12 Things I Learned About Twitter

12 Things I Learned About Twitter Created By: Chris Hamilton www.SalesTipADay.com Excerpt From: Social Boom! By Jeffery Gitomer

This is an section that I wrote for Jeffery Gitomer’s bestseller “SocialBoom”.I hope you enjoy it.Chris Hamiltonwww.SalesTipADay.com The 12 Things I Have Learned About TwitterI have been using Twitter for less than a year. I didnt understand thepoint of Twitter at first, but now I understand its power andimportance.I use Twitter every day to promote my daily blog posts and otherevents or items that I think people may find interesting. As withanything that you do, you are always learning new and innovativeways to use the service. As such, here are 12 things that I havelearned from using Twitter.The 12 Things I Have Learned About Using Twitter (in no particularorder):1. You have to be on Twitter on a regular basis - If you are going touse Twitter, make sure that you are using it every day or everycouple of days. You have to basically make a commitment to yourselfto make sure that you will use Twitter every day or every other dayin order to see the results of your efforts.2. Twitter can be a great source of traffic to your website or blog - Iuse Twitter 3 to 4 times a day to promote my daily blog posts.According to my traffic report, Twitter is my 3rd best source of trafficto my site behind Google and direct traffic. Typically it representsbetween 12% and 15% of all traffic to my site.

3. You have to respond to people who contact you - If someonereaches out to you on Twitter, make sure that you respond to them.There are a couple of ways that people can contact you. The ﬁrst wayis using the "@" symbol with your user name and the other way isthrough a "DM" of Direct Message". Also, if someone re-Tweets one ofyour messages, make sure that you show them that you appreciate itand send them a thank you message to show that you noticed the re-Tweet.4. Twitter is a great way to share information about stuff youwant to share - I use Twitter to inform people about my newsletter,any webinars that I have going on, any events that I am putting on.5. You have to get your message across in as few words as possible- Since you have only 140 characters to get your point across, youreally have to think about the message that you want to produce.Make sure that your message is hard hitting and to the point.6. Leave at least 20 characters left in your post so it can be re-Tweeted without shortening your message - One cool thing aboutTwitter is that it is full of like minded people who may want to shareyour message with their followers. In this case, they can re-Tweetyour message. Basically, they take the message that you wrote andshare it with their followers. In order to make sure that your originalmessage is intact, leave at least 20 characters so that the messagecan be re-Tweeted. The reason for this is that the beginning of a re-Tweet starts with "RT @username" and is usually about 20 characterslong. If your message is too long to be re-Tweeted, then it probablywont be re-Tweeted.7. Use the # or hashtags to get found easier - The # symbol is knownas a hashtag. This is how people categorize their Tweets by subjectsand it is a great way to search for particular subjects. Go to thesearch box on Twitter and type in #marketing and see the resultsthat come back.

8. Tweets have a very short lifespan - Because there are a lot ofpeople Tweeting all the time, your message becomes 1 in millions perday. If you feel that you arent being heard, dont worry, people willhear you, just write some thought provoking or catchy Tweets andthey will come.9. Its a great way to find information or look for opportunities - Iuse Twitter to find opportunities for work or to find information that Imight find interested. The search box in Twitter is a great way to findinformation. For example, lets say you are looking for a sales role inyour area, you could type in "job, sales, your city" and see the results.Its amazing how much information people put on Twitter.10. Use Hootesuite or some sort of service to schedule your Tweets- Since I work all day, I cant be on Twitter all the time. I also need toput out 3 to 4 Tweets on blog post each day. The solution for this is touse a service like Hootesuite to schedule your Tweets. These servicesallow you to schedule your Tweets at different times and any day thatyou want.11. If you want your message to be heard, I find the best time to Tweetis between 9 AM and 3 PM Eastern Standard Time.12. My Twitter followers are great - I have met a lot of great peopleon Twitter. This is how I met Jeffery. My followers engage me inconversations, ask me questions, tell me stuff thats going on in theirworld, help me out when I need it and give me support. Even though Ihave over 12,000 followers between 2 Twitter account, I appreciateevery single one of them.

Here is how I promote my daily blog posts on Twitter:1. Write 3 to 4 overviews that are up to 120 characters long - Eachoverview has to have enough info to make someone want to click onthe link. I use a word document to write my thoughts down and thenI make sure that they are going to fit within the 140 characters limit.2. Use a URL shortener to reduce the URL or web site address size -Twitter has a limit of 140 characters. You need as many charactersas possible to get your point across. If you have a web address that is110 characters long then you only have 30 characters to get yourpoint across. A URL shortener will take the long URLs and shortenthem to 20 Character or so. Bit.ly is the service that I use, but if youwant to find one that fits for what you need, search "url shortener"online. Copy the URL (web address) for your blog post from theaddress bar of your web browser and paste it into the shortener boxin bit.ly. Click shorten and you have not created a shorter URL thatwill open up on your specified web page. A great benefit that bit.ly hasis instant analytics. You can see such information as; how manypeople have clicked on your link, where it came from, how many re-Tweets there have been and more.3. Combine each overview with the shortened URL4. Use Hootesuite to schedule your posts throughout the day - Takethe combined overview and the shortened URL that you created in #3and schedule them in Hootesuite. Make sure that you schedule yourTweets between 9 AM and 3 PM EST for maximum exposure.Rinse and repeat every time you have new content that you want toshare with the world.

Bio:Chris Hamilton has had a 25 year career in sales and marketing withdifferent companies ranging from startups to some of the top Fortune500 companies. Chris writes a daily blog, Sales Tip A Day found atwww.SalesTipADay.com, which helps salespeople, entrepreneurs andsmall and medium sized business with sales and marketing tips.Chris also runs a sales and marketing consultancy ﬁrm that helpsindividuals and companies achieve sales and marketing successthrough proven online and real world processes.2 Twitter Tools I Use:Here are 2 Twitter tools I use to schedule regular tweets, auto followpeople who follow me and manage several Twitter Account. Each toolhelps me save hours each month while growing my Twitter base.SocialOomphI use SocialOomph to automate my recurring Tweets. I was spendingupwards of 4 hours per month just scheduling out regular tweets. Ipurchased the professional version of SocialOomph and I now havepretty much created a “Set it and Forget it” approach.The professional version is $29.97 per month and well worth it to gettime back.Please use my afﬁliate link to purchase SocialOomph:http://www.socialoomph.com/95747.html

TweetAdderTweetAdder will do so much, but the one thing that I really like aboutit is that it allows you to auto add and auto-remove people on Twitter.This will basically put your Twitter adding process on automate.You will grow a Twitter following in no time.Please use my affiliate link to purchase TweetAdder:http://www.tweetadder.com/idevaffiliate/idevaffiliate.php?id=13461

12 Things I Learned About Twitter

by Chris Hamilton on Nov 07, 2011

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