Twitter became a publicly traded company on November 7 and saw the price of its shares climb 73% on the first day of trading. It was the second-largest Internet IPO ever by an American company, trailing only Facebook.
The microblogging service now has more than 600 million registered users (adding 135,000 each day), with more than 100 million active every month. There are 9,100 tweets posted per second; one billion tweets every five days.
Does anyone still think Twitter is for the birds?
With all that activity, it’s imperative that marketers and PR professionals use the platform effectively as part of an overall web presence optimization strategy. What are the best ways to drive website or blog traffic with Twitter? To grow your company’s Twitter following? To generate more engagement and retweets? Utilize Twitter advertising? Get the most out of Twitter search?
Find the answers to those questions and many more here in more than two dozen of the best Twitter guides, tips and helpful infographics of the past year.
Twitter Guides and Tips
10 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your B2B Website with Twitter Influencers by Social Media B2B
Noting that “Influence marketing is getting your industry social influencers to share your content to their Twitter followers (and) 92% of us trust peer recommendations for product choices and brand preferences,” Krista Bunskoek presents 10 ideas for getting the attention of influential Twitterers, from using RTs, @ mentions and favorites to writing about influencers on your blog (hmm, kind of like in this post).
#TwitterTips: 5 steps for a successful 140-character conversation on Twitter by MarketingSherpa
Rachel Katz offers “five tips you can use to create engaging conversations on Twitter,” from having a purpose (“It’s good practice to begin with a purpose for each piece of content shared on social media platforms. Because Twitter is limited by so few characters, this especially holds true. Every tweet should have a purpose”) to having fun.
8 Places You’re Guaranteed to Find Great Content to Tweet by HubSpot
Shannon Johnson presents an excellent collection of resources to help curate content for Twitter (or other uses), ranging from Feedly (which lets you follow pretty much anything—blogs, #topics, vimdeo and YouTube channels, tumblrs, comics, recipes, news sites, podcasts, magazines and more) to StumbleUpon. A worthy compilation, though it’s hard to believe Scoop.it didn’t make the list.
A Simple Tip to Get a Huge Increase in Engagement on Twitter by jeffbullas.com
Noting that tweets with images generate 18% more clicks and 150% more click-throughs than those without, Jeff Bullas recommends adding images to tweets (using pic.Twitter.com to take advantage of the image preview feature) and showcases four examples of brands using making good use of this tactic.
16 Ridiculously Easy Ways To Increase Retweets by Heidi Cohen
Heidi Cohen breaks down Twitter research from HubSpot’s Dan Zarrella into 16 actionable tips for getting more retweets, such as using one (but never more than three) hashtags in tweets; sharing photos (natively or with Twitpic, but not with Instagram); and using the word “please” in calls to action (but not the word “visit”).
5 Ways B2B Companies Can Generate Leads on Twitter by Social Media B2B
Carolyn Hughes suggests five ways to generate B2B sales leads on Twitter, including sharing content to drive website traffic and using Twitter to create “warm” leads: “Your new business development manager could sit down and plow through a lot of cold calls with relevant businesses but this is really a shot in the dark. However, if you start connecting with other businesses and other business people through Twitter, this is a friendly way to introduce your company and start to form a relationship.”
10 Smart Tips for Creating, Marketing and Sharing Content on Twitter by jeffbullas.com
Jeff Bullas (again) explains the three key elements of a tweet, then offers 10 tips for sharing content that resonates on Twitter, from writing a great headline and applying hashtags (judiciously) through targeting influencers and using “action words: more verbs, fewer nouns.”
6 Ways to Use Embedded Tweets to Help Your Business by Social Media Examiner
The erudite and prolific Kristi Hines presents “six ways to use embedded tweets to enhance your content, drive engagement and establish social proof,” from reputation building with customer testimonials to building website traffic with a tweet chat to promoting upcoming events.
40 useful things you can share on Twitter besides blog posts by AdamVincenzini[dot]com
It seems nearly everyone shares blog posts on Twitter. Here, Adam Vincenzini lists more than three dozen alternative types of content to share, from new apps or tools to a Twitter chat transcript, YouTube video, event, photo, or helpful tip.
Seven Tips for Finding Killer Twitter Content by Ishmael’s Corner
Writing that “It takes work to dig out fresh content that hasn’t already been trampled by the masses like the stories from Mashable that always trigger a zillion social shares,” Lou Hoffman offers seven tips for finding unique content to tweet including corporate websites, journalists’ personal blogs, and publications that are “off the beaten path.”
The 10 most clickable Twitter headlines by Ragan’s PR Daily
Allison Stadd lists the “10 most clickable Twitter headlines that will engage your followers, draw traffic to your blog or website and help differentiate your Twitter account,” such as calls to action, how-to’s, the word “infographic,” and, not surprising, top 10 lists.
4 Ways To Get Better Engagement on Twitter by Binkd
Misty McPadden looks at four common objectives for business Twitter accounts, and provides helpful tips for achieving each goal. For example, tips for generating more retweets include carefully curating tweets of third-party content, scheduling tweets, leaving enough unused characters for others to easily retweet you.
Tweet tweet – 20 top tips for businesses by Entanet Newsletter
Discover both interesting Twitter facts (such as that each global Fortune 100 company is mentioned, on average, nearly 60,000 times per month on Twitter) and practical tips (among them: “Monitor the best times to tweet using the likes of tweriod.com“) in this useful post.
