What to say and do on Twitter

Creating compelling content is the best way to engage with your audience and attract new followers. There are no rights or wrongs when it comes to what you tweet; however, researchers at Rutgers University found that informers – who post and share valuable and relevant information – have twice as many followers as meformers, who post updates relating only to themselves.

Create your content strategy
You need a flow of consistent, entertaining and informative content that positions you as an expert, is relevant to your audience, and adds authenticity to your business voice.
Twitter’s best practice guide to tweeting from your business twitter account has five great ideas to get you started.

1. Keep it short
Be concise and focused and you will make a much bigger impact than if you try to communicate on multiple topics. Use links to blog posts and webpages to add extra information; Twitter will automatically shorten these into the http://t.co format for you.

2. Add images
Photos, videos and animated GIFs will all add personality and drive engagement with your tweets. Add up to four photos at a time and experience three times higher levels of engagement than with text alone.

3. Use #hashtags
– Pick a word or phrase that is relevant to your business and start an easily searchable conversation.
– Try relating to popular events, but be careful about the wording and try not to use more than two #hashtags per tweet, such as #ValentinesDay #SayItWithFlowers. Don’t use any spaces or punctuation, as this breaks the link.
– Use brand or campaign-related hashtags.
– Keep them short and easy to spell.
– Find and use relevant trending hashtags, but don’t spam (overuse) them.
– Use hashtags that relate to a product, event, lifestyle or location.

4. Ask questions and run polls
These are effective ways to interact with your audience, provided you keep them relevant. You will engage followers in conversation and gauge their opinions on issues that are important to them. Polls are simple to add – just click the tweet button and then click the ‘add poll’ icon.

5. Curate and connect using retweets and replies
Your retweets reflect your business and need to align with your objectives and values. Be careful to curate your content with retweets of positive content, such as useful articles and customer praise, and ensure your replies are timely and responsive.
If a conversation becomes too complex for tweets, invite your customers to direct message (DM) you, where there are no limits on how long a message can be and the conversation is entirely private.
Do you need more ideas? Twitter does not have to be complicated. Keep it simple and open-ended with these straightforward strategies:
– Try a ‘twitter only’ promotion to give your audience a reason to follow you.
– Promote your favourite charity as part of the wider social community.
– The ‘we’re proud of ourselves’ tweet is a great way to promote your company when you win an award or gain accreditation
– Humanise your company by sharing hilarious and appropriate content.
– Invite feedback with a ‘tell us how we’re doing’ tweet.