A Few Twitter Tips…

We know that you already know loads about Twitter, but we’ve put together a list of some things that other people might not know which can be really useful. You know, those questions that you don’t want to ask yourself in case you… erm, your friend looks a bit silly?

First up – we mentioned it in our spring cleaning your social media post, but it’s always worth mentioning again – make sure that you’re not overdoing it with the automatic tweets about a new post. We know, it’s difficult because some things will stop working so you try out another app then the first app starts working again and you’re not sure which one to disable, but disable them all and just sign up again with one of them. A bit of a faff, but it means followers won’t get annoyed when your new blog post tweets three times within a minute.

While you’re re-reading the spring cleaning post, switch off things like Paper.li, horoscopes, etc. Only you are interested in those. No one else has ever cared about anyone elses auto generated content. Something else to include in this are those tweets that say “I gained X new followers and lost X followers”. Again, it sounds a bit harsh, but no one cares!

You probably already know what RT means but what about MT? HT? OH? Why do some tweets have v / @bonjourblogger or cc / @bonjourblogger at the end?
RT (as if you didn’t know) is a retweet, a way to repeat something that was awesome/hilarious/totally useful. MT is a modified tweet so if you have to edit the tweet a little bit to fit it into a manual retweet to include your comment. HT is short for hat tip – it’s a way for you to say where you found the tweet content from. (“/via @” at the end of a tweet is basically the same thing.)  OH is a way for you to tweet something that you’ve overheard – yeah, there’s a way to tweet the nonsence you hear on the bus. Finally, “/cc @” is a way to copy someone into the tweet – maybe it’s something that you especially want them to see.

It’s good to retweet a little praise (hey, it reminds you that you’re awesome) but chill out. Your followers don’t need to see every nice thought about you, they definitely don’t need to see every #ff that you’re mentioned in and if you’re doing a giveaway, they don’t want to see all the retweets of people tweeting the exact same thing that you’ve set as a competition entry. (Once, maybe twice a day is OK, to remind your followers that there’s a competition over on your blog – 15 times in a row is such a no no!)

If you do get mentioned in a #ff, don’t use the reply all button to thank everyone for saying you’re great. You’re going to get some puzzled looks from people who don’t follow you.

This one might seem really obvious, but it’s amazing how many people and even brands mess this one up! If you’re going to tweet something about someone and the tweet starts with something like “@bonjourblogger has posted about Twitter tips today!”, make sure you put a full stop before the @ – otherwise, only people who follow both you and the other account will see that tweet – make sure everyone hears about it (if you want to, of course!)

Auto DM’s are a huge turn off – we know you want to thank people for following your amazing conversations, but it’s much more personal to tweet them publicly and say hi, rather than send out a stock message saying “hello, thanks for following me, aren’t I GREAT?”

This is a bit sneaky, but there are some people that you might not want to follow you, but you can’t force them to unfollow, right? Welllll….  You can force an account to unfollow you by blocking them. If you might want that person to be able to follow you again the future, or you don’t want the awkward “but why did you block me?” conversation, unblock them straight after.

Hashtags! Try not to overdo them (if every other word in your tweet is a hashtag, that’s just unreadable.) Remember that hashtags can only contain letters and numbers – you can’t use a space and you definitely can’t use any punctuation (wondered why hashtags sometimes only half appear? Because the person tweeting it has put something like an apostrophe in the middle of the tweet!)

This list might sound a bit harsh, but following all of these will mean that you’re not annoying your followers and that only leads to more followers. (The best way to get new followers, as we discussed in the buying Twitter followers post, is to just get out there and talk to everyone!) Of course, if there are any others that you think we’ve missed, leave a comment below and we’ll try to help you out!