How Are You Using Twitter?

By Amanda Smyth ConnorTweeter

Twitter, in my humble opinion, is one of the greatest inventions to come about in the last century. I believe it falls right after “Facebook” and right before “platform heels” in terms of the greatest influences in my day-to-day life. Not only have I focused on using Twitter to info-share, but I use Twitter as the world’s greatest free marketing tool.

How are you using Twitter? Are you interacting or are you just “selling yourself?”

If you are simply posting links to your blog posts, you’re missing out on all of the great opportunities to get new followers by interacting with great Twitter posts. You SHOULD be retweeting great tweets, Tweeting @ people and letting them know what you thought of their posts and interacting with Twitter-ers on a deeper and more meaningful level. Twitter superficiality won’t get you any more recognition or followers.

Yes, you should be posting links to all of your blog posts and articles, but make sure your Tweets are engaging and interesting. Do not Tweet “New blog post! Please read it! [link to blog post.]” That’s the surefire way to lose followers.

HINT: Pay attention to some of the fun hashtags that pop up. #FF = Follow Friday. This is a day when people recap and give a shoutout to their new followers for that week which, in turn, encourages others to follow you. In order to participate, just end your shoutout tweet with #FF. Fun times with socialization.

Amanda Smyth Connor is a social media manager for a major publishing company, owns her own wedding planning business, and has managed online communities and content development for many start-up and Fortune 500 companies.  She has been a professional editor for more years than she can remember.