How to Effectively Use Twitter - The Basics Part II

Where did we leave off??? Oh yeah...links are shortened and we can now address the subject matter contained w/in the actual tweet. 

So now we are getting somewhere, we have used 14 characters to shorten the link that we want to tweet. 126 left! Let's take this blog title for example as our first tweet. How to effectively use Twitter - The Basics. W/out the period it's 43 characters. That's 57 used and 83 to go. So we have the title and the link, but how can we reach outside of the small community who might be following, to a bigger community that we want to interact with on Twitter? Good question. We use Hashtags, or the # (pound) sign. Hashtags allow users to create a type of shorthand language that is searchable thru the twitter search bar. For instance, #SMB is shorthand for small business...#SmallBusiness is another as well as #SmallBiz or #WOSBWoman Owned Small Business. If you search for any of these, you can see the frequency of their use and how relavent they might be to your overall audience. There are also Hashtag search tools like Rite Tag by Saul Fleischman  (@osakasaul). It's best to choose hashtags that relate to the message you want delivered as well as occur frequently when searched. Also, do not over use hashtags. 2 is best, and garners a 17% more likelihood of engagement while any more than 2 or none at all decreases that likelihood. Here is the infographic on the stats discussed thus far from @linchpinseo.

Here is the tweet before insertion of hashtags.

How to effectively use Twitter - The Basics bit.ly12345678 

To effectively reach more people that I feel could benefit from this information I would put the following Hashtags "Good for #SmallBusiness #SocialMedia Marketing "

Now it looks like this: How to effectively use Twitter - The Basics | Good for #SmallBusiness #SocialMedia Marketing bit.ly12345678 #SMM

Ok that leaves us w/28 characters left...I chose to use 3 Hashtags but that's merely b/c the tweet is actually running a little shorter since it's my own copy and I am not retweeting someone. When you retweet someone, you copy their tweet and then say either RT @username or Retweet @username. Again you will get more engagement if you spell out Retweet but sometimes you don't have enough characters remaining to spell it out. That remaining character space is very meaningful, and if you want to give someone the chance to Retweet you w/out having to change your title (your copy) you need to use the "Magic Number" which is the amount of characters of your username + "@"+ "RT " (and + a space after RT) . Mine is 17. So if I want someone to RT me and not have to change some of my copy the best chance for that is to leave at least 17 characters left. In this case since 28 remain I can add the different part numbers ie: How to effectively use Twitter - The Basics Part 1 | Good for #SmallBusiness #SocialMedia Marketing bit.ly12345678 #SMM

That right there is how to compose a very effective tweet. Now that you know how to craft effective tweets you might start to see followers. If that happens, if you find commonalities w/them it's appropriate to follow them back. If not it's perfectly acceptable to not follow them back. However, you might notice an unfollow soon b/c many people like to get followed back and if you don't, again, people might unfollow you. The numbers are great but it's still much more about engaging w/the right people, so that decision is up to you. If your goal is only to get more followers then you should follow everyone back. It's best to remember though, people will judge you by the company you keep both in the real world and in the digital world of Twitter, so be advised of those you follow and follow back. 

That concludes our little synopsis on Tweet Efficacy. If this was even slightly helpful, and you could, retweet this, favorite this (which is a click of the star under the tweet itself, comparable to a facebook like), share it, or give it a +1 on google+ it would be very much appreciated. So we have covered setup, following, tweets, hashtags, retweets, favorites, hashtag searches, twitter clients, and magic numbers. Please stay tuned to Michlin Metals Blog and comment if you want to share any thoughts or concerns. Thanks for reading. 

Michlin Metals is a Woman Owned Small Business Aerospace Metal and Stainless SteelDistributor. Follow Michlin on Twitter @MichlinMetals, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ or on the Web atwww.michlinmetals.com. More on the author on Google+.