• Don’t Take Your Status Update Too Literally: A lot of new “Twitterers” take the question “What are you doing now?” too literally. Check out this clip for a second.

In the humorous clip above, one of the subjects “twotted” all over the place – “Just got to work”, “Sitting in my chair now” etc. Just today, my co-worker said to me that he wasn’t keen on joining Twitter because he’d be tweeting what he was doing all the time. You should not feel compelled to tell people what you are doing all the time, especially if it is everyday daily living tasks.

Instead, tell people about your experience at the grocery store, how the movie you saw yesterday sucked, a website you liked, a book you read, a great quote that can inspire others, basically something others can relate to. I honestly don’t think you are that much of a loner.

• Tweet Often: If you only tweet every so often, chances are you would easily disappear into space. The reason behind this is that Twitter shows you what people are saying in real time. It is not going to show you tweets  since the last time you logged in. People tend to engage more with people that appear often on their twitter feed.
• Engage Others: Don’t make it all about you. Reply to other people’s posts and if you like them, retweet them. Direct message them if you don’t want others viewing your conversation. Up until you figure out that monologue is a very lonely state, you’ll never get to experience the joys of Twitter. Conversations can help you connect to others of similar interests or build relationships with those you already connect with.
• Profile Name: For the life of me, I could never understand why people use twitter IDs that absolutely don’t make any sense. Am not talking about names that others may know you by or that reflect your brand such as “the love coach”. Am talking about the completely random ones like “bhYxtPws”. It doesn’t quite make sense when I can’t figure out your username and have to use the “Find People” feature.
• Profile Pic: Dating websites would tell you that you have a much greater chance of getting a response if you have a pic posted. Same goes for Twitter and other social networking sites for that matter. People tend to respond more to you if they have an idea of who they are interacting with.
• Bio: Tell people a little bit more about yourself and what things you may share in common. This plays an important part in determining whether someone will follow you. If you have a website where people can know more about you, by all means share it. But whatever you do, please don’t list your Twitter page as your website (read “redundancy”).
• Watch Your Follow Ratio: It is not rare to find a new Twitter user trying to acquire as many followers as they can. You have to remember that this is not a contest and building up your follower list is going to take some time. If you are following 450 people and only 45 are following you back, you ending up appearing like a spammer. The best approach is to gradually follow more people as your number of followers increase.
• Don’t Over-Promote Yourself: You’d probably not believe me if I told you this, but I’ve observed one user whose every tweet had the same shortened URL, which was directed a page that asked you to sign up for their services. How this individual managed to maintain this large of a following still beats me. Am not saying you shouldn’t link back to your page, just be gentle with it and make sure your linking is appropriate to your tweet.



• Make Use of the Search Feature: Surely everyone has a topic that interests them. The most common method people use to find information is by performing a search. With Twitter now, you can perform a search right out of your web interface. While Google search results involved indexed entries, Twitter search results are real time and you get your info as best described by ordinary people like you & me as opposed to some news caster so you get a better opinion of the issue at hand.
• Twitter Tools & Other Applications: Twitter has an array of excellent tools and other applications that you can use for a variety of purposes from finding other like minded “Twitterers” to applications that allow you to use Twitter on the go or provide you with a much greater experience than the web version. Find one that works for you and you’ll be totally amazed.

Hope you were able to find this post informative. If you did, please feel free to share it with others.