Twitter is a great social media platform for following your favorite celebrities and brands. It is also a great place to build a personal brand. Its culture of short and meaningful conversations is where Twitter excels. But, it can be quite confusing to figure out your way when you are starting out on Twitter. You may have dozens of questions about how to go about it, like when to tweet, what to tweet, how to grow, etc. So here I am putting out some beginner Twitter tips to get you started on your strong foot.
1. Profile setup: Picking a Suitable Handle, Profile Image, and Header Image
You’d find many people with handles like @johndoe1234567 on Twitter. Would you take them seriously if that’s an account of a business or personal brand?
Picking a short and memorable handle looks more polished and professional. People would also find it easier to tag you in tweets due to the character limits. It’s even better if you can pick a handle that is consistent across all your social media accounts. Take a look at any brands or people that are doing well on Twitter and you’d know what I mean.
Your profile image and header image should be representing what you are about, be it a business or a personal account. Make sure you keep your branding consistent across all social media platforms, so that people know that it’s you no matter where they are interacting with you.
2. Nail Your Bio
Your bio on Twitter has a character limit of 160 characters, so your job is to give the visitors an initial idea of what you are all about. You can set yourself apart nicely if you nail your bio.
Things to mention in your bio:
- If you’re a business, state about your services or products. For personal accounts, start with something about what you do or what interests/conversations you are pursuing on Twitter
- Add something fun but quite common in general about you, like you love coffee or you love Game of Thrones (In spite of that bummer of a final season
) - You can also mention the accounts you are associated with, like you’re working as X at @abc, or you manage @abc
- Add your hobbies like watching cricket, playing video games or partying. That gives people an idea of what you are like when you are not working
3. Tweet at the Right Time
Even though there are so many studies out there, it always varies from case to case. When you are starting out, the rule of thumb is to spread out your tweets throughout the day. Don’t tweet just during the business hours.
People would be reading your tweets at different times. But there will be times when people are more active on twitter than other times, so we’d suggest you do your own test and find out which times your specific audience is more active.
According to Buffer, tweets posted on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday have higher CTRs than those posted during other days of the week. So if you are sharing links to your blog or some page that you want people to visit, now you have an initial idea of where to start your testing.
Once you have figured out the best times to tweet for your account, you can schedule your tweets in advance. There are so many scheduling tools available. Let us know in the comments if you like to know more about which tools to use.
4. Make Twitter Two-Way Communication
One of the biggest mistakes people and businesses make is they treat Twitter as just another platform to put out their content and wonder why nobody is engaging with it.
Twitter is made for conversations, so you should be engaging more with people rather than just distributing your content.
Sort out the keywords and hashtags relevant to you or your business and actively seek conversations happening around those on Twitter. Then get on those conversations, provide your 2 cents on it. That’s how more people would get to know about you and if you’re pursuing the right kind of conversations, you’ll start growing fast.
5. Keep Your Hashtags Minimal and Relevant
People starting with Twitter fall into this trap quite often. They figure Twitter is all about Hashtags, so they fill up rest of the characters in the tweet with all kinds of hashtags.
Don’t do that.
You’ll come across as spammy and it’s hard to take a tweet seriously when it has 15 hashtags. It will not help your tweet get discovered and your followers are likely to ignore that tweet.
Do your research on hashtags relevant about what you are posting. We suggest using maximum of two most relevant and popular hashtags.
6. Take Advantage of GIFs
GIFs are probably the most entertaining and interactive part of Twitter. It adds a layer of humanity and context to what you are putting out. Moving visual content attracts more attention than just text or images.
Twitter for business has a nice post on how you can leverage GIFs to strengthen your brand. Check it out here.
Bonus Tips
- ur Twitter growth strategy can’t be Follow-Unfollow. That is very unprofessional and it does not attract attention the right way. It’s like you are tricking users into doing something and people don’t like that. Save your brand from that negativity and find meaningful ways to grow.
- Set up your Tweetdeck or Hootsuite for active listening and monitoring. That way you would instantly know when people mention you without tagging you and what they are talking about. You can quickly jump in the conversation and provide people with value or more entertainment. (If you’d like to know about how we set up our social listening and monitoring, let us know in the comments!)
If you follow these beginner Twitter tips , you’ll see growth and good vibes around your brand much sooner. We wish you have a great time tweeting!
Which of these tips you found the most useful? Do you have your own tips about Twitter?
Let us know in the comments below
