For those of you so inclined to jump into the micro-blogging phenomenon, and I strongly encourage you to do so, here are 5 highly effective habits of influential Twitter users. The original post that I took this advice from was intended to be sarcastic, a slam on self proclaimed social media experts. However, I found some redeeming ideas that I actually liked, and thought weren’t entirely far fetched. The other tactics that were clearly ridiculous I left out. However, I really did like Mahendra Palsule’s post on Top 10 Best Practices of Social Media Experts on Twitter, you should definitely read it!
Emphasize Positives
Retweet anything and everything whenever anyone says anything positive about you. This includes all mentions, all Follow Fridays (#FF), and all @replies. Your followers need to know what an awesome person you are! If you don’t tell them how will they know? — Seems crazy, and it was intended to be a joke, however, I have seen this tactic be highly successful for the right audience. I wouldn’t do this all the time on my personal Twitter account, but I have seen it work for bands like A Pale Horse Named Death .
Reciprocate
It’s all about give and take. You need to keep a score of who retweets you, how often they retweet you, who has mentioned you positively and who has recommended you. You should reciprocate in exactly the same manner, in exactly the same proportion. If you don’t reciprocate proportionately, you’re out of their favor. Maintain give and take relationships on Twitter. That’s what it’s all about! — Don’t go crazy, you don’t need to literally calculate the proportion of how many mentions and retweets you get, but Twitter IS about conversation, and that is a two way street. Engaging, retweeting, and mentioning people in roughly a similar proportion to how they mention and retweet you isn’t a bad idea!
Hashtags
Hashtags are very important, but it’s important not to overdo it too. Using one or two in a tweet where they are relevant is great; however, you don’t need to fit them into every single post and risk appearing like a bot to your followers. — Hashtags are great, use them!
Share Wisdom
Whenever you attend a social media conference, tweet about it in real-time, with the appropriate hashtag for that conference. You should be imparting all the wisdom you’re getting to your followers, shows how unselfishly you share insight. — This is actually a good idea, if you tweet about a conference (not just for social media, but any industry) imparting what you have learned, and using the appropriate hashtag, you are sharing knowledge and providing valuable content to your followers. These tweets also provide you with plenty of content to write a blog post recapping the event.
Use Old-Style Retweets
Never use native style retweets. They’re impotent because of a number of reasons. If you natively retweet someone, someone else can do an old-style retweet without attributing you, for example. Also, it is very important for the person you retweeted to know how many retweets that person received because of your retweet. Get it? Once in a while, keep talking about why you prefer old style RTs, because they ‘get more engagement’. — There is a lot of debate about this, but I actually prefer old-style retweets. I like them to show up in my mention stream, and there are many other people who prefer that too. Do what you feel comfortable with. If this is confusing for you, check out this poll posted by Mashable on the difference between new-style retweets and old-style retweets, the comments are very good.
These are just a few habits that will help you on your way to becoming an influential expert in your field on Twitter. Maybe some of this is overwhelming, but even implementing a couple of these tactics may actually improve your online reputation! At the very least, it will improve your engagement on Twitter and get you closer to achieving your goals. Happy Tweeting!
This post is adapted from Mahendra Palsule’s post on Top 10 Best Practices of Social Media Experts on Twitter
