8 Best Twitter tweet tips

With nearly 300 million users, Twitter is one of the most effective means of getting your message to your target audience. With a mind-boggling amount of tweets circulating on a daily basis, your challenge is to make your message stand out and get noticed. You also have to maximize the 140-character limit allotted per tweet.

Unfortunately, not all people have a natural talent for storytelling and writing good tweets. If you’re using your Twitter for social media marketing purposes, you have to learn how to write effective and concise content or else you’re in for costly mistakes that will leave your tweets ignored. Welcome to also follow me @WillemTait or www.twitter.com/WillemTait to see how I do it.

Importance of writing good headlines

According to http://www.jeffbullas.com/ the headline is the first thing that people will see in your message. 8 out of 10 people will read your headline, but only 2 of them will bother to read the rest of what you’ve written. You have to use the headline to grab their attention so they will be interested enough to read your entire copy. According to a study, using an engaging headline can increase the conversion rate of your link or website by 73%.

Elements of a great tweet

So what makes a tweet better than the rest? There are two things to keep in mind here: Readability and “Re-tweetability.” This is especially important if you’re using Twitter to promote a product, service, or brand. Both these elements should be present in your tweet in order for it to be effective. With these two in mind, you can now write great tweets using these 8 ways to make your stories on Twitter as compelling and as accessible as possible.

1. Don’t forget the link.

In this case, the link is the extension of your message. Your tweet is just the intro to your story. This is why you should always include a link in your tweet so that it will lead readers to a photo, article, video, or blog post related to your message. You can save up on characters by using URL shorteners such as ow.ly or bit.ly.

2. Use only 100 characters as much as possible.

Tweeter allots 140 characters per tweet but if you want to increase the “re-tweetability” of your message, you need to leave a little space of a least 2 characters. See, when someone wants to retweet your message, they have to add the “RT” symbol and some texts of their own, so those extra 20 characters will be eaten up. Having extra space means the reader doesn’t have to edit your message before retweeting, making it easier to share. This rule can be broken from time to time, especially if it involves preserving the appearance of good copy.

3. Make good use of hashtags.

You can see hashtags peppered all over the place, even outside of Twitter. It can get irritating sometimes seeing them everywhere but face it, hashtags are here to stay…for now. There are good practices in writing hashtags. Some of them are:

Avoid using too many words together, except maybe for humorous posts. Writing #ihatemylifeitssoboringihateit looks ridiculous and you may end up losing followers for it.

• Limit yourself to 1 or two hashtags per tweet. You can use up to 3 if you need to promote an article. A tweet full of blue, highlighted, and clickable words can be an eyesore.

• Do not use the same hashtag in every tweet that you make. It’s understandable if you have to use the hashtag more than once to promote something but even self-promotion has its limits.

4. Hook the reader with a question.

Write a question related to the content you’re promoting and use it as the text for your tweet. Here are some of the good openers:

• “Do you know how many people…?”
• “Do you know the easy way to…?”
• “Are you having trouble with…?”
• “Do you ever wonder why…?”

5. Ask for help by using questions.

Asking for help or assistance can be an effective way in engaging followers. People often feel happy to share their expertise especially if a lot of people can see it. Here are some examples of the questions you can use:

• “Can you recommend a good…?”
• “Where can I find a…?”
• “What can I do about…?”

If someone was helpful enough to answer your question, do not just leave the answer hanging. Strike a conversation with that user and commend them if their answer solved your problem. This will show your followers that you listen to their replies and you know how to show appreciation.

6. Add a personal touch.

Your followers are more likely to stick with you if they can see your personality through your social messaging. They will be glad to know what you think about the stuff that you re-tweet. With only a limited number of characters available, you can do this by saying short expressions such as “No kidding” or “Yuck.”

7. Add something original.

This involves playing around with the text of the message you’re retweeting to make your comment fit within the character limit. Putting words before the tweet which reflect your observation can make you look smart (assuming that your text makes sense) and can make people consider retweeting your messages.

