TweetDeck Tips and Tricks To Master All Things Twitter. 5/29/14 10:35AM. One of our favorite Twitter clients is so good that Twitter itself bought it in 2011.
If you're not using Twitter to connect with customers and market your startup then perhaps you should reconsider.
In social media, Twitter is a force to be reckoned with. While lacking the massive scale of Facebook, the popular microblogging platform that went public last fall is making noticable strides in users and profits.
2 days ago Company Distilling will first open a 4,000-square-foot (3,712-square-meter) tasting room and restaurant in Townsend, Tennessee. Jeff Arnett, the master distiller at the Jack Daniel Distillery in. Twitter India on Friday released a special emoji for Vijay's upcoming film Master.Minutes after the announcement, 'Master Film', 'Master Pongal, 'Vijay the Master' started trending with over 200,000 tweets. Twitter’s rich search functionality is one of its best features. Sadly, it is also one of its least understood and least used features. However, with a little practice and a few tricks, anyone can turn Twitter search into a powerful tool for finding the real-time thoughts of humanity.
As part of its earnings statement yesterday, Twitter said its number of monthly average users grew to 271 million -- up 24 percent year-over-year. (That, coupled with a 129 percent increase in revenue, drove Twitter's stock up about 30 percent in after-hours trading.)
With so many people actively using Twitter, adding it to your online marketing arsenal might be a wise idea. And if you're going to be on Twitter, you better know how to use it right.
With that in mind, here are 10 tips for mastering the art of Twitter marketing:
1. Don't just tweet headlines and links.
Yes, we're all strapped for time. And, yes, tweeting a headline and a link is easy. But first consider: Is that a message you'd want to engage with? Probably not.
Mix it up. Tweet quotes, questions or snippets of interesting details or numbers -- anything your followers would want to click on and interact with.
Also, don't only tweet marketing messages about your company. Inject some life into your tweets. Is something special or out-of-the-ordinary happening at your office today? Tweet a photo of it. Come across a helpful article? Tweet that, too.
Read more: So, You Got Yourself a Twitter Handle. Now What?
2. Understand how to use the @ symbol.
This is a big one on Twitter. Where you place the @ symbol can make a big difference in the meaning and delivery of your tweet.
The @ symbol notes the beginning of a user's Twitter handle. For instance, mine is @jwfell. You'll use this whenever you want to mention someone and call their attention to your tweet.
However, if you hit the Reply button or simply start a tweet using someone's handle, only people who follow you and follow that person will see your tweet in their feeds. In order for everyone you follow and everyone else who also follows that person, start your tweet with another symbol.
For instance, here's a tweet I sent in reply to a tweet from @qz. Only people who follow me and Quartz could see it:
@qz based on one survey of 666 people and another of 500 people? feels like big conclusions from a small sample, no?
— Jason Fell (@jwfell) July 28, 2014For this tweet, I wanted all parties and their followers to see the message, so I started the tweet with a period:
.@RaysBaseball players *really* need to man up & stop the whining about @davidortiz. is almost as embarassing as the @RedSox's season.
— Jason Fell (@jwfell) July 29, 2014Read more: The 5 Common Mistakes Entrepreneurs Are Still Making on Twitter
3. Also know (and love) thy hashtag.
Using the hashtag symbol can be a fun and useful way to start and track conversations on Twitter. The idea isn't to hashtag just any string of words but to use meaningful hashtags that are related to the conversation and that people might search for. Sometimes conversations using hashtags become so popular they begin trending, meaning lots of people are using it.
Be smart about the hashtags you use. Sometimes hashtags for positive marketing purposes get 'hijacked' and used negatively against the company that started it. Some recent examples of hijacked hashtags include some from McDonald's, JPMorgan Chase and the New York City Police Department.
Read more: 3 Ways to Master the Hashtag
4. Remember, quality not quantity.
Yes, you want to tweet regularly to keep your followers engaged and coming back for more. But you don't want to tweet all the time simply for the sake of tweeting. Filling someone's feed with low-quality content can make them unfollow you.
Your purpose on Twitter should be similar to the purpose of being in business: to add value to people's lives. Make sure what you're tweeting is informative, interesting and helpful.
Read more: So, You Got Yourself a Twitter Handle. Now What?
5. Be patient.
Unless you're a celebirty or other well-known figure, your brand probably won't come with a built-in following. And don't bank on your first tweet going viral. Building a sizable following from scratch takes time.
Start retweeting, replying to and favoriting other people's tweets. And, of course, remember to tweet content that's valuable.
Read more: 4 Ways to Fall in Love With Twitter Again
6. Be engaged.
Patience is a virtue. And being active is important. So is being engaged.
Pay attention to what other people are tweeting and to the people who retweet and reply to your own tweets. Retweet. Return those favors. Respond when people ask you questions. Start networking.
This is one important way to grow your Twitter following fast.
Read more: How I Went From Zero to 380,000 Twitter Followers Without Spending a Dime
7. Avoid the dead zone.
So, you're tweeting high-quality content, you're engaged and engaging -- but what if you're doing all this when your followers aren't actually on Twitter? Just like any other social platform, you want to be where your followers are and when they're there.
