Twitter beyond the basics

Etiquette
Thank you's are big, thank people for re tweeting your tweets, for mentioning you, for being nice etc. Also when you want to re tweet something and do not have enough room remove all the names except the original sender.

If the tweet is too long to re tweet, edit or abbreviate the words to shrink it down but still readable.

Length
Try and keep your tweets to less than 80 characters that way it will be easier to re tweet it. If you fill the entire 140 characters people will need to edit your tweet which is more work than they really want to do. Make it easy for them to re tweet as then you will be exposed to their followers.

Time management and listening
After a while you will feel compelled to read every tweet you can. This is a strange one, as the more people you follow the harder it is to read all of them. No one can read all their tweets so there is a sense of overwhelm when you get to this stage. I personally try and use it like I use email. I read for about ½ to an hour in the morning, at lunchtime, then again at the end of the day, this way it gives me an overall look at the day and I can re tweet anything I have found interesting without it taking up too much of my day. You need to be quite disciplined as when you get busy actually doing the work you get paid for, Twitter priorities go down the bottom of the list, but you should try and keep consistent.

Twitter groups – hash tags
I have found a great resource in Tweetups. This is where you meet up with other people from twitter in the real world. Go and have a drink or join a coffee morning in your area. Not only will you meet great people, but you will get so much advice on how to improve your twitter skills, it might even generate some referrals, you never know.

Twitter plan
For lack of any formal plan that I could find, I recommend that you get a piece of paper and write down topics or subjects you would like to tweet on, also include a personal column. Then write your tweets under these subjects so you can plan ahead. Set out a block of time to do research and collate relevant and interesting information you think your followers would be interested in.  Choose one tweet from each subject and spread them out throughout the day or week.  With the personal tweets don't get too personal but show a bit of personality.

This will avoid the whole, “I should tweet something but I cannot think of anything at the moment, Oh I know, I will tweet what I am having for lunch” syndrome.

I have a folder in my browser's bookmarks called twitter and each article that I like I bookmark the page within that folder. When it comes to writing my tweets I already have the page website address and information at hand.

Schedule tweets avoid tweeting 5 in a row
If you are on twitter you will find that you will have something to say about various topics and will have a rush on tweets. I find that if I see 5 or more tweets in a row from my followers I tend to only read the first three so. I think it is better to spread them apart and schedule them throughout the day. Hootsweet is great for that.

Good luck and I hope you are starting to see some great results.