8. Practice good grammar and perfect spelling.

There’s simply no excuse for poor grammar and spelling use, even in a 140-character setting. Accept that a lot of people will judge you on how you write and spell. Watch out for the little things that matter:

• Use capital letters at the start of the sentence and every new sentence
• Avoid text speak at all costs
• Avoid using all caps in your text because it makes you appear that you’re shouting

Lots of celebrities break these rules in their tweets, something you shouldn’t pay attention to. Even if their tweets look juvenile or ridiculous, people will still follow them because they’re celebrities.

Same goes for punctuation. Correct usage of punctuation makes your copy look more professional. Know when and how to use you full stops and commas and put your apostrophes in the right places. Restrain the urge to end all your sentences with a punctuation mark.

It may all seem like hard work trying to incorporate all these rules into a compact message. If you find tweeting to be a tedious affair after knowing the do’s and don’ts, just keep in mind that a little bit of extra effort will go a long way in making your tweets hit the jackpot in terms of followers and traffic. Once you see the benefits of crafting well-written messages with all the right elements, you’ll never be careless in tweeting again.

P.S. Write good tweets and the followers will come.

5 Reasons Why You Should Retweet

Twitter is, perhaps, the most difficult social network to understand.

• There is no private space Even reply messages are publicly visible, so there isn't much room for intimate relationship building
• Often times, important people follow you It's common to feel afraid of tweeting because you don't necessarily want to bother or annoy people
• Twitter is really fast paced One of the first things most new users notice about twitter, is how frequently your feed updates.

Honestly, my recommendation for people just now signing up with Twitter is just to ignore all of those factors. Follow who you want to follow, say everything and anything you feel like saying. There are so many millions of people on Twitter that you're twitter account will succeed if you just stay active and be yourself for a few months.

So, Why Retweet?

Ideally, if you follow my aforementioned advice and just be yourself on Twitter you will end up with a group of followers who share your world views. This means that there is a great chance that anything you like, hate, find funny or are just glad you read will illicit the same reaction from your followers. So, it is my personal opinion that whenever you see a tweet or read an article that you enjoy, you should retweet it immediately and without hesitation.

Still not convinced? Let's go over a few more reasons:

1. Tweets Are Easy To Ignore If I'm following you on Twitter, and you retweet an article about hair care products (which I don't care about), it's really no bother for me to just ignore it and keep looking for a tweet I'm more interested in reading. In fact, there is a guy who shall remain nameless that I've been following on Twitter for four months and has yet to post a tweet that I wanted anything to do with. However, months ago he linked to an article I liked so I just continue to follow him.
2. If Your Retweet Annoys A Follower Into Unfollowing You, It Was Probably Going to Happen Eventually Anyway Just stop worrying about losing your followers. If something about you annoys one of your followers, it was only a matter of time before they ditched you anyway, right?
3. Retweets Are What Make Blogs Succeed If you read an article or tweet that links to a blog you enjoy reading, you are now blessed with an awesome opportunity to help make their blog a success. I know everytime I write something that gets tweeted and retweeted a lot, it gets me really excited to continue blogging. See examples of good examples at @WillemTait 
4. Retweets Are A Great Way To Get More Followers If I tweet about some nonsense or website that I love or hate, and you take the time out of your day to retweet it, I'm a happy guy. I mean think about this. By retweeting something that links to a website or blog, you are both doing a service to the website mentioned and the person who originally tweeted the article! How awesome is that? Those people owe you.
5. People Need To Know Say I'm following you on Twitter, and your following someone who just created a product that will change my life forever. Unfortunately, I'm not following this life saving person. They tweet about their product, and you retweet it. You've just changed my life in a big, big way. Too far? Maybe, but there is at least a little validity, don't you think?

