Companies are becoming more and more aware of the power social media holds—as more people regularly interact on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, and Instagram, you need to learn how to communicate with customers, clients, and colleagues in the social media sphere. Twitter has become a wildly-popular public platform, and can provide great opportunities for winning click-thrus, conversions, and, most importantly, new customers.

But before you can make all your marketing and networking dreams come true, you need something to say.

Use this handy guide to get started linking to outside content and creating interest in your new (or existing) Twitter persona.

Linking to Outside Content 

• Short and Sweet: Use link shortening applications, such as bit.ly or goo.gl to make       links shorter and save characters. Plus, these apps can give you an opportunity to measure click-thrus, too.

• Watch it Like a Hawk (or an Owl): Use tools like Hootsuite or Buffer to schedule tweets, follow hashtags relevant to your industry/field, and monitor other users who are posting similar, useful content. Buffer has an added benefit of allowing you to measure some analytics.

• Curate Content: don’t just post a list of Top Ten Cat Videos; compile a list of Top Ten Cat Videos and link back to other sites. This way, you become a resource and you have a personality—a “person” is deciding what is the Top Ten, rather than that list appearing from thin air.

• Reuse, Recycle: Use relevant hashtags to connect with current events. Find a creative way to reuse a trending hashtag, i.e. “Luis Suarez may bite at the #worldcup, but this new #marketing #strategy from @CLERITI sure doesn’t! http://bit.ly/TYAw7l”

• Find Hashtags (and Then Steal Them): Find a list of keywords or hashtags that are often used by other companies in your industry. These are not always the same as SEO keywords, because Twitter is a dense, character-restricted medium. If you can, scope out larger companies and begin creating lists that shows what type of content they’re producing and how they’re using hashtags to introduce it. This gives you an idea of how other companies are labeling the topic as well as what topics are currents in the field. Use this to your advantage, and creatively apply hashtags to pre-existing content.

• Be Creative: Finding lead-ins to links that are both funny and appropriate is key. Pick one aspect of the content you’re linking to that is the most important—what do you want people to walk away knowing? Remember, not all your lead-ins are going to be winners, but try to have a personality. Sell yourself (appropriately), not just your product.

Creating Interest

• Be a Man (or a Woman or a Company) of the People: Twitter is highly social in that people use it to interact, and they are often pleasantly surprised when a “company” or professional account interacts directly with them. If someone @mentions your account or uses a # to ask a question relevant to your field, you must interact with them, even if the field focuses on B2B sales. Twitter isn’t just a place to broadcast information; it’s a place to connect.

• No Such Thing as a Stupid Question: Promote Twitter as a place for questions by linking back from blogs and posted content and including your Twitter handle. This lets potential customers/clients know that you’re a real person who is approachable and willing to create a conversation rather than just clickbait.

• Retweetin’ Fool: Most people find a wall of tweets, all made by the same user/owner of the page, to be boring. To maximize twitter interaction, be sure to retweet other users 1/2 to 1/3 as much as you post original content—even if much of your original content links to articles or blogs written by others. Find local companies, relevant industry-leaders, etc. to retweet. It breaks up the Wall ‘o’ Tweets and adds visual interest to your page while signaling to users that you’re taking full advantage of the “social” aspect of social media. Again—people like to know that there’s a real person behind the “Tweet” button.

Helpful Sites:

bufferapp.com
hootsuite.com
http://www.copypress.com/
http://blog.agencypja.com/
http://ots.evansville.edu/support/training/twitterforacademics.pdf