Twitter – philrickwood.com

3 Ways To Engage Your Followers On Twitter

September 10, 2014September 13, 2014 admin 2,158 Comments

Image released on Creative Commons at Flickr.

Engaging your Twitter followers
Engaging with your followers on Twitter is one of the most beneficial and cheapest ways to market your brand. Its something you should get into the habit of doing each day. Below I have listed 3 ways you can easily engage with your followers.

#1 Make your posts informative.

Post interesting and informative posts. If a subject is not interesting to you chances are pretty high it won’t interest many of your followers either. Mix your posts up with news from your industry or the category from which most of your followers are interested in.

Its important that you do not make every post about your product or service. Followers will soon get tired and bored with your site if you post repetitive or pushy ads for your business at every opportunity.

If your stuck for what to post try a few inspirational sayings or quotes in image format. They always seem popular on my site.

#2 Engage with followers everyday.

Be sure to engage with your followers at every opportunity. Reply to all comments that people direct to you everyday. You can do this by thanking people for their comments, for following you or for a re-tweet. Engage them by asking questions and building relationships. This will effectively assist in building your brand as a company or business that is responsive to others.

Although the direct message section can be associated with spam you will get some genuine inquiries there so its worth checking out and replying to those messages as well.

#3 Make reference to your followers site.

When others follow you check out their Twitter page and the links to their website. That way you can tweet them a welcome or thank you tweet and refer to something they are interested in. You will be much more likely to get a response when you refer specifically to one of their interests.

Make your tweet an open statement or question i.e ‘What a great site you have how long did it take to build?’ or ‘I see your from Australia, what time is it over there now?’ etc. These types of response will open the conversation up and make it more likely you will be able to build an online friendship and network with fellow Twitter users.

About the Author
Philip Rickwood is a Social Media Enthusiast
from Devonport in Tasmania with over 100k
Twitter followers at @afhitcom
philrickwood.com

I recommend Thrive Themes they make blog page building a breeze.

Now Everyone can View their Twitter Activity Stats

August 28, 2014September 13, 2014 admin 773 Comments

New Statistics Available

Twitter announced on the 28th of August that they were opening up their analytics to everyone. Previously only Advertisers and verified uses could view the their stats.

Below is an example of the stats provided by my site.

Follow this link to view your stats.

About the Author
Philip Rickwood is a Social Media Enthusiast
from Devonport in Tasmania with over 100k
Twitter followers at @afhitcom
philrickwood.com

I recommend Thrive Themes they make blog page building a breeze.

6 Ways to Create a Great Twitter Profile

August 27, 2014September 1, 2014 admin 232 Comments

Creating a great Twitter profile
This should be your number one consideration when starting your Twitter account. It will
have a huge impact on the number of followers you get and your interaction with other people on Twitter. (Image above from Mashable.com’s Twitter site.)

6 Ways to create your Twitter profile.

#1 Find a great header image to display at the top of your page. Something that relates to you, your business or your location. There are lots of free image sites out there just do a search on Google or get one done professionally its your choice. Its the first thing people will see when they arrive at your site so make it impressive. I’d recommend not making it too sales oriented or you may turn people off if they think your only there to sell to them.

#2 Get a quality image for your profile picture of yourself if you have a personal Twitter account. If your have a company account then use your company logo. Ensure that the photo used is of high quality to again create a good first impression.

#3 Use the recommended image sizes for both your header picture and the profile picture. Twitter recommends “Recommended dimensions for profile photos are 400×400 pixels. Recommended dimensions for header photos are 1500×500 pixels.”

#4 Complete all sections of the bio section including your location and a link to your blog or business. The bio does not give you a lot of room so think carefully before completing that section. Take a look at people with similar interests to yourself and check out their bio’s for ideas on how to word it. I would not recommend using too many hash tags in this section. They lead to search queries and take potential viewers of your site to the Twitter search screen.

#5 Make new tweets interesting. Its nothing worse than going to a site and finding it full of advertising. Many sites just repeat the same advertisement on a regular basis. This is not interesting for your followers and its against Twitters spam policies so it may get you banned. Re-tweet stories from other people from within your sector or interest group. The recommended tweet ratio is 3:1 tweet or re-tweet other people’s tweets 3 times to one of your own. This will avoid your site becoming boring and predictable.

#6 Use images with your posts.

By using images in your posts you will attract a larger audience than text only posts which can get overlooked. Above is a recent post which received a number of clicks, re-tweets and made a favorite. The image lets viewers immediately visualize what you are trying to portray in your tweet.

————————–

If you use just these 6 tips you will be well on the way to providing a top rate Twitter site and attract
a large following to your page.

About the Author
Philip Rickwood is a Social Media Enthusiast
from Devonport in Tasmania with over 100k
Twitter followers at @afhitcom
philrickwood.com

Get More Twitter Shares With this New Content Builder

August 26, 2014September 13, 2014 admin 41 Comments

Thrive Themes has introduced a nice feature to their WordPress blog building tools.

The feature lets your visitors click a box to tweet any quote from your post with one click.
Another nice feature of this element is that it will automatically add your URL from the blog page to the tweet.

I really like some of the other features they have used in Thrive Themes. This theme lets
you build WordPress pages without the usual problems of moving around text and images
on your page and have no idea how it will look on the finished page.

In Thrive themes you get an immediate image of how the final page will look no more
preview post, return fix problem repeat etc. This video gives a better idea of how the theme
works.

About the Author
Philip Rickwood is a Social Media Enthusiast
from Devonport in Tasmania with over 100k
Twitter followers at @afhitcom
philrickwood.com

6 Tips When Using Direct Messages on Twitter

August 8, 2014September 1, 2014 admin 112 Comments

6 Tips When Using Direct Messages on Twitter

1 Before you send any direct messages to people make sure you are following them and they are following you. There is nothing worse than getting a direct message asking you a question you compose a reply then a message appears from Twitter saying you are unable to send a direct message to this person as they are not following you.

2 Twitter direct messages have a bad reputation for spam. Basically don’t use the direct message system to spam people you are likely to get a very low response rate. Its much better to get to know contacts and find out their needs before attempting to sell to them.

3 If you run out of space when sending a direct message just start a new message directly below the previous message.
Twitter will only allow you 140 characters just like in a regular tweet for direct messages.

4 Use direct messaging to thank your new followers. If your looking to engage new followers this is a good opportunity to ask a question about their work, site or products.

5 Use the direct message section to provide information you don’t want others to see. If someone asks for a quote on a specific job for example you don’t want to be tweeting that information for everyone to see.

6 Use of Truetwit. Often I’ll get messages saying user* uses TrueTwit validation. To validate click here: . Basically its not for me once you sign up to that system you will find yourself sending that same message to everyone that follows you. I find it much easier to send someone a personal message or just view their profile you can usually tell if someone if genuine. If their is no picture or bio the chances are pretty high you have been followed by a spam account.
You probably won’t want to follow them back. Some people might like using the Truetwit system but I find it annoying and won’t use it.

About the Author
Philip Rickwood is a Social Media Enthusiast
from Devonport in Tasmania with over 90k
Twitter followers at @afhitcom
philrickwood.com