Top Twitter Tips

A blogger has produced a handy guide to help people find their way around the microblogging platform of the moment – Twitter.

James Dickey says his Ten Commandments of Twitter are designed to help users get the most out of the social networking tool.

And here are a few of his tips:

* Set Your Twitter Target

This is the key issue according to Dickey since “everything else you do - or don’t do - in the rest of the commandments depends on this”.

He notes: “The handle, picture, bio, who you follow and how you follow back, might all be different if you wanted to promote your ad agency vs. raising awareness for the plight of the almost-extinct blue-tailed pigeon fish.”

* Select Your Twitter Options

Your needs may be served by selected options rather than default settings so Dickey recommends considering your choices.

Options can include sending and receiving tweets via a mobile phone and getting email notifications of updates.

And Dickey warns against stopping non-followers reading your posts: “It’s the Twitter equivalent of walking into a room and asking everyone else who’s already there to put on earplugs while you talk to the three people you like the most.”

Instead, he advises you should “assume everyone else is just another nice person like yourself looking for a new outlet to reach whatever goal they selected”.

* Link To Your Website

Every Twitter profile enables the user to place a link to their website, blog etc and Dickey urges Twitterers to make use of it as a potential traffic driver.

* Connect Twitter To Other Social Media

Dickey uses the example of Facebook, where users can install an application which automatically takes new message tweets and runs them as status updates.

* Find Some Followers

To establish a presence on Twitter and attract followers, Dickey recommends following very popular users and writing replies to their tweets to encourage them to follow you back.

* Write Something!

“It’s only 140 characters. It doesn’t need an outline, multiple drafts, or an editor (hopefully).

“Look at what your purpose was and talk about it. Since it’s only 140 characters, no one expects the next great novel.”

Visit Dickey’s social media & marketing blog for the full list.

[HT – PDA blog]