How to Make the Most out of Twitter

It is almost impossible nowadays to go one week or even one day without hearing about Twitter. Almost everybody, from business to celebrities and including journalists, amateur sport pundits, and many others have taken to Twitter and are tweeting on an hourly basis on various topics. However, Twitter has very noticeably turned into a powerful business tool as organizations have quickly started using it as an effective way of talking about their products or services and generally conversing with their existing and prospective customers.

Even then, many organizations usually fail at using Twitter effectively. This is often because these businesses see Twitter as a quick fix tool, something which it is not and will probably never be. The first thing to keep in mind is that an effective use of Twitter requires a long-term strategy and thus necessitates resources. In addition to this crucial aspect, there are also several things that need to be catered for such as personalizing your profile and frequently tweeting.

Optimizing your Twitter profile

Your first step should be to optimizing your Twitter profile. This obviously starts with your Twitter username. You will want this to match your business name but this may unfortunately not always be possible. In such cases, you will need to come up with a name that is somewhat relevant to your official business name. Shorter versions of your business names and other more creative choices are fine and are often quite easily remembered by people.

One thing to absolutely avoid is the use of special characters such as trailing underscores in your Twitter username. People will often be unable to remember such characters and this will consequently make your profile harder to find for those who never followed you but are trying to find you again.

Once you have settled on a username, your next step should always be to customize your profile as much as possible. Twitter will by default give you a brand background which you can swap for another equally generic one in the options. However, you can also create your own background and upload to Twitter, and this is in fact the only option you should even consider.

Use a background that matches your business or blog logo and colors and make sure your background includes your important information such as your name, your website URL, your Facebook page, and your primary contact information. While it is true that these are not clickable and cannot be copied and pasted since they are part of the image, it makes it easier for people to find the information should they need it.

Similarly, you must also add a description and you logo to your profile. Twitter only gives you 160 characters for your bio and you must obviously make the most of this very limited number. This is also where you try to insert your most important keywords so that people can find you with relevant searches. However, it is equally important that you do not simply overload you bio with keywords as people do read these.

Using Twitter

Having a truly personalized profile is only the beginning. Your main objectives on Twitter should be to get real followers and to engage with them. “Real followers” is an important thing when it comes to Twitter. There are sadly many accounts that merely exist for spam purposes and accounts that will not be very helpful in your quest to effectively using Twitter. This is why all those account-selling services are so useless. Your objective should not be to simply get any follower but to get one that will actually be interested in what you are tweeting.

Many people expect that they will also be able to obtain large amounts of followers simply by sitting back and tweeting out an occasional update every two or three days. This does not work unless you are a huge business like Pepsi or a popular celebrity such as Lady Gaga. If you want those followers to come to you and to treat your word like the gospel, you need to be very active. You also need to post real content that people will want to check out as this is the single thing that will convert users into followers.

In addition to tweeting your own content and talking about your products or services, you also need to get out there and have conversations with other users. This is a great way of attracting new followers since more users directly addressing you in their tweets means that you effectively gain the exposure you require. Conversing with users quite normally is also a good strategy since there is less pressure on you to come up with unique content to drive users to your website. It is also an excellent way of staying active on Twitter when your inspiration is sorely lacking.

Get the most out of Twitter  – Infographics

Source – SocialColleague 

The author Ash Sawmynaden is a search engine and social media strategist who spends his time between Réunion, the islands of Seychelles and Mauritius in the Indian Ocean.