Twitter was launched in 2006, it’s a unique and useful social network that employs almost 1,000 people all over the world. It has a database of 500 million registered users, generating over 340 million tweets daily and handling over 1.6 billion search queries per day. Although a tweet can be a maximum of 140 characters, the information you can share within these boundaries can be incredibly useful.
Twitter is a great microblogging service however without close attention, it can quickly become an unmanageable mess arriving 140 characters at a time.
It’s all about Following the right people, organising tweeting topics, and avoiding spammers are the keys to twitter’s usefulness.
Here’s my guide on how to get the most from using twitter:
Following the right people
If you follow 2,000 people without being followed by many in return, Twitter will not allow you to follow more accounts until you meet their ratio criteria. So although many don’t know it, Twitter has certain restrictions regarding the number of people a user can follow. This means that at least in the beginning, you need to only follow relevant profiles. If you are not interested in somebody’s updates or online life, it’s not worth to follow that person.
Following countless people will clutter your timeline and you can miss important information. Your timeline will also become confusing, showing you information not related to your interest. If you follow an account and think it is not worth your time, you can at any given point remove the profile from your following list. This will make more space on the timeline for the updates that matter to you. Be selective and only follow people you are interested in, to make sure you will get the most out of your Twitter profile.
Refine your following stream
not everyone is a good twitter user and there are services to avoid that quiet, lurking types or those who tweets too much.
manageFilter.com is a web service that analyses your followers and can show who is not following you back, who is quiet or inactive, who is too chatty, and even users with no avatar uploaded. Users can select up to 2000 if they follow the company’s Twitter account.
Write a good bio
Your bio is the first interaction on your profile that you will get judged by people when they land on your Twitter profile. Because there is a character limit as well, you should pay extra attention to what you choose to write and what you omit. If you have a Twitter profile for building a network or a brand, it is important to mention something about your key interests and profession. Make use of different words to emphasize your message.
Stating your real name and having a recent picture of you is something I recommend you to do. It brings you and your profile more credibility and, when people see your profile, this is exactly what you need to keep their interest.
Find out who’s dumped you
There are several services that let you find out who has recently unfollowed you and they may perhaps deserve the same treatment.
one ingenious service is called unfollow, by following its Twitter account (@unfollowr,) the services will send you a Twitter direct message when someone dumps you from their following.
Organise tweeps
Twitter introduced a feature called lists to the service back in 2009 and it’s a handy way of organising your favourite tweeps by topics or social circle.
to create a list, users can go to their twitter profile page, select create list, give it a name and search for people to include.
Twitter lists can be public or private, with public lists available for other users to read.
These are the tips I can offer you regarding your personal and/or company Twitter profile. Remember that more or less everything you do on social media (publicly) will be remembered by your followers, therefore paying extra attention to each update is something that will make the difference between a popular Twitter profile and an unpopular one.
Are there some tips you have for the other readers? Is there anything else I missed or you would like to share with us?