I got several questions after last week’s tip on one way to use twitter. I strongly recommend a focus on Facebook for more immediate rewards but if you’re keen to build both as you go, fair enough, but my main advice is only do so when you’ve got time left over after your Facebook efforts are done for the week!
Tips for general use on Twitter:
- Be open and personal – say something on your profile that lets people connect to you as a person. If possible make that something unique to you. Fill in as much as you can on your profile page.
- Use a clear photo that will be recognisable at the small size it shows beside your tweets.
- In your Bio make it clear what you do and what you tweet about. This allows people to decide to follow you because your content is of interest to them. (that makes them more likely to be potential clients too).
- Use the Header Image (like a Facebook Banner image) to your best advantage. It’s your twitter billboard. Use it to tell a story – you doing your thing, something that identifies your offering in image form, at least a pic of you and a caption that lets people know what you are about.
- People like to share funny stuff, but it’s the stuff that is funny and insightful that really wins. The perfect tweet should contain insight and humour and point on to something useful – some information in a link that will help people.
- Insight, Humour, Information. Always have one, try to have two, and if you can consistently come up with all three then more power to you!
- Use images and links. They will look small on a tweet but on your wall they show fully and reveal the image.
- If you can say what you want with characters left over that’s great. Just because you’re limited to 280 characters doesn’t mean you have to use them all.
- And the big one: Establish a niche. Post on an area or topic you specialise on. Have a weekly recurring tweet theme. ‘Tip of the Week’ for example 🙂
Be consistent with that.
As you build a following, go for people who are really interested in what you do, not just building a bigger number.
These tips are also largely applicable to other social media too.
 If you have any questions please ask.