People tend to be off of Twitter between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. local time. (For reference, people tend to check Facebook until about midnight before unplugging for the day.) The 'sweet spot' for tweeting is said to be between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m.
Read more: Avoid These Social Media Dead Zones
8. Get smart and monitor Twitter's data.
You want to monitor your efforts and levels of success on Twitter. While a lot of people get caught up stressing about follower numbers and how many times they're retweeted, you can use Twitter to track sentiment about your brand. You want to know who's talking about your brand, what they're saying and areas where you can improve.
Soccer Master Twitter
You can also track how many people clicked on your post, where they clicked from and if they made a purchase on your page.
Read more: 3 Ways to Use Your Twitter Data to Beat the Competition
9. Get creative with picture and video.
Words and links are great. But don't forget to engage your followers with fun and informative pictures and videos.
Twitter's Vine allows you to create short, six-second videos and share them on Twitter. (Yes, they're that short.) You can leverage Vine for contests, to highlight new products or tell fun stories.
Read more: Lessons in Leveraging Vine From 5 Successful Brands
Master Twitter
10. If you can't beat 'em, mute 'em.
Sometimes even the people you enjoy following most on Twitter can get annoying. Maybe someone is on an epic rant about politics. Perhaps the person is live-tweeting an event that you don't care about. You don't neccessarily want to unfollow the person to follow them again later on. What to do?
Mute them. Earlier this summer, Twitter rolled out a mute button that allows you to stop someone's tweets from showing up in your timeline until you un-mute him or her. Pretty simple. Pretty convenient.
Read more: It's Official: You Can Now Mute Loud Mouths on Twitter
What do a retweet of a billion-dollar presidential golf swing hitting a hole-in-one into the back of a former presidential Democrat candidate, the new name poetically given to a crazed lunatic who has a fetish for shooting off misguided rockets, and a March 4th claim of “wiretapping” in Trump Tower that took seven months to be proven true, all have in common? President Donald J. Trump‘s magnificent way of communicating to the American people and the world instantaneously -- tweeting.
What Twitter is for President Trump in 2017, Facebook was for former President Obama in 2008.
Master Twitter Emoji
There has been much said about President Trump's Twitter activity and the content thereof, and the discussions have centered on whether tweeting is fittingly 'presidential'. As to that, I ask 'may I see the Presidential Behavior Manual?” Should he hire someone to tweet for him? Or do we suggest the extreme of taking away the President's First Amendment constitutional right to freedom of speech, i.e., banning him from Twitter altogether? Even as you read this, the media, particularly the Left, is having panel discussions and town hall meetings about the President telling the American people the truth about events in his own characteristic form of expression -- blunt, direct, and to the point -- yet all of his tweets will be revealed as truth when the smoke clears.
Folks, it's a brave new world and there are some who just don't want to embrace it.
But let's do some compare and contrast, shall we?
Back in 2008, a skinny no-name dude came out of nowhere and captured the attention of the American people. That skinny dude was Barack Hussein Obama. And how did he captivate the country, particularly millennials? Through social media -- specifically Facebook.
The Republicans and their candidate, John McCain, were completely caught off guard and could not match Obama's pace on social media. By the time they realized what hit them, Obama had already won the election and Republicans were fuming, thinking that he and the Democrats had played dirty tricks when in reality their failure to reach the American people was due to their own lack of innovation, among other things. In realizing the success and power of social media and how great it was as a propaganda tool, Obama completely prostituted Mark Zuckerberg's creation.
Literally spreading lies and propaganda through social media, Obama was able to mesmerize and confuse millennials and others who believed that he was hip and in tune with the American people and leading them to greener pastures. From ObamaCare, to the Iran deal, to trivial things like what he was feeding his dog, social media became a huge part of Barack Obama's newspeak to America and the world. Think back to when the Supreme Court ruled on gay marriages - the White House Facebook page had an avatar photo of the White House in the rainbow gay colors... how's that for a Newspeak?! Yet nobody questioned or challenged his access or content.
Now fast forward to 2016. When the presidential election was heating up, Donald J. Trump used Twitter as his bullhorn. Free access, free rein, and rapid-fire comments that shocked the world and the Democrat party as well as some Republicans. Just as Obama was ahead of McCain in 2008 with Facebook, Trump outpaced Obama and Hillary when it came to Twitter. Twitter was the one social media network that Obama had never used. And when Obama tried to catch up with Twitter, he ended up making himself look like a fool. Does anyone remember when he was on the 'Jimmy Kimmel Live' late-night show and he was answering a tweet from then candidate Donald Trump? Trump tweeted that 'President Obama will go down as perhaps the worst President in American history'. And Obama replied unwittingly and arrogantly with 'at least I will go down as a president'. Little did he know Trump would soon succeed him. Karma is (t)weet!
But the platform for communication aside, what of the content of the communiqués? Simply put, while 9 times out of 10 the propaganda that Obama posted on social media was complete and utter lies, thus far 100% of the information that President Trump has placed on Twitter has been truthful and accurate.
