How to manage your professional Twitter account?

Do you know Twitter?

It’s one of the most influential social media, with 145 million active users each day. Twitter is an essential social network for businesses, and it’s very useful to optimize SEO and for business intelligence.

However, it’s difficult to increase the number of followers on Twitter. This social network creates a few enthusiasm as it might be sometimes difficult to understand.

Here are some tips to create your Twitter account and implement a social media strategy in addition to the creation of your website to develop your online brand image and become an efficient community manager.

Why should you use Twitter for your business?

Twitter is an essential social media for businesses. Let’s discover why use it for your business and website.

A monitoring tool in real time

Twitter is the best social media to monitor in real time. It’s very effective because the information conveys and might go viral quickly on Twitter.

However, monitoring on Twitter might be difficult because you have to sort the information to not end up with much information, which is sometimes useless.

Moreover, it’s possible to analyse your competitors from Twitter thanks to business intelligence. To that end, you just need to subscribe to their profile using another identity, and follow them easily.

In this way, you will follow their tweets, publication rate, interactions with their community…

Therefore, Twitter is an essential source of information for a business. You will access a lot of information about your market, competitors… quickly.

Moreover, remember that the press uses Twitter a lot. It’s the favourite social media of journalists.

But Twitter isn’t just for monitoring…

Strengthen your brand image

Once you have created your Twitter account, you will customize your page, give details of your profile and diversify your content. To strengthen your brand image, it’s necessary to remain active and interact with your customers. To that end, reply to their comments and questions, propose surveys…

All these actions maximize and enhance your visibility.

Thanks to the search system by hashtag, it’s possible to know the opinion, trends and who talks about you and how.

All this information will help you control your brand image and strengthen it easily.

Create a Twitter account: the basics

Now you know more about the reasons why a business creates a Twitter account, we will discover the basics of this social media.

Twitter terms

First, it’s essential to know the basic Twitter terms.

👉 Tweet: also used as either a name or a verb, it’s the message you post on Twitter. The length of a tweet is under 280 characters and might contain images, videos, GIF, or links. 

👉 Twitto: nickname for a Twitter user

👉 TL or timeline: news feed. It gathers all the tweets posted by users you follow.

👉 Hashtags: keywords preceded by a pound sign (#)

👉 Followers: subscribers, persons who follow your account

👉 Following: subscriptions, persons you follow

👉 DM or direct message: private tweet-like message

👉 RT or retweet: mentioning or sharing a tweet

👉 TT or top tweet: Twitter trends, topics discussed in real time

👉 @ or mention: it sends a tweet to someone special, it mentions them publicly

How does Twitter work?

For a good start on Twitter, first, you need to create and fulfil your profile. To that end, follow these steps:

• Choose your pseudonym so that your public will find you easily

• Add a profile picture: use your business logo

• Select a banner / cover image: it appears on your profile and can reflect your current campaigns

• Write a biography to present your brand in a few words

• URL: you can add your website URL

• Choose your location: it might be important for customers to find or locate you easily

To launch on Twitter, subscribe to the accounts that seem interesting and then create lists to manage the information.

Obviously, you can draw up lists by topic to gather in the same place all the content that deals with the same topic. You can also subscribe to lists of other accounts.

These lists enable you to use Twitter effectively and save time in the future for searching information.

Moreover, Twitter has good practices for a correct use:

• Courtesy

You can welcome all your new followers thanks to an automatic message.

Mention other subscribers @ and thank people who retweeted you.

Remain human. Users prefer seeing that a real person manages the Twitter account where you post your messages.

• Posting rules

Tweets have 280 characters at the most. Try to use less characters to be retweeted and mentioned easily. Users read more short tweets than long tweets.

You can use #hashtags, but don’t use them too much. Use GPS hashtags to enhance your visibility.

• Know your target audience

To use Twitter effectively, it’s essential to know your target audience to create content that suits their needs.

Now you know the basics of Twitter. Let’s discover even more about this platform…

Which content should you post on Twitter?

Twitter is an open social network where you can post any type of content. Post short and entertaining content for internet users. On Twitter, you can also publish more frequently than on other platforms. It’s the norm to see a business post several times a day.

Moreover, generate interaction on Twitter. To that end, you can:

👉 create surveys: they work very well because it’s fast and easy to reply. They are also simple and fun, and enable you to know your public opinion or discuss with them.

👉 add visual elements: publications with images, visual elements or videos draw much more users’ attention on Twitter. It’s important to consider the different formats of Twitter for your visual elements so that internet users see them on the internet or mobile devices.

👉 launch ad campaigns: if you have the budget, you can advertise on Twitter (sponsored posts) to enhance your commitment and the visibility of your post.

Post content on Twitter from Monday to Thursday, between 12 p.m. and 1 p.m as users consult more Twitter during this time slot.

📝 Twitter also enables you to sell articles. Therefore, don’t hesitate to implement a true social selling strategy.

How to choose your hashtags?

Now you know the good editorial practices, let’s discover how to select the appropriate hashtags for your tweets.

To choose the suitable hashtags, here are some tips:  

• Select them according to your business sector: for example, don’t add #luxury if your company sells low-cost products. Therefore, use the semantics of your business.

• Analyse your competitors: observe their hashtags to find yours.

• Create a brand-name hashtag: you can create a brand-name hashtag that gathers all the tweets that talk about you.

• Follow top tweets: you can draw your inspiration from top tweets, imitate them, and enjoy higher visibility. However, remain relevant and coherent with your brand!

• Don’t use too many hashtags: a tweet with too many hashtags is illegible. It’s better to add about 2 hashtags per tweet.

Organize your planning

Managing a social account requires a good organization. To organize your publications on Twitter, there are many tools you can use.

Buffer is a tool that will serve to program your publications in the coming weeks and months. It enables you to gather your social accounts on a single platform to manage your social media more easily.

Mention is a comprehensive tool to make business or media intelligence and manage brand or social networks. It enables you to make a publication schedule and centralize your accounts on social media. Moreover, you can reply to private messages and comments directly from the platform.

Hootsuite also enables you to manage your social networks from a single platform. It’ll be possible to schedule your content, manage your social networks, analyse…

Once you have chosen your schedule tool, it’ll be possible to define your editorial calendar.

The tool will help you select the best date and time of publishing. If you define a planning, you will never be short of ideas and maintain a certain consistency as regards your publications.

However, don’t rest just on planning of your publications. Twitter is a social network in real time. Be on the lookout for the news on Twitter to be able to tweet if necessary.

We have seen (almost) everything… Let’s see mistakes to avoid on Twitter…

Twitter: mistakes to avoid 

Twitter is a spontaneous social network, but you need to respect some rules to be a good Twitter user.

1. Avoid too long tweets: a too long tweet will lose users’ attention who won’t take the time to read your message

2. Forget to complete your profile: it’s essential to complete your profile so that internet users recognize you easily

3. Not being spontaneous enough: even if you program your tweets, don’t forget the spontaneity of the social media and remain on the lookout.

4. Write illegible tweets: it’s important that a tweet be clear and understandable. Don’t use too many hashtags, images of poor quality, capital letters or spelling mistakes.

5. Avoid spam: It’s essential not to spam your followers with too many daily tweets or repetitive tweets that always say the same thing and convey the same message.

Manage your Twitter account: in conclusion

Now you have some tips to create your Twitter account and take advantage of it by developing an effective social media strategy. With time, you will become a professional community manager!