What’s All The Twittering About?

May 20, 2009 by Brie

The use of Twitter has tremendously grown as people from all walks of life take to it. For those of you new to Twitter, there are a few things you should know before getting started so that your page is effective and useful both for you and your followers.

Firstly, sit down and figure out why it is you want to use Twitter in the first place. Many use Twitter as a marketing or networking tool for their business, while others as a simple add on to their web-sites to send out updates to their customers.

Using Twitter for social networking can be both risky and smart. Be sure that you target the right kind of people to follow and have in turn following you. If you are chatty and just want to talk about your favorite T.V. shows, seek out like-minded people. If your more conservative and want to discuss world and political topics, then essentially, your followers should be the same.

For the everyday blogger, Twitter comes in handy for drawing traffic to your blog. Once you begin building a following, updates will draw in your readers, increasing both your RSS and email subscribers.

Remember though, you only have 140 characters to get your point across, so be sure to use it effectively and wisely! If you need to post a website URL, be sure it’s not a long one, and if it is, there are many URL shortening services you can utilize. These include bit.ly, twurl.cc, or tinyurl.com. People want to read your updates, not a big long link. Make sure you use these free services whenever you can.

If you want to post tips, post descriptions or just say a little something about what you have to offer, keep it brief. Use your words wisely and cleverly to keep your followers interested. Stay on topic to what your niche is about. This keeps your followers attentive and anticipating your next update. There is nothing that drives many tweeters to the unfollow button faster than someone jabbering about everything and anything. Most simply don’t have time to wade through it all in order to find something that MAY be relevant to what they followed you for in the first place. However, be sure that you also dont over do it by spamming. This will chase your followers off quicker then a bucking bronco.

As long as you’re social and not constantly pushing hard sell tweets, your followers will tell their friends about you. Be sure to keep up with your following by saying hello once and awhile, answering direct messages and just by interacting with people. Don’t let it all be about what your trying to sell – build relationships too.