And therein lies the problem.
It's not a problem for the media and the Democrats that President Donald Trump is using Twitter. The problem is that he's using Twitter without going through the media. The media has always been the newspeak propaganda machine for the Democrats, and the media has always been at the forefront of disseminating that information. Yet now America has a President who doesn't need the media nor cares for the media, so he uses a brilliant medium to speak directly to each and every individual connected to the internet across America and the world. President Donald Trump is a 71-year-old businessman whose personality is solidified, so the way he communicates on social media is going to reflect that personality -- blunt, sharp, to the point -- and you're not going to change that in a 71-year-old man. The best thing to do for those in America and around the world who don't like it is to just accept it for the next 7+ years. Because believe you me, he's going to win reelection -- and he'll tweet about that too!
#enoughsaid
What do a retweet of a billion-dollar presidential golf swing hitting a hole-in-one into the back of a former presidential Democrat candidate, the new name poetically given to a crazed lunatic who has a fetish for shooting off misguided rockets, and a March 4th claim of “wiretapping” in Trump Tower that took seven months to be proven true, all have in common? President Donald J. Trump‘s magnificent way of communicating to the American people and the world instantaneously -- tweeting.
What Twitter is for President Trump in 2017, Facebook was for former President Obama in 2008.
There has been much said about President Trump's Twitter activity and the content thereof, and the discussions have centered on whether tweeting is fittingly 'presidential'. As to that, I ask 'may I see the Presidential Behavior Manual?” Should he hire someone to tweet for him? Or do we suggest the extreme of taking away the President's First Amendment constitutional right to freedom of speech, i.e., banning him from Twitter altogether? Even as you read this, the media, particularly the Left, is having panel discussions and town hall meetings about the President telling the American people the truth about events in his own characteristic form of expression -- blunt, direct, and to the point -- yet all of his tweets will be revealed as truth when the smoke clears.
Folks, it's a brave new world and there are some who just don't want to embrace it.
But let's do some compare and contrast, shall we?
Back in 2008, a skinny no-name dude came out of nowhere and captured the attention of the American people. That skinny dude was Barack Hussein Obama. And how did he captivate the country, particularly millennials? Through social media -- specifically Facebook.
The Republicans and their candidate, John McCain, were completely caught off guard and could not match Obama's pace on social media. By the time they realized what hit them, Obama had already won the election and Republicans were fuming, thinking that he and the Democrats had played dirty tricks when in reality their failure to reach the American people was due to their own lack of innovation, among other things. In realizing the success and power of social media and how great it was as a propaganda tool, Obama completely prostituted Mark Zuckerberg's creation.
Literally spreading lies and propaganda through social media, Obama was able to mesmerize and confuse millennials and others who believed that he was hip and in tune with the American people and leading them to greener pastures. From ObamaCare, to the Iran deal, to trivial things like what he was feeding his dog, social media became a huge part of Barack Obama's newspeak to America and the world. Think back to when the Supreme Court ruled on gay marriages - the White House Facebook page had an avatar photo of the White House in the rainbow gay colors... how's that for a Newspeak?! Yet nobody questioned or challenged his access or content.
Now fast forward to 2016. When the presidential election was heating up, Donald J. Trump used Twitter as his bullhorn. Free access, free rein, and rapid-fire comments that shocked the world and the Democrat party as well as some Republicans. Just as Obama was ahead of McCain in 2008 with Facebook, Trump outpaced Obama and Hillary when it came to Twitter. Twitter was the one social media network that Obama had never used. And when Obama tried to catch up with Twitter, he ended up making himself look like a fool. Does anyone remember when he was on the 'Jimmy Kimmel Live' late-night show and he was answering a tweet from then candidate Donald Trump? Trump tweeted that 'President Obama will go down as perhaps the worst President in American history'. And Obama replied unwittingly and arrogantly with 'at least I will go down as a president'. Little did he know Trump would soon succeed him. Karma is (t)weet!
But the platform for communication aside, what of the content of the communiqués? Simply put, while 9 times out of 10 the propaganda that Obama posted on social media was complete and utter lies, thus far 100% of the information that President Trump has placed on Twitter has been truthful and accurate.
And therein lies the problem.
It's not a problem for the media and the Democrats that President Donald Trump is using Twitter. The problem is that he's using Twitter without going through the media. The media has always been the newspeak propaganda machine for the Democrats, and the media has always been at the forefront of disseminating that information. Yet now America has a President who doesn't need the media nor cares for the media, so he uses a brilliant medium to speak directly to each and every individual connected to the internet across America and the world. President Donald Trump is a 71-year-old businessman whose personality is solidified, so the way he communicates on social media is going to reflect that personality -- blunt, sharp, to the point -- and you're not going to change that in a 71-year-old man. The best thing to do for those in America and around the world who don't like it is to just accept it for the next 7+ years. Because believe you me, he's going to win reelection -- and he'll tweet about that too!
#enoughsaid