Follow @WillemTait for some of the best examples of social networking

10 Quick Tips to Help You Write a Kick Ass Twitter Bio

Twitter Bio-Writing Tips

1) Provide the Nitty Gritty. People need to know who you are, what you do and why they should be interested in you. Use words and short phrases, such as "John Smith, Entrepreneur, Small Business Blogger, Antique Toy Collector".

2) Consider the Audience. While focusing on the essentials, allow your personality to show through to attract followers.

3) Maintain Your Focus. Everything in your Twitter bio, from your words, background and photo should be focused on your purpose for being there. If your Twitter account is for business, keep everything zeroed in on business.

4) Make Yourself Easy to Find. Always lead would-be followers or potential customers to your website, blog or other social media page by including a link in your Twitter bio.

5) Keep Your Priorities Straight. There are many facets to your life; as tempting as it can be to share them all, keep your priorities straight. A business-focused Twitter bio is not really the place to share your hobbies.

6) Include Keywords. Use keywords that tie to your business, such as home decor, marketing, freelance writer. Consider the words people would use to search for you and use them.

The Big No-No's of Twitter Bios

7) Don't Waste Space. Save favorite quotes, favorite bands, your kids' names and anything else outside your true focus for your actual tweets.

8) Beware of Copy and Paste Errors. If you plan to use a great bio you have posted on another social media venue, ensure you don't cut any of it off while copying and pasting.

9) Use What You've Got. You've got 160 characters. Use them all or as many as possible to get the most out of your space.

10) Maintain an Effective Bio. To maintain a killer Twitter bio that grabs people's attention, you have to keep it fresh. Change information when needed. People are looking to connect with others who share the same interests or offer something (information, products or services) they want. When the details of your business or work life change, ensure that your Twitter bio reflects that.

The 5 Most Common Twitter Mistakes you should avoid

Twitter has helped transform numerous businesses, and there are more businesses using Twitter in order to get the transformation. However, many people and businesses are making these 5 common mistakes on Twitter. If you want to know if your account is good or needs to have some changes, read this entire blog post. These are the 5 most common mistakes people make on Twitter:

1. Having a bad bio. Many people know that not having a bio is a big mistake on Twitter, and that’s why few Twitter accounts don’t have bios. However, not everyone writes a good bio.These are some ways to write a higher quality bio with those 160 characters.
2. Not tweeting about your blog enough. The rule everyone has been led to believe is that 20% of your tweets should be about your blog while the other 80% should be about other things. Many people with thousands of followers (and some of these people have over 100,000 followers) make this mistake. I made this mistake until I reached 20,000 followers. I decided to tweet about my blog for most of the day. The result was a dramatic increase in traffic. I did not lose followers when I tweeted about my blog. In fact, I gained more followers when I tweeted about my blog. Twitter is all about building awareness for a blog or product while meeting other people. The more you tweet about your blog, the more awareness you are building.
3. Not interacting with your followers. HootSuite and other tweet scheduling tools are incredible. You don’t have to be on Twitter every hour in order to tweet every hour. There are people who use these tweet scheduling tools and forget to login to their Twitter account. Followers with questions don’t get answered. That’s a bad move, and all you have to do to avoid that is to check Twitter three times a day and reply to your followers when they want to talk with you or have a question.
4. Not following back. Too many people make this mistake. Every newbie at one point thinks that they are going to be the next verified person with 100,000 followers while only following 10 people. That’s what I thought, but when that didn’t happen, I decided to follow people.Following others is an essential way to get more people to follow you back and hear about you.
5. Not tweeting enough. Many people make the mistake of only tweeting a few times throughout the day. I define too few as tweeting 5 times in the day. In order to get more attention, you need to be tweeting more often. When you tweet more often, you should also tweet consistently. I consistently tweet once every hour (I’ll eventually bring up the rate to one tweet every half an hour). The more I tweet, the more followers and blog traffic I get.