The State of Twitter, 2013 by Margie’s Moments of Tiyoweh
Margie Clayman responds to 10 not-uncommon questions and observations about Twitter, ranging from common practices, tools and etiquette to queries like ““Some celebs are subscribing to the Chris Brogan method of unfollowing most of their followers. Why?”
Twitter Tips for Beginners
Twitter Best Practices: 11+ Tips for Tweeting Well by Social Media Today
Courtney Hunt provides a guide which “offers a set of Twitter best practices that helps people maximize their ability to maintain a strong signal/noise ratio and avoid making mistakes that can hurt their individual professional and/or organizational brands,” emphasizing the importance of listening, quality and timing among other characteristics.
The 2013 Twitter Marketing Guide by KISSmetrics
*****5 STARS
Kristi Hines (again) here provides an outstanding beginner’s guide to Twitter (that even veteran tweeters may want to skim) covering everything from initial profile setup and optimization through planning a content strategy, building an audience, advertising on Twitter, and becoming familiar with key Twitter tools.
15 Steps To legitimately Gain More Twitter Followers by LinksToWeb
Though the English is a bit rough, the ideas shared here by Vishnu Aniyan for growing a Twitter following are solid, from creating an interesting Twitter bio, background and custom About page to being generous in linking and retweeting others, and practicing “strategic, not aggressive, following.”
Twitter 101 in 21 Tweets [SLIDESHARE] by Social Media Today
Barry Feldman cleverly provides a helpful guide for Twitter newbies in the form of 21 tweets that explain what Twitter is, how it works, how to use hashtags, build a following, find useful Twitter apps, generate retweets and more.
Advanced Twitter Tips
Custom Timelines – Curation a la Twitter by Relevanza
Birgit Pauli-Haack explains how to use Tweetdeck to create and publish custom Twitter timelines to curate content; for example, for filtering out the best event-related tweets or a selection of tweets from a Twitter chat.
7 Big, Recent Twitter Changes you Should Know About to Optimize Your Tweeting by Buffer
Belle Beth Cooper reports on several key enhancements made to Twitter in late 2012 that not all Twitterers may be aware of, such as Twitter Alerts for emergencies and breaking news, updates for Android and iOS7, and yet another new location for the DM feature.
14 Twitter Tips and Tricks for Power Users by Mashable
Matt Petronzio shares more than a dozen tips on how to do things you may not have known you could do with Twitter, such as getting tailored trends (“You can change the list to reflect trends in your own country or select cities, worldwide and even trends tailored to your interests and those you follow”), using keyboard shortcuts, and creating user widgets (embeddable code for specific Twitter feeds).
Twitter Advertising Tips
Lead Generation Card: Now available to all advertisers, with new features by Twitter Advertising Blog
Tarun Jain explains how Twitter advertisers can use Lead Generation Cards, and highlights recently added features including new layouts, simpler setup and lead collection (including options to load incoming leads directly into a CRM system), and multi-language support.
Step-by-Step Guide for Twitter Ads to Promote Your Business by Kuno Creative
Noting that “Twitter provides its users a customized marketing strategy where they can promote events and sales, gain brand awareness among audiences not currently aware of them and even gain new followers they can advertise to in the future,” Deepak Gupta steps through the different advertising options available on the platform and how to set up Twitter ads.
Tweet tips: Most effective calls to action on Twitter by Twitter Advertising Blog
Jennifer Romanek outlines four of the most effective calls to action on Twitter, starting with asking for a download:”Promoted Tweets in timelines that explicitly ask people to download accompanied by a link increase URL clicks by an average of 13%. Promoted Tweets in search that feature this call to action also increase clicks by an average of 11%.”
Twitter Search Tips
Twitter Search 101 – How To Search by More in Media
Dorien Morin-van Dam passes along three helpful tips for advanced searching on Twitter. My favorite: “Plug the URL of your latest article (or blog post) into the search bar” on Twitter, which enables you to find all shares of that content, regardless of URL shortener or surrounding text used.
How Marketers Can Track Any Link Shared By Anyone On Twitter by All Twitter
Shea Bennett delves into specific uses of Twitter search to track shares of any link on Twitter, and narrow these searches with advanced search operators to find brand, product, blog, competitor and other types of shared URLs.
Best Twitter Infographics
How To Grow Your Twitter Audience by twiends
This creative and distinctively designed infographic illustrates a broad array of tactics for gaining new Twitter followers, from “things you can do online” (e.g., guest blogging, webinars, signing up for Twitter directories) through real-world activities, tweeting and retweeting, and other activities (such as including your Twitter handle in print ads and QR codes).
Twitter: Tweet Cheat Sheet [#Infographic] by Stormnet Media Blitz
Did you know that Twitter engagement rates for (primarily consumer) brands are 17% higher on Saturday and Sunday, yet only 19% of brand tweets go out on weekends? Or that tweets with image links generate twice the engagement rate of tweets without links? Discover lots more interesting Twitter facts and stats in this infographic.
Blueprint For Building The Perfect Tweet [INFOGRAPHIC] by All Twitter
Mary C. Long shares a blueprint-style infographic with tips for better tweeting, such as “using consistent excellence to stand out from the crowd,” “selling the headline in a non-salesy way,” and “using correct (and acceptable) punctuation.”
Dorien Morin-van Dam says
You rock! What a wonderful resource to all new to Twitter and to those who want to rock Twitter in 2014. I am in great company!Thank you for including my article.
Tom says
Well thanks Dorien! Glad you found the post helpful, and your post certainly makes it more valuable. 🙂 Feel free to share this anywhere you like.