To tweet or not to tweet?

Now that you have mastered the art of embedded tweets, here are six basic strategies to follow:

1.  Mention often

By using the @ symbol before the twitter name, you are mentioning an individual or company in your tweet. Include mentions often when you link to someone’s content or attempt to spark a conversation.

Bonus: You can easily tweet-back to your tweetheart this way, should the need arise.

2.  Use those hashtags (these are not your average number signs)

This will allow you to go beyond your own following. When you add a hashtag to a tweet, your updates will be seen by anyone who is following that particular hashtag, not only your twitter followers.

Twitter describes hashtags as “themes” for your tweets. Now your tweet will be searched by other users who are interested in the same topic, as well as linked to all other tweets containing the same hashtag.

Think of it – your tweet could be seen by millions of twitter users!

The twitterverse wants your links and pics

3.  Include links

Tweets that have links have a higher retweet value. Be sure that your links work – test them to ensure they are not broken. Extend the valuable content of your tweet with links to industry support, experts’ advice, and professionals’ feedback.

4.  Use pictures

They’re worth a thousand words, which you can certainly use when your tweet limit is 140 characters. With a twitter image sharing service such as Twitpic, you can easily support your image attachments. (Twitter doesn’t yet have a built-in method.)

Check out what some Twitpic users are up to, such as @Astro_Clay, U.S. astronaut and adventuritter, and see the world tweeted from afar. Or help your readers stay abreast of the summer Olympic games via those who have front row street-seats:

Just leapt out of our seats to watch the torch go past down the road. #southwark twitter.com/TheWriter/stat…

— The Writer (@TheWriter) July 26, 2012

5.  Get the timing right

The early-bird tweeter gets the worm every time, so tweet during the day, between the hours of 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.

Speaking of timing, watch how the Olympian contestants tend to split the second:

This is so fun. Races across time! RT@slateHow badly would Usain Bolt destroy the best sprinter of 1896? WATCH: slate.me/MI9ZGy

— Caragh M. O’Brien (@CaraghMOBrien) July 26, 2012

6.  Track your progress

Fine-tune your tweeting strategy through a free service like Hootsuite. You can also get the free app through iTunes, making managing and measuring your social media updates even simpler. If you think the Twitter bird is cute, wait until you check out Hootsuite’s owl.

Stay in tweet-touch

Under no circumstances, however, should you be Twegosearching. Definitely not all day, every day, every five minutes…

Finally, be web-savvy and follow Twitter Tip Tuesday to further your twittastic abilities.

 
Flickr photo credit: Mrsdkrebs