11 Twitter Tips and Tricks from the Pros
If you’re looking for Twitter tips and tricks, you’ve come to the right place. Maybe you’re looking to build your personal audience, or you could be striving to build your brand’s following on the increasingly important social media network. Whatever your reasoning, we’re going to show you how to use Twitter like a pro.
If you’re looking to increase your reach, add followers, and ultimately, find more customers, check out our top 11 Twitter writing tips sure to improve your presence online.
1. Say Something Compelling
First and foremost, on Twitter you must have interesting things to say if you hope to build your brand. Unoriginal, uninspiring content will get sent away with a reprimanding finger wag. Regurgitated info will get ignored, and you will not add followers.
Content that plays well and helps your Twitter account grow includes:
- How-to learnings that teach followers on Twitter, not through links
- Inspirational thoughts that make followers think and feel something
- Breaking news followers don’t have the inside scoop on
The easiest way to ensure you’re saying something of interest is to think of Twitter as microblogging. Add as much value as you can in 140 characters with short, but useful information your followers can immediately digest and potentially use.
2. Use Photos
People are addicted to visuals. It’s human nature. So use this to your advantage on Twitter. Keeping this tip in mind, every time you post something on Instagram, make sure you link it to Twitter, too.
Any time you add a new blog post or web page to your site, link the web address to Twitter and add a relevant photograph. As always, personal images work better than stock photos.
Twitter isn’t Snapchat or Instagram, so you’ll want the meat and potatoes of your Twitter feed to be the words. Just remember to combine your short, sweet prose with a relevant photo.
3. Add a Personal Touch
One of the most essential Twitter hacks we can give you is to focus on being personal. Open up to your audience. Be authentic with them. This doesn’t mean you need to pour your heart out, especially if you’re managing a brand, but you can share details of your personal life. If you’re building your personal brand, a good, old-fashioned Twitter rant is definitely acceptable on occasion.
Many companies share photos of employees doing customer service or share submitted pictures of customers using their products or services. This is an excellent way to bring a personal touch to a corporation. Sponsoring events and live-tweeting them is also a great way for businesses to reach followers on a personal level.
4. Give Praise
Always remember Twitter is a social network. Part of networking is lending a helping hand now and then. If you’ve found fascinating accounts in your industry or niche, then reach out and follow them. If you begin enjoying their content, don’t be afraid to give them a shout out and ask your followers to follow them, too.
The key to giving praise on Twitter is to make sure everything stays relevant without impeding your business. For instance, if you run a small sporting goods shop, you could shout out a professional dunker on Twitter that posts awesome videos on the network. Then add in a little information about how you sell the exact same shoes he wears.
5. Schedule Tweets But Keep it Social
Many sing the praises of scheduling tweets. Honestly, it’s commendable to be able to schedule out a month of tweets and not worry about it for weeks at a time. However, Twitter is first and foremost a SOCIAL network. So you cannot just schedule a bunch of tweets and then ignore the social side.
You always want to be interacting on Twitter. Even if you schedule tweets, you still need to respond when people interact with you. If someone comments on one of your posts, you should respond as long as the comment is legitimately from a fan, follower, or customer. If an account is trolling you, then you can ignore them, block them, or respond in kind.
New to scheduling tweets? Â Try this out.
6. Never Buy Followers
Here’s one point that all Twitter vets know:Â When it comes to followers, never buy them. Just DON’T do it. Everyone will see right through your deception.
It’s easy to see if someone or some brand bought their followers. If an account has over 1,000 followers, but they can’t get a single retweet or favorite on even a single tweet, then the account bought followers. The higher the number of followers without a verified account, the greater likelihood of purchased followers, unless you see a lot of activity in their feed.
7. Powerful Pinning
Just posted a fantastic new blog article full of evergreen content? Or maybe a wonderful new product was just released by your company? Situations like these are perfect for using the newish pin feature on Twitter.
Any time you tweet, you can bring special attention to that tweet and post. A pinned tweet is simply a tweet you’ve already selected that stays at the top of your feed all the time. The tweet will remain at the top until you change it. Why is this so useful? If you publish an amazing post on Monday, but you continually tweet, many of your followers could miss the update. By pinning that tweet, you direct traffic to your post for weeks or months on end.
8. Never Overuse Hashtags
Over hashtagging is a common Twitter rookie mistake. In the past, this was ok, as you could only search on Twitter with hashtags. Now Twitter searches text, too, so hashtags are less important. You can still use hashtags to add emphasis and focus on certain words in your tweet. Just make sure to focus on these two important tips:
- Only use one hashtag per tweet
- Stick with popular or trending hashtags
A random hashtag that no one is searching for will do your tweet no good.
9. Twitter Tests
When talking Twitter hacks, this is one all social media writers must know. So let’s dive into some of the basics of A/B testing and CRO on Twitter. Words matter, especially on Twitter where they are at such a premium. Luckily, you get real-time analytics on this invaluable social media platform.
Once you get a decent amount of followers, you’ll instantly be able to dial in the type of content your fans love. Did one tweet get a bunch of favorites and re-tweets? That usually means your followers like this kind of content. Did another type get zero interaction? Your fans aren’t a fan of this type of content on Twitter. Pretty simple, right?
You can even get a little more advanced if you’d like. One of our favorite ways to test headlines is through Twitter. You can send out the exact same information written in different ways within minutes of each other. Then compare which tweet performs better based on how it’s worded.
10. Timing Matters
Like all facets of life, our Twitter tips and tricks wouldn’t be complete without mentioning timing. Just like all tweets aren’t created equal, not all times of the day are the same for tweeting.
One Twitter hack we found shows that the absolute best times to tweet are between one to three in the afternoon on Monday through Thursday. You’ll find the most users on Twitter at this time, and research suggests that people are more active on the network at these times, as well. At the very least, we recommend scheduling your tweets in this timeframe. If you don’t want your tweets to get seen, then feel free to tweet after eight on a weekday evening or after three on the weekend. Night time and all day Friday and Saturday are typically slow on Twitter, as people are enjoying their evenings and weekends.
Lastly, you’ll want to find a tweet pace or rhythm. You don’t want to be the brand or account that continually spams their followers. Your brand won’t grow doing that.
11. Favorite For Followers
Any article about how to use Twitter like a pro wouldn’t be complete without a way to get followers quickly. So we’ll show you how to add followers rapidly. Just don’t mistake organic growth for a tip or trick. If you’re committed to growing your brand, the quality of tweets is what will gain you followers more than anything else. Still, here’s a quick way to gain some followers:
- First, make sure your feed is full of gold on any given day: great insights, interesting links, and a few photos.
- Then pick a popular, active hashtag for the day. Even better if the hashtag you select is related to your brand or niche in some manner. One thing to note is you shouldn’t be doing this on political hashtags if you’re managing a brand.
- Next, click on the hashtag and start favoriting every single tweet you see. Don’t even read them. Just continually like – around 300-400 tweets.
- Then send out some more gold on your feed.
If you have an interesting feed, you should be able to gain 5-10 followers through this manner. Just be careful! If you do this more than one day in a week, you’ll find Twitter issues a ghost-ban on you. After this happens, you won’t be able to acquire any followers from this method.
Twitter Tricks & Treats
You don’t need to be an online marketing agency for these 11 Twitter tips to send your followers surging. Just stick to the plan described above and you won’t ever need another Twitter hack. Your online presence will grow, and so will your brand and sales.
If you’re still unsure about Twitter writing, iWebContent can help. Our staff includes professional social media writers who can create tweets, blogs and other kinds of digital content for your business. We can even schedule your tweets and interact with your followers. Get in touch today to learn more.