Twitter tips

Last week I created version 1.0 of Simon's Guide to Twitter, a short presentation for my colleagues at work, designed to evangelise Twitter, encourage an increase in their use of the service, and to provide some guidance for those getting started.

One of the slides contains a list of tips which I thought made a good starting point for the newbie.  Some I made up myself, and some I 'borrowed' or were shared with me after an initial request for contributions.

I thought it might be worth sharing here, and also using this opportunity to ask for your thoughts on what should be included.  If you're new to Twitter I'm keen to know whether you find these helpful and encouraging, and if you're a seasoned pro, I'd like to hear your thoughts on how this list can be refined.  The aim is to get the 'top tips' onto a single slide, so it's certainly not intended to become an exhaustive list.

Please have a read-through and share your thoughts in the comments.

• Have a theme you tweet predominantly about


• Mix professional and personal* tweets


• * not too personal :-)


• Ensure your bio describes you and what you’re about


• Try to tweet at least 2 or 3 times a day


• Reach-out by sending ‘@replies’ – aim to increase conversations as % of tweets


• Use your real name in either ‘username’ or ‘name’ - eg. My username is AvayaData, name is ‘Simon Tompson’


• Use a photo of yourself (nobody follows an egg)


• Alcohol and twitter do not mix


• Consider anything you tweet will be public in perpetuity


• Use a #hashtag to join a conversation about a specific topic


• Don’t feel obliged to follow people who follow you


• Use Twitter search to find people covering topics that interest you and who may be interested in you


• As the number of people you’re following grows, use Lists to categorise


• Beautiful 20 year-old women who follow you are 99.9% guaranteed to be spammers