Tips for Conquering Twitter (Part 1)
Social media has become an inescapable part of companies’, organizations’, and individuals’ daily operations. Because it’s a quick, easy, and free way to get more online exposure (and because everyone else is doing it), most businesses and organizations simply can’t afford not to be on Twitter.
Because younger professionals are generally more comfortable with the Twitter platform, companies and organizations often entrust their Twitter presence to younger employees. This is a great opportunity to show your understanding of your company or organization: its mission, its strengths and weaknesses, and its values. If you play the Twitter game correctly, you can add real value to your team’s marketing campaign, and give your career a boost in the process.
Here’s our first tip:
1. Content tweets are the surest ways to gain followers and drive traffic to your website, profile, or blog.
-Linking to useful content shows your followers that you have something valuable to offer. Original content is best because it helps you stand out and provide a unique, one-of-a-kind product or service. In a notoriously noisy and overcrowded platform like Twitter, it’s important to demonstrate your usefulness and originality.
-While linking to third-party content is a quick and easy way to keep your followers up-to-date, the returns (in exposure and credibility) will mostly go to the third party. When retweeting or linking to third-party content, do your best to encourage the original source to return the favor by promoting your content in the future.
-Maximize your exposure by strategically tweeting your most important content at certain times of the day. You can find information about the best times to tweet, as well as links to tools that will help you form a personalized tweet-timing strategy here.
-Once you know when to tweet, you can start scheduling your most important tweets for those high-impact times using HootSuite. It’s simple, free and indispensable to the serious Twitter user.
-While exposure is important, remember that the goal of content tweets is to get your followers to click through to your content. It doesn’t matter how many RT’s you get if that’s not happening. Experiment to find out what times people are most interested in your content.