For those of you on Twitter, here are a few ideas to help boost your followers and engagement on the platform. The best part? None of these take a long time to do. They just require a little bit of time each day.

Why should you be on Twitter? Decision makers, reporters, recruits, referral sources, colleagues, conference attendees/organizers are all on the platform.

While I can’t promise you that you will obtain new clients as a result of using Twitter, I can say with confidence that Twitter can be a very useful marketing tool for some business professionals.

Your Daily Twitter Social Media Plan

Try doing the below actions for 15 minutes per day:

  • Respond to any mentions you’ve received
  • Skim through news sources you’re following to find content to retweet
  • Interact with three new people
  • Tweet one of your top performing blog posts from the past (with an image of course)
  • Follow five new people (look through your followers’ followers for ideas) – networking on this channel is key for success and increasing your followers and reach
  • Respond to any questions/comments on your posts
  • Send a note to someone you haven’t spoken to in a while or a follower you’ve wanted to get to know better through the messaging feature
  • If you’re speaking at a conference, promote it and use the conference hashtag to raise your profile and become part of the conversation – extra points if you live tweet during the event.
  • Avoid going on negative rants, keep it positive and upbeat.
  • Don’t only post business content. Find a balance between business and personal tweets. I post a lot about my puppy and finding happiness and balance in my life. Let your audience get to know you and they’ll form a stronger connection with you and your content. People want to get to know the person behind the brand.
  • Don’t spend time posting all day without actually listening. Then respond in a conversational and authentic way.

Always tag individuals and entities in a post by using the @ sign so they get a notification you’ve mentioned them. If you’ve ever seen someone put a period before the beginning of a tweet, that’s because you can’t start off a tweet with an @ sign or it will be seen as a reply and won’t show up on your main feed.

Please also use hashtags in your posts but use them wisely and sparingly, and do research to find out what the best hashtags would be. That involves looking at how many followers a hashtag has and being strategic about which ones you choose

While Twitter hasn’t led to new business for me, it certainly has raised my profile and enables me to have a consistent digital presence with important individuals in my industry.

It’s not easy to condense your thoughts to 280 characters, so constructing concise tweets on this channel while also using hashtags and @ signs can certainly be a challenge, but it is well worth it from a marketing perspective. One of the things about Twitter to note is that it is often one of the top Google searches about you.

Are there any other actions that you take on Twitter that have been helpful to you? I’d love to know!