5 Tips for Using Twitter More Effectively

Twitter allows you to share almost anything, but that doesn't mean you should.

Using Twitter is easy. You set up an account, type 140 characters and click "Tweet" – that’s all there is to it. Using the site in a way that’s enjoyable, however, is a different story. Learn how to communicate effectively on the social network, and transform your Twitter experience from humdrum and tedious to engaging and fun.

Think Quality, Not Quantity

When you’re new to Twitter, your empty timeline may tempt you into following everyone who follows you. This approach, however, often leads to a timeline filled with spam and mundane dispatches from complete strangers. Twitter is a quick-moving, constant stream of real-time updates, and following too many people means that you may miss tweets from the users you’re really interested in. Take time to vet the users you’re following to make sure they’re people whose tweets you’ll enjoy. Think quality, not quantity when you tweet, too. Pace your tweets so they're not too frequent; people like to feel that they’re following a real person, not a robot. Make each character count before you press the "Tweet" button.

Get Organized With Lists

Although following anyone and everyone on your personal account isn’t recommended, if you’re tweeting for your business, following a lot of people – and gathering many followers in return – is a good strategy. If there are certain users you really want to keep up with, such as industry influencers or important customers, use Twitter’s Lists feature to create organized, easily accessible feeds featuring only the users you’ve placed in the list. You can also add users you’re not following – like celebrities – to lists; this keeps your main timeline uncluttered while still providing quick access to recent tweets from your favorite stars.

Schedule Your Tweets

You probably realize that 3 a.m. on a Saturday night isn’t the best time to make a big announcement on Twitter. What you may not know is that 8 a.m. on Monday or 7 p.m. on Friday isn’t an optimal time, either. According to a May 2012 study conducted by the link-shortening service Bitly, the best time to tweet is Monday through Thursday between the hours of 1 and 3 p.m. – that’s when your updates are likely to gather the most attention. Using a Twitter management application like TweetDeck or HootSuite, you can schedule your tweets in advance to make sure they’re posted at a time when they’re most likely to be seen.

Add Variety to Your Tweets

Take a good look at your personal timeline – if all your tweets are about the same thing or are excessively negative, your followers are probably tuning you out. A Twitter feed that consists of nothing but personal drama or Foursquare check-ins quickly gets boring. If you’re having something really delicious for dinner, go ahead and post it, but consider including a photo or link to the recipe you used to provide something for your followers to interact with. Share interesting links, videos and photos, and remember to interact with your tweeps -- the people who follow you -- by retweeting and responding to them.

Safety First

Sharing is the name of the game on any social network, and Twitter is no exception. The rising popularity of location-based check-in services, included in apps such as Foursquare, Instagram and UrbanSpoon, means that you can share your exact location with friends at any given time. While the intent may be innocent – you might check in to a restaurant to activate a special, or share your location in an Instagram photo to let others know where it was taken – the consequences can be dangerous. When you check in to a location, you’re telling all of your followers (and the entire world, if your Twitter account is public) that you’re not at home. Even if you’re not checking in to different locations, tweets that advertise an empty house can lead to unfortunate consequences; in 2009, an Arizona man was robbed shortly after he tweeted to his more than 2,000 followers that his family had left for vacation. If you still want to share this type of information, reduce your risk by disabling Twitter’s location feature when tweeting at home (a follower can click on this and get a Google map directly to your home), and never set your own home as a check-in location on Foursquare.

References

• AllTwitter: 10 Must-Learn Lessons for Twitter Newbies
• B2B Bloggers: 25 Awesome Twitter Tips
• Bitly Blog: Time Is on Your Side
• Time Techland: Newsflash: Two-Thirds of Tweets Boring, Says Study
• PhoneDog: The Dangers of Over-sharing and Location-based Services
• CNet: Twitter User Says Vacation Tweets Led to Burglary

Resources

• Read this Article in Spanish
• HootSuite
• TweetDeck
• Twitter