In Part 1 of “The Twitter Saga” series, I shared what Twitter is and the benefits of using it. In this blog (Part 2) of “The Twitter Saga”, I will share more specifics regarding best practices using Twitter and dive into specific tips on how to engage your followers.

Twitter is less personal than other types of social media and often times people follow you that you do not know. For this reason, tweets that mention something personal, such as how delicious the coffee was that you just enjoyed, is not going to benefit your brand or business when it comes to building followers. In fact, these types of tweets are going to get you unfollowed quickly. When promoting a business or brand, it is very important to provide your audience with information that is relevant to them and share things they will want to learn about.

Here are some best practices for using Twitter for your business or brand:

ADD VALUE

If someone is following your business, they are interested in what you have to offer. Your tweets should be short, catchy, and provide quality content that gets the attention of your followers. Make it worth their time by providing interesting tidbits. This also will get more of the people who see your post to retweet, or share it, with their followers. For example, I enjoy video editing, so I am following Adobe, which is a company that produces professional editing software. The value that Adobe provides to me is that they regularly send me tips and links to invite me to watch a “how to” video on a new feature of the software. And in turn, I reward them by continuing to be a loyal customer and by sharing their tweets with my followers.

ADD A CTA

BROADEN YOUR REACH

Use hashtags (#) before certain key words so your posts appear on trending topics. I’ll go into more detail about hashtags in my next blog, but for now just know that this creates higher visibility on your tweets. And if you are sourcing information from someone else, include that person’s Twitter handle or simply retweet it. This provides value to your followers so they now know where to get additional information and ideally the person or company you promoted will do the same for you in their future posts. In addition, ask for your followers to retweet your post. Believe it or not, less than 1% of companies ask for retweets. However, companies that ask for retweets are more likely to get them. And if you spell the entire word “retweet” vs. the abbreviation of “RT”, research shows that using the full word is up to 23 times more effective.

TWEET OFTEN

Businesses should tweet at least 3 times a day with information that is relevant to their audience. It doesn’t need to be just proprietary content, but you can also retweet other blogs or articles you found helpful and related to your industry. The more value you can provide your followers, the more they will want to continue to follow you. Also, if you are tweeting about the same subject, such as a blog post, vary your message so that it remains fresh for those who may see it twice. But be careful not to post too many tweets in a day, as that can also be a turnoff for your followers, especially if they are posted one after another.

USE VISUALS

They say that “a picture is worth a thousand words” and with Twitter and every other type of social media, this statement is true. Pictures attract people. Use an image that is relevant to your post. You can even share up to 4 photos in a single tweet. And if there are people in the image, tag them to get more exposure. Tweets with images are nearly twice as likely to be retweeted.

BUILD YOUR FOLLOWERS

One important tip to gaining more followers is to follow others. When you choose to follow someone, they become alerted of this fact and often times they follow you back. But don’t just follow anyone. Have a target audience in mind and follow those who you would want to follow you back. These followers are more likely to be receptive of your tweets because what you have to say will be relevant to them.

ENGAGE YOUR FOLLOWERS

In “The Twitter Saga: Part 1”, I talked about how Twitter allows for a two-way interaction with your customers. Engagement is not just about your posts, but how you communicate with your audience through your replies and direct messages. It is very important to interact with your followers. And some businesses, especially retail stores that sell goods and services to an end-user, engage their followers by offering rewards via special deals, promotions, and contests.

GET HELP

Sending multiple tweets a week can be time consuming. Companies should consider hiring someone dedicated to sending out their tweets regularly, retweeting relevant topics, responding to customers and making sure that messaging is in on brand with your target audience. Also, consider using a social media management system, like Hootsuite or Buffer, which allows you to write and schedule multiple tweets in advance and post them for you throughout the week.

The goal of this blog was to expand your knowledge of how to get the most out of Twitter by using best practices for a brand or business. If you follow these tools, in no time you will have built a strong following. My next blog will explore hashtags and how you can use them to your benefit to get more reach and visibility.

What are your thoughts? What are some other tactics for Twitter?

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Want to learn more about Twitter best practices? Check out the following resources, where I obtained some of the above information: 10 Tactics To Increase Twitter Engagement, Photos Just Got More Social, Use Images on Twitter to Get More Retweets, and 12 Mistakes You Shouldn’t Make on Twitter If You Want More Followers.