By avoiding these 5 common mistakes, you will be able to get more out of Twitter. By consistently avoiding these mistakes and tweeting along the way, you will be able to transform your business with Twitter.

Top 10 Twitter tips for growing your business

1. Hashtags: You should familarize yourself with this symbol (i.e., #) and make it your friend. Put this hashtag in front of a keyword or your company website and Twitter will convert these hashtagged words into searchable keywords. What does this mean for you? Anyone searching for something can find all tweets containing your hashtagged word in a single location, thus making it easier for them to find your tweets even if they’re not one of your followers. Search the database for hashtagged questions pertaining to your business or topics of your expertise and connect with these followers. You’ll find you not only do you have more readers, but possibly more customers as well.

2. Engage with your followers: Simply sending out tweets and not responding to your followers will get you nowhere. It’s important to respond to those that tweet at you and answer any questions they might have. Each time you interact with your followers, make sure it’s a personalized message. No one wants to feel like they’re receiving a mass tweet. If they feel your message is sincere and they like what you have to offer, the chances of them retweeting your information is even greater, thus ultimately exposing your business to more followers.

3. Combine your platforms: Make it easier on yourself by synchronizing your Twitter account with all of your other social platforms. You can do so by associating your Twitter account with the RSS feed of your company website, Facebook page or blog. By doing so, every time you make an update it appears across all of your platforms, meaning you only have to make one update at a time. Sounds efficient, right?

4. Update your profile: Although most of your followers are only reading your tweets and not your bio, it’s important to have a profile in place that’s up-to-date and professional. Think of it as an extension of your brand. Potential new followers and customers will be checking out your profile to see what you’re about before hitting the golden “Follow” button.

5. The power of a list: This Twitter feature has helped companies gain followers and spread their knowledge to a larger audience. A Twitter list is somewhat similar to a Facebook group. Basically a compilation of followers, grouped together for whatever reason you come up with. You can use these lists to your advantage by promoting and rewarding customers. How? Try creating a list comprised of all your valued customers and reward those on the list with a 20% off coupon or free gift with purchase. Lists can also help your business internally. By creating a list of all employees and those that tweet on your behalf, it’s an easy way to manage these tweeters and aggregate accounts. Once you’ve created your list make sure people know about it by adding it to a list directory such as Listorious.

6. Keep track: It’s important to track your followers and identify whose really paying attention to your tweets. You can do so by tracking retweets, clicks, messages and hashtag mentions. This will give you the opportunity to engage with your loyal followers and maintain these relationships.

7. Ask questions: Get feedback from your followers by asking the right questions. Find out what you’re doing right, what you need to work on and what they want more of. This shows not only that you’re listening, but can provide you with valuable insights about your followers and consumers.

8. Tweet about others: You don’t always need to talk about yourself and your company. It’s important to integrate other’s ideas and links into your tweets. Retweet what your followers have tweeted, share their links and let your followers know what you find interesting about a particular tweet. This lets your followers know that you’re human and are interested in what they have to say as well. Not to mention it’s a great way to build and expand your community.

9. Promoted tweets: This is a new feature of Twitter that enables businesses to speak to a larger audience, even those that don’t follow them. How does it work? First, send a tweet to your followers and then promote that tweet. The promoted tweet then appears as content in search results, so those looking for something pertaining to your tag will see it in the search engine. Twitter offers these promoted tweets on a cost-per-engagement basis, meaning you only pay when users retweet, reply or clicks on your tweet.

10. Customer Service: Best Buy is a great example of how to use Twitter to provide real-time customer service. Create an account in which users can tweet questions about products or services to you directly and tag the answers with a hashtag back to your company website. This allows you to interact with your consumers and provide them with something of value. Best Buy is leading the ranks with over 2,900 employees on board to answer questions and have responded to over 38,000 inquiring tweets. You could be next.

