Perfecting the Tweet

Twitter is taking over the social media world, so it’s no wonder why they call it the “Twitterverse”. According to Twopchart, Twitter gains 11 new accounts per second, on average. So why is it so popular? A few reasons: it is simple and easy to use, and ranks first for visibility. Many people gain up to 26% of new traffic because of Twitter.

Here is how you can use Twitter to your full advantage:

1. Keep it you. Just because you’re tweeting for a brand name doesn’t mean you can’t give it personality. Let yours shine through every once in a while. There’s nothing worse than Twitter accounts who drone out business tweet after business tweet. Hello! We know a machine isn’t tweeting for you, give us something funny every once in a while. Humor is important in the work place. It gives us a break and keeps us going throughout the workday. It doesn’t even have to be funny. Even a neat fact about a product you sell is better than another robotic tweet. Of course, like all things in life, you must let your personality shine in moderation. If we’re following a brand name, we’re mainly following it to read more about the brand.
2. Put some SEO up in your profile! Your account name should be your SEO title. Coca Cola’s Twitter name isn’t “delicious soda pop” because that won’t give Coca Cola the attention it needs. Save the “delicious soda pop” for the description, where you will be entering a brief paragraph full of helpful and important keywords about your brand.  Lastly, name your profile image your brand name. So instead of uploading the file twitterpic.jpg as your profile picture, upload MyBrandName.jpg. Of course you’ll enter yours instead! This way, Twitter will automatically pull your file name and use it as the alt tag for your image. When you hover your mouse over your profile picture, you’re showing your brand name in one more area.
3. Tweet with order. Just like a book, your tweets need a beginning, middle and end. Start with a headline or phrase, then follow up with a link and end with a hashtag.
4. Get to know your hashtags. These are a great way to track tweets, but also perfect to make yourself appear with the keywords you want to be associated with. For instance, if you were selling lipstick, you would tweet “Fresh Lemonade by #Revlon is brand new flavored #lipstick sure to refresh on a hot summer day”. Here, you are tagging your brand name and the new product you’re advertising so if anyone were to search #lipstick or #revlon, your tweet will show up in the search results. Hashtags are another thing to use in moderation. Limit your tweets to three hastags max and rearrange your wording to have them become a part of the tweet, not the start of a tweet. Also, look for words that travel quickly in the Twittersphere. If #flavored is more popular than #lipstick in the Twitter search results, go ahead and hash out flavored.
5. Know your RT. Retweeting is just what it sounds like, re-tweeting someone else’s post. The good thing about Twitter, though, is their special “retweet” link on each post. Just click it and it will be posted on your profile. There are a few different ways you should retweet things. Directly RT posts that are highly influential. Copy and paste the tweet and follow the steps from item three above, ending with RT @whoever you are “retweeting”, plus your comment, if you have one. You can also retweet with a response instead of the actual tweet, just mention the person you are responding to with the @ sign.  This will allow that user to see your response, as it’s directed to them. Finally, only RT things you want your brand to be associated with. If you’re selling vegan baked goods, you don’t want to be seen RT’ing a post about the hip new BBQ joint.

So with this basic outline of posting the “perfect tweets,” Rock Candy Media would like to introduce a jazzy new widget on our website homepage. With this hashtag widget, we will have specific hashtags set up to automatically become a part of your tweet. See that we’re having a promotion going on? Check out our #box and you’ll see the tag specifically set for that promotion. It’s just another way RCM is stepping up the game to be the company for you.