Do you Twitter?

I’m a crazy Twitterer. I use TweetDeck, HootSuite, TwitPhone, TwitApps, GeoTwitter to name a few. We even had an online scavenger hunt called High Twit Adventure. I feel pretty confident on how to use this exciting new social media tool, but I always want to get better if you have any tips.

But for those newbies out there I wanted to give you a brief synopsis of how Twitter works. Enjoy

What Should You Tweet About

Community – Use Twitter to build community. Do this by @replying to build conversations with specific individuals

Business – Use Twitter to build business. Do this by providing links, content and other resources for your community to learn about your product or service.

Wisdom – Use Twitter to give knowledge. Do this by giving links, content and other resources to help your community learn about other products within your industry.

Personal – Use Twitter to be human. Your community wants to know who you are, not your brand. Give them tidbits about your day and life.

The Basic Tools

You need a few tools to manage your Twitter relationships properly.

Use Tiny URLs – When providing links you should convert them using TinyUrl.com to ensure you make the 160 character limit.

Find your favorite mobile application – Twitter is best when its ongoing. You will need a mobile application for providing the best personal tweets.

Use Tweetlater.com – To deliver information and business tweets in a way that doesn’t saturate your followers feeds.

Find Your Community

Step One: Identify keywords, attributes, locations and terms your target community uses.

Step Two: Build a ready-to-fill database for Twitter users that fit your target community.

Step Three: Set up RSS alerts for every individual keyword from search.twitter.com. Add each user under each alert to your database

Step Four: Find location-specific users using Twellow.com.

Step Five: Add all of these users to your database and get ready to have a conversation.

Please note you should not follow every user you profile.

Join the conversation

This is the tricky part.

Before following any profiled users, you should reach out to them.

Using @replies: ask them a question, shoot them a link. Organically build relationships with the users instead of automatically following them.

Most likely, their conversation with you will encourage them to follow you. Follow them back.

Continue to use the four types of tweets – emphasis on providing wisdom and business – and you will have a happy community.

Get creative

AFTER you’ve built a happy and attentive community, then you can get creative when it comes to marketing campaigns.

Using #hashtags feel free to create:
•    Contests
•    Promotions
•    Offer discounts
•    Connect followers
•    Whatever else sounds like fun.

Tags: @hightrekTEAM, basic tools, How to use Twitter, Social Media, Twitter