Maintain, Optimize, and Promote Your Twitter Account

So, you've set up your Twitter account. Now how do you make the most of it? Here are some tips, gathered from Twitter itself, some shared web resources, and our own experience.

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Maintain, Optimize, and Promote Your Twitter Account (65 KB)

Maintaining Your Twitter Account

Frequency of Tweets

You should post a tweet at least once per day. This will encourage people to follow you because they will know that you update regularly.

Tweet Topic Ideas

If you are at a loss for what to post as tweets, here are a few ideas and suggestions:

• News
• Useful tips
• Tools
• Links to pages on your website
• Resources and links to other websites in your industry
• Events

Refrain from posting anything that could be interpreted as a sales pitch. If you have a new product or a limited time special offer, it's OK to announce it. But adding text like "Buy now" or "Contact us" with any regularity will generally turn off your followers. Your tweets should be focused on sharing good information, not selling wares.

Other Places To Find Tweet Topic Ideas

Find blogs in your industry. Use Technorati.com, AllTop.com and Blogs.com to find blogs in your industry. You should pick a few blogs to follow (this is outside of Twitter itself). When appropriate, leave comments on their recent blog posts, and then post a brief comment about this to Twitter (preferably with a link to that blog post).

Use Twitter's search. Find Twitter accounts of other people in your industry. Follow them and see what they are talking about. Then use these topics as idea generators for your LinkedIn status updates.

Search LinkedIn for questions related to your business' industry. Answer these questions (briefly!) in your tweets (and also answer them on LinkedIn itself, with a link back to your website).

Retweet Tweets You Find Interesting

If you find an informational or interesting Tweet that is related to your company's industry, retweet it on your own Twitter page. To "retweet" means to quote someone else's tweet on your own Twitter page, with a link back to their Twitter account. The syntax is as such: RT @originalsender: original message.  "RT" stands for ReTweet.  The username of the account that originally broadcasted the message is the "originalsender."  The content of the Tweet is the "original message."

URL Shorteners

Since Tweets have a 140 character limit, we're always looking for ways to reduce the number of characters in our tweets. One way to do that is by using URL shorteners. These are services that take a long link and create short links that redirect to the longer ones. Three of the most popular URL shorteners are http://bit.ly , http://goo.gl , and http://tinyurl.com .

Promoting Your Twitter Account

Advertise Your Twitter Account On Your Website

Make sure you have a link to your Twitter on your website. If you don't know how to add the link, contact your web developer.

In the same vein, make sure that if you do email marketing, that you have a link to your Twitter in your email newsletter template.

Offer Incentives

Offer incentives for people follow you on Twitter. Offer a prize to the n^th person to follow your Twitter account, and offer a prize to the person who recommended the page to them.

Post a Link to Your Twitter Account in a Facebook Wall Post or LinkedIn Status Update

You won't want to do this too often, but especially when you first create your Twitter account, post a link to it on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Use Hashtags

The # symbol, called a hashtag, is used to mark keywords or topics in a tweet. Clicking on a hashtagged word in any message shows you all other tweets in that category. Hashtags can occur anywhere in the tweet. Anyone who does a search for that hashtag may find your tweet. Here is an example of a tweet that uses a hashtag:

Twitter is a great #marketing tool!

In this tweet, #marketing is the hashtag, and you can click on #marketing to see all other tweets that contain that hashtag.

Participate in Trending Topics

Get involved in #hash tag memes and other trending topics. http://search.twitter.com lists the most popular trending topics of the moment (these can also be found on your Twitter home page). Look for the #hash topics and jump in on the conversation.  If you are tweeting for your company, just be careful to only post responses to these trending topics that you don't mind having the company's name associated with.