Some Basic Questions About Twitter

Twitter is an extremely powerful tool that you should try to harness the power of. It’s a great way to get some quick traffic and potential customers to your website. However, some people may have some basic questions about the service, but they are too shy to ask them. Therefore, I am going to try to answer some basic Twitter questions.

• Do I Have The Ability to Change My Twitter Username?

Even though most services do not offer this ability, Twitter does! Just go to the Account tap on Twitter and you will see a field that enables you to change your username.

• Should I Follow People Back That Follow Me?

Simply put, no you do not have to follow anyone that you do not want to. However, if you follow people back, the more gracious they will be. You shouldn’t follow everyone that follows you, but if they post useful or interesting information that you are interested in, consider following them back.

• What Are #hashtags?

Basically, #hashtags is a way to organize tweets that makes them easier to filter whenever someone is searching for something specific. Therefore, I would highly suggest using it, so your tweets are more visible.

• How Do I Use an @Reply?

An @reply is basically a public message that is sent to someone else on Twitter. If you want to send a public message to someone, simply put their username after the @ symbol somewhere in your tweet. For instance: “@ColorMeSocial great information! Really helpful!!” Your message will be sent to the user ColorMeSocial where everyone else can see.

If you know of anymore basic Twitter questions and you have the answers to them, please list them below in our comments section. Remember, it’s a great feeling to help others out.

Tips to Help Optimize Your Twitter for Search Engines

Back in the day, everyone knew that social media networks such as FaceBook and Twitter both had nofollow attributes associated with outgoing links. Therefore, you would not gain any search engine authority whenever you posted your link on Twitter or FaceBook. However, the game has changed since then, and actually back in December of last year, Google said in an interview that tweeted links are a signal for search engines organic and news rankings. So, don’t ever be afraid of posting your link up on Twitter now. It definitely helps!

Whenever you post on Twitter, you should always try to get some use out of your keywords in the tweet. However, with 140 characters this can become a bit of a challenge. To make matters worse, but this definitely helps, is that you want your tweets to be able to be retweeted without the person retweeting having to delete some of your message. You never know, they could end up having to erase your keywords from the tweet. Therefore, whenever you tweet, try to give a little bit of legroom. Instead of taking advantage of the full 140 chars, try to limit yourself to around 120 characters. That way, you can take full advantage of retweets and your keywords will still be intact.

Whenever you make a Twitter account your username does have an influence on SEO. Never have a username that has numbers in it, because a lot of the spam bots on Twitter have numbers in their username. Whenever search engines such as Google comes across links posted by people with numbers in their username they disregard them, because they cannot differentiate whom is truly a spammer, and who is not. Therefore, leave numbers out of your Twitter name.

If you have any other search engine advice for social media outlets, please post below and let us know.

Some Simple Tips That Will Help You Optimize Your Twitter Account

If you have a Twitter account it is most likely because you want to market your business on Twitter. That’s completely understandable because it’s a great way to gain traffic and potential customers. However, Twitter has personal branding options that you just can’t simply leave it. If you want to increase your effectiveness on Twitter I am going to give you some simple steps on how to accomplish this.

Take advantage of using a custom background on Twitter. This is one of the first components of your Twitter account that you can optimize and I would highly suggest doing it. You will have the option of being able to upload your own custom background, or you can choose from a list of default backgrounds on Twitter. You should never use the default option. Using a custom background on Twitter will make your page more unique, and stand out amongst the other millions of Twitter pages.

Your account picture is another thing that you can completely customize on Twitter, and you should never leave this out. Having the default avatar of an egg will not help your Twitter marketing campaign. You should consider uploading your business logo, or something that pertains to your business.

Also, do not ever forget about your Twitter bio. This is another thing that will set you apart from everyone else. Give people information about your company or your brand, but do not make it too long, or boring. Of course, link to your website in your bio where users can find out more information about yourself, or your company.

If you have any other Twitter tips please leave them in the comments section located below this post. We love reading what our readers have to say.

Step-by-Step Guide on How to Use Twitter For Marketing and PR Purposes

1. 

   Image courtesy of Jerry Slifwer via Flikr

   Go to Twitter and create an account. You can do this by going to www.Twitter.com and clicking on the “Get Started – Join” link at the top of the page. The sign-up process s is fairly simple, so you should not have a problem getting started at all.

2. Start posting some updates. The great thing about Twitter is the fact that you are limited to only 140 characters, which equalizes the playing field, especially if you are not a very good writer. Almost anyone can be a great writer when they are limited to only 140 characters, so get to posting links to news articles, talk about an interesting idea you had, talk about what you are cooking for dinner, etc… Just keep your Twitter account updated consistently.
3. Start making some friends on Twitter. Making friends on Twitter is extremely simple. When you find someone that you are interested in, all you have to do is click on the “Follow” button, and you will be graced with their updates from there-on. Most commonly, the person you decide to follow will also follow you back. After that, begin interacting with them.
4. Posting URLs Properly. This is one thing you will have to get good at, because if your URL is extremely long, it will not leave you much room to write anything because of the 140 character limit. Therefore, when posting a URL you should use a URL shortening service such as TinyURL.
5. Chat with other Twitter users. If you want to have a successful following on Twitter, you should mention other people in your posts, and reply to direct messages whenever you receive them. Interacting with your followers will definitely make you a success on Twitter.

 

If you have any other Twitter tips for marketing and PR purposes please leave a comment below this post and let us know. We would love to hear your input on the subject.

Should You Buy Twitter Followers?

This is one thing that I get asked quite often, so I am going to touch on it today. So, is it really worth it to spend money on Twitter followers? Quite frankly; no, it is not. First of all, if you are going to market on Twitter, you want to have targeted followers, which will in turn mean targeted traffic for your website. If you buy Twitter followers, who knows where they are coming from? They may not be interested in your niche what so ever, and that means that you have just wasted money.

Buying Twitter followers will rarely work in your favor, because they convert so horribly. Not only that, but how do you know that they are even real human accounts? Some of these people that offer Twitter following services may have fake accounts set up, and then just have those fake accounts follow your account. In other words, you just got ripped off, and there is nothing that you can really do about it. Also, if they are a real human account who is saying that they will stick to following you? They may only follow your for a brief period of time, and then drop you.

Another thing you have to think about is your current list of followers. If they see that your Twitter account has suddenly blew up, they may be thinking that you are using shady techniques in order to get more followers, and then unfollow you. They do not want to be a follower of someone that could be potentially nothing more than just another spam bot.

If you have ever purchased Twitter followers, please leave a comment and let us know how it worked for you. Did you get the results you were actually hoping for, or did you feel cheated out of your money?

Next Page »