You know Twitter has made its mark when the Merriam-Webster definition of the word “tweet” now includes “to post a message to the Twitter online message service.” Below are tips and tricks on how to use Twitter to your best advantage, written by our own longtime community member, Doreen Martel.
It has been some time since we addressed the Twitter and Helium connection, and it may be time to revisit how important Twitter is to writers at Helium. As Google has changed its method of ranking content based on social media, it may be more important than ever to make sure that you are participating actively on social media sites. For most writers, one of the easiest sites to participate in social media is Twitter. While Facebook and Google+ are simple to use, for maximum exposure, Twitter is probably still the best social media platform.
Hashtags are more important than ever!
Twitter has made it simple to share information, but one of the problems is the “flood” of links that come through a time-line. The more followers a Twitter user has, the more likely they are to find that they simply cannot keep up with the stream of information. This is when hashtags (which look like this: #) come into play. Hashtags help sort links by category and make finding information much easier. In addition, many Twitter users create “newsletters” through the free Paper.li service, and they use these keywords to “pull” information into their newsletter. When your work is used in a newsletter you gain credibility and possibly more traffic. Hashtags must be used properly to be effective. For example, if your article is about a literary review, you can use the book name, author name or something related. Misleading hashtags are going to tick off users who use these to find information and could also lead to suspension of your Twitter account.
Twitter changed link shortening
One of the recent changes to Twitter is how it handles links. Writers can save some space by removing the “http” before their long-links. In fact, it is a good idea to remove most of the long link as the short link can be created using even fewer characters. Helium writers need only use the string that starts with “Helium” and ends with the item number. An example of this is “How to get followers on Twitter www.helium.com/items/1730719 #twitter” which includes the article title, URL and item number as well as the hashtag. The tweet can be posted directly to Twitter or used as is in any automation program. In reality, writers can remove the “www” from the string as well.
You have to stay active!
Automation tools have made it easy to set up tweets and leave them to run unchecked through the day and night. However, the more active you are on Twitter, the more likely you are to have others read your work. Don’t ignore your followers, make sure that you at least check your account on a daily basis and respond to people who have retweeted your work or made comments. If you fail to do this, you will lose followers and run the risk of not getting anyone to pay attention to your work.
Twitter can waste a lot of time if you do not handle it properly. However, after doing some testing, it is easy to see a difference in Helium earnings when you (a) use hashtags, (b) make sure you are following the new link standards and (c) interacting with followers. Try it and see!
