Knowing how to use Twitter and related Twitter tricks is a great advantage for any business, no matter the size, when it comes to communication and marketing.
Twitter is a Social Media tool of importance. If you don’t want to take my word for it, let’s look at the statistics. The number of active users is high, even through economic crisis, the number of users grew significantly from the start of 2017. In fact, each month there are consistently more than 320 Million active users.
Twitter has always been around. Unlike Facebook, which is more of a social hangout, Twitter is a network based on information. It’s a Social Media network where it’s easy to share news, innovations and insight thanks to its users targeted on niche markets.
This article will teach you how to integrate with 320 Million Twitter users with 7 simple tricks.
Now that you know how many Tweeters there are, and therefore how important it can be for your business, let’s get to the 7 Twitter tricks that can advance your Social Media strategy.
1) Use shortcuts
Twitter is known for one thing: its speed! In order to be effective, you need to stay on top of it, creating content daily. That’s why the creators of this platform made keyboard shortcuts for the Twitter-sphere.
Here are some of the most useful keyboard shortcuts:
- “n” compose new Tweet
- “m” to send a private message
- “f” to save a Tweet to your favorites
- “r” to Retweet
- “j” to go to the next Tweet
- “k” to go to the previous Tweet
There are many more keyboard shortcuts, if you want to know them all…use a shortcut!
Go to Twitter’s home and press “?” You’ll be all set;)
2) Utilize the “embed tweet.” function
The “embed tweet” option is frequently overlooked. But what good does it do?
This function allows you to embed (actually integrate) a tweet onto a webpage or blog post.
How to: click on the drop-down menu at the top right of a Tweet. Next, select “Embed Tweet”. You’ll have to copy the and paste the code onto the webpage or blogpost of your choice.
Want an example? Here is a Spidwit Tweet.
Pubblicare contenuti di qualità sui social? Ti aiuta Spidwit! Nuovo video :)
Okay, great, now we know how to embed and share a Tweet. You can see from the previous example that it is possible to follow whoever posted the tweet, to like the tweet, retweet and comment.
In one simple phrase: it serves to increase our twitter account’s activity.
3) The comment and the mention
One of the biggest mistakes on Twitter comes from not knowing the difference between a mention and a reply. In order to reply, the tweet must contain the ‘@’ in the beginning of the tweet, ex: @johnsmith. So you would write the tweet this way @johnsmith have you tried Spidwit? This will become a reply directly to @johnsmith.
A Tweet containing a tag in any other part of the tweet will be a mention. Here’s an example of a mention: “Hi @mariorossi! Have you tried Spdiwit?
Okay, now you know the difference between a reply and a mention. But why do you need to know hwo to distinguish one from the other? Here’s why, a reply tweet, unlike a mention, will only be seen by followers that you both share (the writer and the handle it’s being sent to).
4) How to Archive your Tweets
Go to your account settings, you’ll find many options, one will be “Your Twitter Archive”, by selecting “Request your archive” you will get an email from Twitter with a downloadable .zip file attached. Once opened, this file can be used in three ways:
- as a .csv file it can be used in Excel
- with our browser clicking on the file “index.html”
- by exporting JSON for developers
Why has Twitter bothered to provide us with all of these ways to use our Tweets? Basically it allows us to use the data in ways that wouldn’t be otherwise possible. Using data in the .csv format allows for the type of quality analysis performed as part of social media management. This can be used for helpful adjustments to widen your reach and improve your social media strategy. Developers can work with Twitter’s API to add services to a site.
5) Pin a tweet to the top of your profile page
Jack Dorsey (Twitter’s CEO) and co. have introduced the ability to pin one of your own Tweets to the top of your profile (a move already done by Facebook not long before). However, many profiles haven’t yet made use of this handy function.
Pinning a tweet to the top of your profile allows you to use 280 characters to express the most important aspects of your business, and ensure that post takes center stage of your profile.
To pin a Tweet to the top of your feed, go to your profile, selected the tweet that you want to showcase, and click on the top right drop down menu. Select “pin to your profile page”. If you change your mind and no longer want that, no problem, from that pinned Tweet select from the top right drop down menu “Unpin from profile page”.
6) Follow your competition, without them knowing
Strategically speaking, you want to keep an eye on your competition. You could use an anonymous account to follow, but there is a way to follow secretly from your primary account. There are private lists. You can create a feed containing your competitors’ posts, without them knowing.
How do you create a private list?
- Once signed into Twitter, click on your profile picture in the top right corner
- Select lists
- On the left-hand side click “Create a new list”
- Give the list a name and description, do not forget to change the privacy setting from public to private!
- Search for your competitors and add them to the list- that’s it!
7) Use Twitter Analytics to maximize your reach
As said from the very beginning Twitter is known for its speed. The lifespan of a Tweet is about 45 minutes. If a Tweet lives for such a short time, we have a very small window of time to get our message to as many followers as possible.
It becomes all the more important to know when and how many of our followers are online. The best way to get this information is by using Twitter Analytics. Once you know when followers are online, you have to tackle the next problem: scheduling Tweets in advance. Let’s say that our target audience is overseas, we then need to take time differences into effects.
Clearly, the easiest solution to these problems is to schedule Tweets in advance.
There are many tools available that can help with post scheduling, including Spidwit!
8) Bonus Twitter Trick
Since you made it this far, the least we could do is give you a bonus trick! What I am proposing isn’t exactly a standard tip, but it’s a trick to help you surpass the 280-character limit.
Very simply, the trick is to type the desired text in any type of note-taking application and then take a screenshot of the text. Crop the shot to include only the text you want and then post the image. This trick has two advantages. The first is that you have more room to write what you want. The second is the fact that the post is an image. On Twitter, images usually generate more engagement.
Conclusion
We hope you have enjoyed this post, and that you were able to learn something new. If you have a Twitter trick to recommend leave us a comment!
Autore: Spidwit Blog Editor
[Spidwit blog] keeps you informed on social media and digital marketing news and trends.
[Spidwit] is the super-easy tool that helps SMEs, professionals and freelancers with the discovery, creation and sharing of quality content on Social Media pages.
