There’s a lot of different ways to use twitter, and a lot of services out there that work in conjunction with Twitter that most people don’t know about it. Because Twitter was built on the concept of simplicity, these services aren’t included with Twitter by default. It’s the combination of these services that helps turn Twitter into a great tool for businesses or personal brand developers. The tools below are ones I have used in various facets and experiments both personally and to setup clients to achieve the best success.
Before you begin, you need to answer the question on what you’re objectives of using Twitter are. These services are used in conjunction with each other to achieve maximum impact on a targeted audience of followers who might be interested in the information being tweeted (whether it be blog posts, promotions, or just personality filled tweets).
Setting Up Your Twitter Profile
Extended Profile – Before you start tweeting, you want to make sure your profile looks as good as it can. This means taking the time not only to upload an avatar, but to also create stronger branding on your Twitter profile page via creating an Extended Profile.
Twitter Landing Page (TLP) – The Twitter Landing Page is a unique page you create on your website that greets those users who come specifically from Twitter. Once you’ve created your TLP, you can begin using it by pointing your Homepage URL on your twitter profile to your TLP.
How to build followers on Twitter
I think it’s very important to manage your Tweets, especially as you work on building followers. You want to make sure you’ve got a good reply to tweet ratio, meaning if someone were to look at your last 10 tweets that they’re going to see an @reply to someone in there. Think of your Last 10 (L10) the same as it is in sports. It’s you recent activity or track record. Your L10 shows you’re a human, and there to interact, not just add to all the noise that’s already on there. A good ratio is going to be dependent on your audience.
Twellow – A well organized Twitter Directory, Twellow is a great tool for finding new followers and seeding new accounts. It works great in conjunction with Mr. Tweet if you Twellow users first, then run Mr. Tweet to help you find more followers based on your Twellow results. Twellow is one of my first steps in seeding a new twitter account. Seeding your account helps with social proofing.
Mr. Tweet – One of my favorite tools, Mr. Tweet gives you suggestions on who you should be following based on your current followers and twitter habits. It also gives you a means of finding followers without past activity which helps for seeding new twitter accounts you can utilize .
Twollow – Auto follow those that tweet a particular keyword you enter (For example: Your company name). This is another resource for building up followers on Twitter. This can be a great tool if you spend some time researching those keywords that most apply to your business or topic on Twitter. The more specific you can be with your keywords, the higher potential you have to make a connection with someone who is interested in what you have to say (which is really what you want).
Twitoria – Tells you what friends of yours haven’t tweeted within the time frame you specify. I’ll be honest, I’m still working on integrating this into my twitter process. Using Twitoria requires a fair deal of account micro-management. As it stands, and I could be wrong, the only reason I see using Twitoria is if there is a drop in the follower or follow-back percentage for people who are above a certain follower threshold (eg: more than 1,000 followers). If there isn’t (and if anyone has done some studies, please let me know!) then there’s not much point in pruning your followers besides personal reasons.
Tools to help you make more effective tweets
TweetLater – A great tool for scheduling your twitter messages (tweets) to be send out while you’re away. TweetLater also has other functionality, such as Auto-DM (though I would encourage you to proceed in that area with great caution). TweetLater works well for planning promotional campaigns, or organizing messages across different social media properties.
Bit.ly – Bit.ly is a URL shortener. There are a lot of them out there, but I use Bit.ly because in my opinion, it’s the best. It provides the proper redirects (301), it provides tracking, it’s low on domain character usage (giving me more space to send messages), it doesn’t have a framebar, and it has venture capital funding so it’s unlikely it’s going anywhere. There’s a great article by Danny Sullivan that provides a detailed analysis of all the different URL shorteners and which one is best (Bit.ly).
Tweet Deck – TweetDeck is a Twitter Client so you don’t have to go to their website to get replies, direct messages, or Tweet. In my opinion, it’s the best client for twitter, allowing you to group followers, search, and a lot more. They also recently added in support for Facebook Updates (very cool!).
Sideline – Developed by Yahoo!, Sideline runs off of Adobe’s AIR platform (just like Tweet Deck) and helps with tracking tweets that are pertinent to you. A very new, but cool tool. Definitely worth learning (it’s simple).
Twist – A great tool for Twitter trend analysis. You can use it in conjunction with sideline, or to help with the keyword research mentioned before that helps with using Twollow. An example on using it would be observing that “LOST” has a spike every Wednesday night (when the show airs). If you create a follow strategy to start a relationship with some of those individuals, you can create an opportunity to connect, and you also know the best time to market to them. Eg: Maybe you should time your Tweets for after LOST (similar to airing new TV shows after the prime time)?
If you’ve got any comments or suggestions on how to use Twitter like a pro, please feel free to let me know!