Rik Logtenberg on Sep 30, 2009

Let’s face it, most people think twitter is a gimmick. It’s easy to set up an account and easy to start posting. Sadly, most people stop there. Many of my clients post a few tweets, get a few followers and then become frustrated at the amount of time they spend composing elegant messages for a tiny audience. It just doesn’t seem worth it.

But if you persevere, Twitter can become a powerful and time-saving tool for staying connected with your friends and promoting your business.

Here then are my 10 easy steps to becoming a twitter master:

Step 1: Create multiple twitter accounts for each business in addition to your personal account

If you’re like me, you have a couple of businesses going on. I’m a consultant, a web designer, and a partner in a yoga training company (no joke). Since each company has a unique client base and who are clearly interested in different things, I set up a blog and twitter feed for each company. By creating separate twitter accounts I can focus on giving my followers things they’ll find interesting.

2. Customize your twitter accounts with unique profile photos, bios and backgrounds

Many people still find or follow twitter feeds through the twitter website. This makes your feed page a canvas for your brand. I’d recommend hiring a designer to create a custom background and profile photo. Also put some effort into writing your profile. In many ways this page is as important as your website to convey who you are and what you do.

3. Create a bit.ly account

Each tweet you post can only be 140 characters. This means you need to conserve characters whenever you can. Since many your tweets are going to be urls, that’s a good place to start trimming. bit.ly is my favourite url shortener. It can take a url like this: http://www.riklogtenberg.com/2009/09/our-new-home.html and convert it into this http://bit.ly/19jkxF. Not only does bit.ly save you space, it can track important details about who clicks on your urls and when.

Make sure you add all of your twitter accounts (and facebook and gmail too). And also install the browser bookmarklet and the bit.ly sidebar. Both tools will make it easy post tweets about pages you are visiting.

4. Install the url shortener addon for firefox

Sometimes you want a quicker way to get a short url. A url shortener addon for firefox is the way to go. You can get my favourite one here. Make sure to enter your bit.ly account information into the account settings.

5. Download Tweetdeck or Tweety

These programs make it easy to follow and post to multiple twitter accounts. Tweetdeck also lets you post status updates to your facebook account. The real advantage to these programs is how they keep track of everything that’s going on, including your mentions (any tweets that mention you), topics (those terms marked with # at the front), and direct messages (a direct message to me would begin with @hubrik for example).  If you have an iPhone or blackberry make sure you get the app for that too. You’ll be able to post photos, location info and more to your tweets while you’re on the road.

6. Search for people to follow

Use the Twitter search to find people you know or people who are writing about things that interest you. There’s a good chance that following someone will encourage them to follow you back.

7. Direct message, reply and retweet

If you want to talk to someone directly, try Direct messaging them with the Direct message button in your twitter program (or put a D and their username at the beginning of your tweet. ex. D hubrik). If you want to reply to someone else’s tweet, use the Reply button (or put an @ in front of their username, ex. @hubrik). While Direct Messaging is private, Replying is public. It’s kind of like talk really loud at a cocktail party.  Retweeting is simply reposting someone else’s tweet. Your twitter program will have a button to do this or type RT @[username]: and the message.

8. Mark your tweets with a topic

The unofficial technique for labeling a tweet is to put a hash mark (#) in front of the topic word. So for example, if I posted a tweet about climbing I would end it with ”#climbing” (minus the quotation marks). This allows people to find my tweets (and therefore me) much more easily.

9. Sign up for Twitter Directories

Mr. Tweet recommends people it thinks you will find interesting and recommends you to other people. Recommendations are based on your profile and the topic of your tweets. Mr. Twitter also has a direct recommendation service that allows you to post about people you are following. This is a great tool for building goodwill and to get recommended yourself.

Twellow bills itself as the Yellowpages for Twitter. Register to set up a profile and then add your profile to up to 10 categories.

10. Add a link to your twitter feeds to everything

Put links to your twitter accounts in every profile signature that you’ve got—email, forum accounts, social network accounts, newsletters, website footers, business cards, posters,.. everything! Here’s what my email signature looks like (I use the Blank Canvas Addon for Firefox to create the html signature for gmail):