While working with clients on their Twitter feeds, I’ve been using these Twitter guidelines that I’ve put together over the last few months. But I’m always looking for new ideas to share, so feel free to add your best Twitter maximization practices in the comments or email me.
Here’s my list:
1. Add your Twitter URL to email sigs and business cards. Link to your Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn etc. profiles. If you have a blog, add a graphic or link asking people to follow you on Twitter.
2. Find the most knowledgable and relevant people in your niche and follow them. Respond to their tweets when possible and if you’re lucky enough to get a response, you may see a surge of new followers.
3. Mix it up. As with blogging, give your Twitter followers a good mix of helpful content as well as slices of your own life. We want nothing more than to connect with each other and giving your followers 140 character bursts of who you are — interests, thoughts, questions, etc. — serves as a powerful connection tool. It’s fine using Twitter to give information about your company but make sure to mix it up with tweets of third-party links and other resources for more reader interest. If you want to find out what your followers are interested in, check out Twittersheep and create a tag cloud from the bios of your network.
4. A great way to get more followers is to promote others. Whether giving them props on their tweet or linking to a choice post on their blog, giving credit to your favorite @username will help get you noticed.
5. Add your feed to We Follow: http://wefollow.com
6. Twit the peak. Post most often to your twitter account during peak browsing hours of your targeted followers. Not sure of the hours, ask yourself when you tend to be online the most. You are more likely to interact with more of your followers online as the same time as yourself, as well as maximizing your tweets’ exposure to more potential followers. Which days of the week do most people tweet? Research shows Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are the most popular days.
7. Tweet often. It’s a fine line between too many and not enough but 3-5 a day seems to be a range that works. (According to @timoreilly, the tweet average is 4.22.) The more you tweet, the more opportunities for new followers and search engines to find you. For the time-crunched, try using a client such as HootSuite to schedule your tweets ahead of time to keep up feed momentum.
8. Respond to @Replies. Take the time to respond to replies directed towards you. Whether it’s a RT (retweet) or a general comment or question, respond to as many replies as time permits. Try not to give @replies like “Yes”, “I agree”, “Thank you” which are meaningless to the rest of your followers. Provide some context with your @replies to raise follower engagement.
9. Live-tweet events. Share observations, speaker content, questions, and shout-outs to other attendees. Make sure to add the event’s agreed-upon Twitter hashtag to your tweets to make it easier for others to follow and find you.
9. Ask questions. Whether you’re looking for information on how to do something or curious about what others think about a product, take advantage of Twitters enormous crowd sourcing power and ask your followers for help. Not only will this engage your current followers, but you increase your odds of showing up in http://search.twitter.com where many users go to find relevant tweets.
10. Check out the most popular trends and keywords at What the Trend and Twitscoop: http://www.twitscoop.com
