followers on twitter (I have 4000), there are three main ways of gaining followers:
1) Proactive means
2) Passive ways
3) automated following


All of these methods rely on you putting up interesting content to your target market. Plus following the rule of thirds for your tweets - 1 third about you and what you are doing with your business (not selling, just talking about what you are getting up to in your business), 1/3 replies to people - after all you are looking to engage with your followers, and 1/3 about your business, e.g. blog posts. Until you are established on twitter (think 500+ followers), don't be tempted to advertise on twitter. Out of about 10-15 tweets I post up a day, I only allow myself 1 tweet which is an advertisement for one of my products.


Plan to tweet daily and tweet 5+ times a day. Use a free service like hootsuite, future tweets to pre-schedule your tweets. Or a paid for solution like Tweet Adder or Tweetspinner if you want to be able to bulk upload your tweets.


Lets start with passive ways:
These include advertising you are on twitter on your business card, website pages, e-mail signature, forum profiles, forum signatures (which are appended to the end of your posts).There are some great free social media icons and widgets you can use. I got mine from this webpage:
http://webdesignledger.com/freebies/the-best-social-media-icons-all-in-one-place

(http://webdesignledger.com/freebies/the-best-social-media-icons-all-in-one-place)
These ways all rely on the fact that someone sees that you are on twitter and also have a twitter account. I probably get a small percentage of my new followers this way.


I get a significant portion of my new followers by posting up regular interesting content which is normally retweeted by my engaged followers. This becomes a virtuous circle as I attract even more followers who are interested in my tweets.

Proactive ways:
This involves finding people you want to follow you back - i.e. people well connected to your target market. Don't leave it to chance & hope that they will follow you back, drop them an @replies along the lines of 'hi, new follower here, I'm following you because.....' At least 80% of people will follow you back.


Automated following:
Use these method selectively, as you are aiming to always have a larger proportion of followers than friends. But certain pieces of software like tweet adder, tweetspinner, socialoomph, pluggio (I think) will help find you followers. These tools can be used to get a bigger following quickly - but will not help you engage with your followers.

[CaterTrade]

Or if you mean physically telling people what your twitter address is, it's twitter.com/username and they then click follow.

[trebor8]

Im using tweet deck but not so good with it. but thanks for this tip.. This help me a lot too..:D

Sorry for taking this thread off to another tangent, but is tweetdeck any good for handling multiple social media accounts

[maxine]

Sorry for taking this thread off to another tangent, but is tweetdeck any good for handling multiple social media accounts

Yes you can add multiple twitter accounts and also facebook too.

But be careful to watch which account you are tweeting from ... I have seen so many give the game away when tweeting on behalf of someone else by tweeting from all of the accounts at the same time!

Hootsuite I think is a bit more vigorous as you have to actually tick a profile before the tweet goes :) (plus you can schedule tweets for another time if you wish too)

[bianca_dee]

Thank you!

Wonderful post! Well explained. I would take note of them. I think I'd have to start with the Proactive method.

[efficiencycoach]

You can use tweetdeck for handling multiple accounts. But hootsuite is better for this particularly if one account is handled by more than one person.

[AdrianTCW]

For work I have set up our blog so that every new article makes a Tweet on Twitter. It's a practice adopted by many (including celebrities and news giants) and it works well. Doing this means people can find your articles and may follow the link to read them if the headline is interesting enough. You may find new followers appearing on your list because of it and it should increase blog traffic. I know we have.

It's very easy to do using a wordpress plugin called WP-To-Twitter.

It's important to remember that Twitter is becoming very important in the search engine sphere. Research shows that it has actually surpassed Google in some circumstances. And because updates are live and regular the search function on Twitter is far more up-to-date than Google itself. :cool:

Follow us on Twitter - companywhouse

[efficiencycoach]

there are many wordpress plugins which will tweet out when you have published a new blog post. In wordpress do a search on 'twitter' in plugins, and choice from the list!

Twitterfeed is my personal application of choice. Twitterfeed takes RSS feeds and tweets them out on your twitter, facebook (& a few others) account.

This means that you can set up more than just your own blog to tweet out automatically to your twitter account & facebook account.

[trebor8]

I think this thread is excellent! it would be a shame to see it dissapear into the abyss.
Is there a way of recommending these posts to be a sticky?