twitter-117595_640Twitter is one of the easiest ways to connect with followers and share insights, alerts and other updates. The following tips can help you up your game and use the platform like a pro!

Content Remains King on Twitter

Don’t forget that regardless of how many characters you use to convey your message, it’s the actual content that counts. The best types of tweets to spur engagement typically either entertains, informs, or accomplishes both.

Tweets that contain high-quality, interesting visuals, quotes, lists, statistics and how-tos generally perform the best on this particular social media channel.

Use Twitter Tools to Automate and Organise Tweets and Generate Useful Analytics

TweetDeck is a free tool that allows users to manage all of their Twitter accounts more easily. Some of Twitter’s more useful features include using it to keep up with multiple accounts, create and schedule your tweets in advance, organise your lists and track the use of your hashtags.

Live Track the Impact of Your Tweets

Track real-time engagement by enabling push notifications in the Twitter app. Make sure that you’ve downloaded both the mobile and desktop versions of the app so that you can check for differences that your audience might experience when using different platforms to access your content.

Use Analytics to Fine Tune Your Tweets

Twitter Analytics can show you how many people have viewed specific tweets, as well as how many people have interacted with it by clicking on it or taking other action, such as retweeting it. This provides users with valuable data about the engagement rate of specific tweets. By analysing this information, you can determine what types of topics and tweets your audience prefers and use it to improve your messaging.

In addition to this data that is found on the tweets tab, you can examine the content in your audiences’ tab to pick up demographic information about your audience’s lifestyle and interests to create tweets and other content that is tailored and more desirable for them to consume.

Use Hashtag Best Practices

Hashtags make it easy for others to find your tweets and join in the conversation, but you must use them correctly for the best impact. Research what’s trending when using a hashtag and create your own for specific fundraising campaigns. You also want to use them in multiple posts and channels to generate buzz around the topic and increase your rank.

Be careful though, because you can get too much of a good thing when it comes to hashtags. Never use more than two individual hashtags in the same tweet, as using more than two at a time actually decreases interest in that tweet and decreases engagement.

Use Direct Messaging to Convey Private or In-Depth Information

While it’s tempting to simply tweet your response to queries, keep in mind that your tweets are the same as posting on public walls and forums; anyone with a Twitter account can see them, and, retweet them. If someone asks you a sensitive, or very detailed question, provide more detailed information by following up with them by using Twitter’s direct messaging feature.

Use Twitter Tools to Improve Your Twitter Etiquette

Do you know what you should do if another Twitter user retweets or favorites one of your posts? That’s right, you should thank them as soon as possible. The same goes for when a new Twitter user starts to follow you, you should follow them back so you can keep the conversation going and expand your network of connections! Tools like Social Oomph can automatically notify you when someone retweets or likes you, making it easy for you to quickly show your gratitude. This tool has a host of user-friendly features that will improve your Twitter experience, from making it easy to shorten URLs for your tweets, to automatically re-following those who follow you. You can also schedule posts and manage some of your other social media channels such as Facebook and Pinterest while you are there!