How to Use Twitter Like a Pro

Leveraging Twitter to gain exposure for a brand is an effective marketing tool for many businesses. Just how you Tweet and use Twitter, however, can impact the results and response you receive – and, without the right insight and strategies, it could lead to damaging mistakes that could affect a brand’s reputation.

Highlighting a path for success, below are some insider tips for using Twitter like a pro. By incorporating these tips into your current Twitter use and strategies, you can enhance your exposure to and connection with your target audience, positioning you for more leads and new business.

1. Know when you’re Tweeting too much

One to four Tweets per hour has been found1 to be the ideal number of Tweets in terms of maintaining audience engagement without bombarding them and driving them away. So, dial into this ideal range and figure out when your target audience is most likely to be on Twitter (check this out for more on how to dial into your target audience’s usual Twitter time/s).

Scheduling tools (like Buffer, HootSuite, Sprout Social, etc.) can be helpful in maintaining a Twitter schedule (and scheduling your Tweets to automatically post at a specific time).

2. Never Tweet on autopilot

This can be a BIG mistake. While we’ve just encouraged you to set up your tweets in advance, as scheduling them out can be helpful, don’t operate on autopilot – this can cause you to make the mistake of auto DMing (direct messaging), which tends to be an immediate turn off to an audience who wants to connect with a person or connect with the personal side of a business.

Another mistake that can result from Tweeting on auto-pilot is that it can cause you to Tweet during a national crisis or some other tragedy, which can lead to perceptions that your business is disconnected and/or insensitive. So, bottom line, Tweet on autopilot is a big no-no.

3. Put some thoughtful consideration and research into your hashtag choices

We’ve discussed the golden rules for using hashtags on Twitter pretty extensively; so, here, we’ll just keep it short and note that taking the time to research and carefully select hashtags can be a powerful way to dial into your target audience immediately. That can mean maximum exposure for your posts.

4. Shorten your URLs to make room for more/other content

By using URL shortening tools, you can save as many characters as possible for explaining the link you are sharing and enticing people to click on it. This can be really valuable with the character restrictions – and it can be central to increasing conversions.

5. Monitor Your Brand

People are talking, this can be an effective tool for gauging what your audience has to say about you; ideally if they are saying good things, the Twitter Search tool can be an easy and effective way to collect testimonials.

Make sure to respond to any negative comment especially, even if you can’t solve the problem, people want to be heard.  Show you care, have empathy and are a human.

6. Use Twitter Search to build your authority

Search for terms surrounding your business and location based in order to jump into conversations to provide value.  If a person asks ‘how do I do XYZ’ relevant to your solution and you help them, you’ve now started a relationship with a potential prospect that now knows you, likes you for helping, and trusts you if you know what you’re talking about.

7. Use the Twitter Search Secret Weapon

Search followers or mentions of relevant software, news or competition for your company and see what problems your target audience is having. Not only can you engage and potentially help solve their problem but you can set this up automatically to save to a spreadsheet giving you loads of problems and desires in your audience’s exact language.

Additionally, the Twitter Search tool can inform your content choices for posts, based on the topics people are interested in at the moment, while allowing you to monitor the other guy (e.g., see what and how your competition is doing).

8. Always try to provide value

On Twitter, you have to give value to get value. In other words, if you expect others to pay attention to your Tweets, retweet them and respond to them, you have to follow others, retweet and be responsive to them.

Additionally, it’s crucial to provide some piece of valuable information or insight in your Tweets in order to get noticed, keep your audience’s attention and compel them to respond to your calls-to-action when they are Tweeted. So, bottom line is that the name of the game is value.

9. Have a crisis plan in place

The reality is that people make mistakes, oversights happen and, in some cases, that can mean that Tweets that shouldn’t be posted make it online. So, be prepared by developing a crisis plan now; with one in place, you can immediately put it in action and keep your cool, helping to resolve the issue(s) ASAP so it’s minimally (if at all) damaging in the long run.