Naturally I’m referring to Twitter here and couldn’t resist the play on words, but this has become serious business. Twitter aficionados have developed a wealth of tips, tricks and strategies to get the most out of this social networking tool for their businesses and social lives.
As one of the early adopters of Twitter back when it first came out, I actually let it fall by the wayside. There were too few people using it and it had not yet evolved to the point where it was more than just a piece of silly fun.
Now, however, you would be remiss if you did not at least give this platform a try. Initially it will require some hard work and focus but, after a while, you can run it as you would any finely tuned instrument, easily and quickly.
So, what is Twitter exactly? For those not in the know this is an instant messaging service that anyone can use and that asks you to make an update in 140 characters or less. That’s it. It is the simplest of ideas that has burgeoned into the biggest of industries. To register just go to www.twitter.com and Bob’s your auntie.
Whether you’ve been on Twitter for a while or just starting out, it’s a good idea to regularly check out other people from your areas of interest. Use the Search function to hunt down humans using the relevant keywords like “journalist” or “marketing”. Read through these, this may take quite some time, and opt to follow those that have something of value to add to you.
Do the same for organisations that are relevant to your line of work. They may offer up tweets that have hot news or specialist items that you can use and that will give you an instant advantage over other people who rely on slower means of communication.
Don’t worry if some of the people you are following turn out to be excessive, boring or useless tweeters, you can just unfollow them with the click of a button.
Before you start tweeting, look at what kind of updates your contemporaries are making and how they are making them. People tend to go off users that tweet too much, especially if the content is inane, or those that tweet too rarely. Try and achieve a balance between topical and interesting content, linking to interesting articles and your blog (if you have one), information about courses or conferences you are attending and so forth. These tweets will add value to your readers and will encourage them to stay tuned to your updates. It may even spark a conversation or result in a networking opportunity.
The ReTweet (RT) and the hashtag (#) are two tools that will get you noticed. If you keep your tweets down to 120 characters that leaves other users room to add the RT@[username] characters when they pass on your information to others in the tweetosphere. If people ReTweet your posts then their followers will see you and they may follow you and it has a knockon effect for your profile.
Similarly, the hashtag is useful for tweeting within a specific niche. By adding #[keyword] to your tweets, it means that your posts will appear when people search for that keyword on Twitter. For example, you could write “I have just rewritten the codex on marketing #marketing” and others will find you by searching for #marketing. You can find the latest hashtags on. You can use hashtags to search for jobs, career advice, opportunities and see the latest hot topics in your chosen field.
Get in contact with the people you follow, or your followers, whenever they post something interesting. It’s also polite to acknowledge any direct messages they send to you. This way you can start to form relationships and these can bear fruit later one. It’s a good idea to use an application like TweetDeck to manage your Twitter as you can send Direct Messages, Replies, ReTweets, hashtags and more at the click of a single button. It also makes managing your different information flows very easy. So if you follow friends and associates you can allocate a column for each and your streams will be easier to follow.
There is a lot more you can do to optimise your Twitter to really get great business leads and contacts. This is only touching the surface. One of the biggest advantages of Twitter is that you don’t need a heavy application to run it – it will open smoothly on your mobile (try out the Garmin-Asus M10 for awesome smartphone features including instant Twitter updates) and on your netbook without challenging performance.