Top 20 Twitter tips for businesses

1. Help others with problems by using the hashtag for your industry term.

2. Share tips related to your business and work-life balance.

3. Share photos of conferences, travel, products and other interesting finds.

4. Provide selected highlights from a conference or event.

5. Report industry, company, world and other news that’s related to your business, together with some commentary.

6. Link to articles and content posted elsewhere with a summary of why it’s valuable.

7. Post original thoughts on your topic, industry and business.

8. Join industry and topic Twitter lists related to your business.

9. Feed your tweets into other social networks like Facebook and Linked-in

10. Participate in Twitter chats related to your industry or business on a regular basis.

11. Research prospects before meeting them. You can gain a lot of valuable information just from scanning their tweets, profile and contacts.

12. Give referrals via Twitter. What goes around comes around.

13. Spread your tweets throughout the day, rather than posting the all at once, as people check Twitter at different times of the day.

14. Respond to tweets which relate to your industry.

15. Publish your Twitter ID on all marketing collateral, including business cards, email signature, email newsletters, web sites and brochures, so prospects can learn more about you.

16. Post discounts and offers on Twitter.

17. Use keywords on your profile and a fun fact to earn trust, add personality and enable you to be found.

18. Dump the default Twitter avatar use a photo of yourself or a suitable image.

19. Follow experts, companies, competitors and leaders in your industry.

20. Be authentic, genuine and real. In other words, be yourself.

5 twitter strategies and tactics

Everyone knows the indisputable value of LinkedIn for B2B sales, marketing, B2B prospecting, and entrepreneurs in general. 

This article shares some of the latest Twitter strategies, tactics, tools, and best practices.

GETTING STARTED

1.  Decide your purpose. Why are you using Twitter?

Some Twitter users utilize the social media site to build their company brand or generate leads. There are bloggers who use the platform to share ideas and articles and to see what others are writing about. Some people check Twitter for news, while others want to see what celebrities or friends are up to.

Defining your purpose will help you decide who to follow and what kind of information to share.

2.  Focus on your passion. There are millions of Twitter users tweeting thousands of pieces of information every second. It is easy to get overwhelmed by and lost in the noise. Rather than trying to soak it all in and repurpose everything, focus on your passion.

Don’t be a jack of all Twitter subjects and a master of none. Tweets surrounding your passion are going to be stronger. Plus, you will attract users who have similar interests. If you don’t focus, you will attract meaningless followers, if any at all.

3.  Define your brand. Once you have zeroed in on your purpose and passion, decide how you want the Twitter world to view you.

Do you want to specialize in one subject to attract a targeted audience? Or do you want to be more general, tweeting about numerous topics? Do you want your tweets to be funny and casual or very professional? Is your goal to be a thought leader or celebrity? This will give you direction on who to follow and what to tweet.

4.  Determine your strategy. Is your strategy to communicate?

If your goal is to influence, promote or sell, your strategy should be communication based. You are going to want to attract attention. To attract attention, you are going to need to tweet, direct message, engage with other users and focus on getting information out in the Twitter world.

Is it to listen?

If you are using Twitter to keep up on news, learn, provide customer service or perform market analysis, your strategy should be to listen. You are going to want to decide who will provide the content you’re interested in and follow them. You will also want to learn how to utilize filtering tools, including hashtags and Twitter lists. 

5.  Learn how to use Twitter. Reading this article and articles like it is a good first step. However, to really learn how to utilize Twitter, you’re going to need to get your hands a little dirty and roll up your sleeves.

1. Go to Twitter.com, and create a free account.

1. Learn Twitter terminology. When you post something, it’s a tweet. When you repost something from another user, it’s a retweet or RT.  Trending topics, or TT, are topics discussed by many users at a given time. You can Favorite a tweet by clicking on the star. That is a great way to recognize someone for sharing your content.

1. Explore. See who is on Twitter and what people are tweeting.

1. Engage. Follow the guidelines in this article and become an active user.

Welcome to also follow me on Twitter #WillemTaitRSA or www.twitter.com/WillemTait