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How To Get The Most Out Of Twitter

Wednesday, December 1st, 2010

Those who have actually delved into all that Twitter can do have found a site that is completely rewriting the future. It’s changing the fact that some people have been unreachable and that some causes too obscure to make any real change. Take the Earth Hour initiative that grew from 88 countries before the twitter boom to 128 countries and countless participants after it. Twitter has made making a difference possible.

So the question is ‘How do I put that to work for me?’. It’s simple. You have to understand that Twitter.com is a place to make connections and relationships. It goes so far beyond networking that it hinges on true community. With Twitter you can go beyond mass email marketing and instead speak to people directly and encourage them to care about your business and/or cause.

A few things to remember:

  • First, stay on top of your @ messages but use the search bar. Find out who is talking about you and your company and be ready to offer thanks for praise and solutions for complaints. Consumers love to have the option to reach out and speak directly to a CEO when they have a bad experience (and it doesn’t hurt that complaints are limited to 140 characters!) but some won’t @ you so you have to find them.
  • Remember that most of those using twitter love that it is informal, so be sure that your ‘voice’ is casual and friendly. Phrases commonly used by customer service reps should really be avoided. Just be candid.
  • ReTweet interesting or relevant things you see. People love to have their tweets shared. Offer links to pertinent or even just fun or insightful things you’ve seen, even when those things aren’t on your website.
  • Lastly, and this cannot be stressed enough, DO NOT SPAM. One of the best things about Twitter’s setup is the difficulty to spam people. Don’t be the company who perseveres and gets the spamming out there. No one likes it and it’s against their terms of service.

The bottom line is to have fun while getting your name and information out there. Find people to follow who are interesting and be interesting in return. You don’t have to follow everyone who follows you but be courteous and check things out.

Learn How To Speak Fluent “TweetSpeak”

Friday, November 26th, 2010

So you sign in and see: “I tweeted this RT from @aplusk and my followers freaked. I even got DMs and it was almost a TT! #lamepeopleirritateme”. Brain melting? Don’t worry, it’s not as strange as it looks.

Starting with RT. Quite awhile ago Tony Hawk posted “RT @someone It’s my birthday!” Of course people wished him a happy birthday. Little did they know, RT means ReTweet. This means that the person is resending someone else’s post to spread the word. ReTweeting is actually done often and is a quick way to get the word spread far and wide about anything or anyone. It’s like the old pyramid schemes, if one sells to ten and they each sell to ten and so on.

Next the @ signs. This is only a way to mark that you are using someone’s unique twitter name. @aplusk happens to be Ashton Kutcher. (A plus K get it?) So any time that you see an @ sign just realize it refers to someone. When you use the person’s unique twitter name via the @ that post also appears in a separate page on their profile that they can choose to look at often to see who is talking about them.

DM means Direct Message. This is a bit like an email sent via Twitter with a 140 character limit. You can only send these private messages to someone who is following you. This makes it easier by eliminating an inbox full of spam or otherwise unwanted messages.

The last thing the above message talks about is TT’s, Trending Topics. Along the side of your profile page (or in you menu if you are using a telephone ap) you will see a list of topics. These change frequently and generally refer to whatever is ‘hot’ in the news or entertainment industry. It’s a way to see what ‘everyone is talking about’ as it takes thousands of tweets to start a TT. A way to alert people that you are trying to start a TT is to use a hashtag which is represented by the pound sign ‘#’. Example: If @pink puts out a new album she might tweets something like “My new album just dropped!! Pick up #greatesthitssofar online or at your local store!” This shows that she would like the name of her album to ‘trend’ giving it optimum recognition.

How To Get More #ReTweets

Monday, November 22nd, 2010

With only 140 characters and minimal branding, Twitter can seem like an extremely difficult way to get your message across. Quite often the key to spreading that message is to have others spread that message for you in the form of ReTweets. If done correctly, Tweeting can even be the first step in triggering a viral message. So here are some quick tips for how to get more ReTweets.

(All the heavy lifting has been done by social media researcher, Dan Zarella. The complete report entitled “The Science of Rewteets” can be downloaded here.)


Link Occurrence in ReTweets:
Generally, only about 19% of Tweets contain links. On the other hand, about 57% of ReTweets contain links. That’s a whopping 3X difference! By all means…include a link to something worthwhile!

ReTweet Links

URL Shorteners: By far, the bit.ly URL shortening service was the most ReTweeted. It’s also included in many social networking plugins and features some pretty snazzy analytics. If you have an option, use bit.ly for your URL shortener.

Most ReTweeted Words & Phrases: With only 140 characters allowed per Tweet, it’s often difficult to decide exactly what to write. Every word counts! Here is some actionable data to help make that easier. Talk to your followers (not at them), offer something worthwhile, and ASK for a ReTweet.

Time of Day: As with any message, the time of delivery can make a BIG difference. While overall Tweet volume peaks during business hours and in the evening, ReTweeting occurs much more frequently between 3 PM and midnight. If you’re hoping to snag a few ReTweets, post in the afternoon.

Best Time of Day for ReTweets

Day of Week: The day of the week also plays a heavy impact on your chances of getting your original Tweet shared. Relative to non-ReTweets activity, Mondays and Fridays are the best days of the week with Friday seeing the most activity.

ReTweet Day of Week

More On Twitter And What It Can Do For You

Wednesday, November 17th, 2010

So presuming that you have signed up for Twitter in an effort to benefit from it’s unique platform, you are now probably wanting to know exactly what to do with your profile and account.

First, realize that your actual page on the Twitter.com website isn’t extremely important, so making it personalized and visually stimulating, while fun, isn’t an important step for now.

Your primary objective when starting out is to get followers. The best way to do this is to be current, relevant , and interesting. If you understand that people will search certain terms, then you can begin by tweeting about current affairs so that those browsing around will see your tweets.

These tweets should be fun and entertaining. Witty tweets will draw more attention than merely informative ones. Learn to make your 140 characters worth reading.

Find articles and/or story’s that pertain to your area of business and then choose to either summarize the story or comment on it in your own words and add a link for people to follow for the full story.

Another way to begin adding yourself to the Twitter world is to find other companies and people who you are interested in and who may be interested in you. This way they will be notified that you are following them and may choose to follow you.

Once you’ve figured out these steps, it’s time to tweet! Pick a topic, article, story, or thought and type in the 140 characters or less that will let people know you have arrived on the social media scene!

Good luck and happy tweeting!