11 Top Tips for Twitter Success

As one of the biggest social networks and most heavily visited websites in the world, it goes without saying that Twitter is one of the best and most effective tools to promote yourself in the present day. Having a presence on Twitter has become a necessity for any blogger, but not everyone knows how to use it. Twitter is an incredible promoting tool once you get the hang of it and get to know the tricks, so it’s more than worth putting some extra time and effort into getting the most out of it. If you are in need of some help or advice, look no further.

1. Don’t wait for people to follow you

With so many people now using Twitter, it’s become more difficult than ever to attract followers on the whim. The odds are, simply, against you. People are less likely to randomly come across your profile than they would have been a year or so ago, and with so many other distractions on the site, you have no choice but to work harder to get their attention.

The best way to do this is to seek people and follow them first. Don’t just follow any old person, though. People are quick to spot obvious promoters, and will either ignore you, block you, or at worst, report you for spam, risking your entire profile getting deleted. Avoid this by making use of the search function and going through the followers and mentions of similar blogs or companies. Pay attention to what they tweet and select people who have an interest in the same things as you or the things you blog about.

2. Tweet often, but not too much

If you just tweet a link to your blog once or twice a day, people will get bored quickly and see no point in following you. Tweet often, but not so much that you start to fill people’s time lines. This can get annoying, so try to limit tweets to 5 or 6 spread throughout the day.

3. Be conversational

Make conversation with your followers. This will keep them hanging around for longer, and you will build up a loyal following who feel like they have a connection to you. Ask them questions, answer theirs, and talk about topics related to your blog. Keep it friendly and be approachable. People who don’t make an effort to be part of the community and just focus on promoting themselves or their interests can come across badly and put people off.

4. Make friends with other bloggers

Rather than seeing them as competitors, why not try to make friends with other bloggers, especially those in the same kind of market as you. You can exchange tips and learn from each other, and if you get to the stage where you start sharing each others blogs and retweeting one another, it will be a great, mutually beneficial relationship.

5. Keep tweets short and snappy

You don’t have to use all 140 characters, and in fact, it’s often better not to. Don’t underestimate how small peoples’ attentions spans can be. Moreover, plenty of users still prefer to manually retweet tweets, and if your tweet is too long, they won’t be able to do this, so your blog could lose exposure.

6. Be interesting

Post things that will interest your followers, even if they won’t directly benefit your blog. If you see a good deal or a fascinating article somewhere else, don’t be afraid to tweet it. Give personal commentary on things that are happening in the world of in pop culture, if it fits your brand. Add value to your page and give them a reason to stick around.

7. Try and attract celebrities

If any of your blog posts relate to a particular celebrity, or a high-profile company, tweet it to them with an interesting message. You never know, they may post it to their feed, retweet you or even follow you. This will get you a lot of attention, so is worth a shot, but don’t spam celebrities as it’ll put them off helping you out.

8. Use link-shortening services

Twitter has it’s own shortening system, and will shorten links by default, however you won’t get any benefit from this. What you will gain from is using a service like bit.ly or is.gd to track the links – allowing you to see what content people are interacting with the most.

9. Timing is everything

Make sure you are posting tweets at peak times. Note what countries your followers and target audience are primarily from, and sync your tweets with their time-zones. You don’t want to be posting tweets in the middle of the night or too early in the morning, as nobody will be around to read them.

10. Use hashtags

Use hashtags for keywords – this will help you to show up in searches. Keep in mind that if you use too many it can be irritating and look messy, so try to limit them to one per tweet.

11. Create great, original headlines

Work on your headlines. Keep them eye-catching and enticing so people will want to click them and retweet them too. Be witty and use puns if appropriate.