21 Tips for Getting Started with Twitter

1. Consider connecting your Twitter account to your blog, Facebook, or website.
2. The best way to gain followers on Twitter is to regularly engage and contribute in a meaningful way.
3. Set aside a specific time each day to use Twitter for business purposes, sharing content, and engaging with others.
4. Stick to the 80/20 rule of marketing. Spend 80% or more of your Twitter time on activities that are not self-promotional, or you will be disliked on Twitter.
5. Reply to questions in a timely manner.
6. Put a “Follow Me” icon on your website and your blog and a link to your Twitter profile in your e-mail signature. Integrate the fact that you are on Twitter into your other marketing efforts and brand your Twitter profile consistently with your other social accounts and marketing.
7. Don’t get too personal or too negative. Google indexes tweets, and the Library of Congress archives them, so don’t say anything on Twitter you wouldn’t say in person to your customers or in public.
8. Don’t use corporate rhetoric and jargon—be a human being!
9. Listen first and then respond when you can add value to the conversation.
10. Update your status at least once a day.
11. Complete your profile and biography so that other people can learn more about you.
12. Use a real and clear photo of yourself.
13. Don’t immediately follow hundreds of people. They will check out your profile to see whether they might want to follow you back. If you are following hundreds of people who have no or poor content, you’re just a spam account.
14. After tweeting regularly, follow more people beyond your friends, based on your interests.
15. Avoid using punctuation in your username.
16. Don’t thank everyone publicly for following you, as it’s not always necessary.
17. Twitter success is more about engagement than follower count. Don’t be tempted to go out and buy followers.
18. Place links 25% of the way through tweets for the best click-through rates.
19. Use action verbs rather than nouns and add “via,” “@,” “RT,” “Please,” or “check” to get better click-through rates.
20. Best times to tweet include weekends and later in the day, rather than in the morning.
21. Learn how to include images or videos in your tweets.

These tips for Twitter will be useless unless you put them into action.