Twitter

“The messaging system we didn’t know we needed until we had it.”

• When picking a Twitter “handle,” use your real name or brand name instead of a concocted screen name. An easy to find and recall name can increase your number of followers and level of interaction.
• Fully utilize the Twitter biography space. The more complete your bio is the more likely people will be to follow you and interact. A blank bio is a no-no.
• Upload a photo. People like having a face to look at along with a name.
• People like connecting with other people – so be yourself, be real and be authentic.
• Listen before you tweet – take some time to get an idea of what people are talking about and how.
• Use Twitter tools to enhance your user experience:
• Search.Twitter.com: a keyword search tool for finding who is tweeting about subjects of interest to you.
• Twellow.com: Yellow pages for Twitter. Find the people you want to connect with based on bio information, location and business categories.
• Tweetdeck.com can help you organize your Twitter page into categories, which allows for easier management.
• Use a URL shortening tool: A great aspect of Twitter is sharing URLs. However, 140 characters gets used up pretty quickly. Use a URL shortener like budurl.com. This tool also lets you track click-throughs, referrers and other useful ROI stats in real-time.
• Share photos on Twitter: use a tool like Twitpic.com to include photos in your tweets and make sure to include descriptions as an added bonus. Share photos of events, products and other interesting happenings.
• For a businessperson using Twitter, it’s good to tweet about business, but sprinkle in a little personal stuff too. It helps humanize you and your brand.
• If you like what someone else’s tweets, share them with other people by “re-tweeting” them.
• Don’t be “salesy” or too “self-promoty” – people on Twitter don’t respond well to the hard sell and are interested in what you say as long as you don’t brag about how great you are too much.