How to Tweet Like a Pro

Twitter is a social media giant and some of its users include the who’s who of celebrities, influencers, and business moguls. It is a way to keep up with current events and a way to engage with other Twitter users just like you!

Whether you’re looking to set up an account for personal use or an account for your business/brand, this post will share Twitter tips that will show you how to tweet like a pro, even if you are a total Twitter rookie!

How to set up a Twitter account

The first step in leaving the nest as a complete Twitter pro is to set up a Twitter account - once you’ve done this, you can start tweeting immediately. It’s really quite simple:

1. Go to twitter.com
2. Click on the “sign up” button
3. Use either an email address or a mobile phone number to link to your Twitter account. Depending on the method you have chosen, you’ll receive either an email or text asking for verification.
4. Select a user name, or unique identifier, that you want associated with you or your business
5. Customize your settings for your new account - like including a sweet profile picture that your future followers will recognize
6. Start tweeting!

How to follow people on Twitter

Birds of a feather flock together so they say, and Twitter’s features enable its users to do just that.

By following users, posting tweets with people’s Twitter handles in the message, and using hashtags to categorize content, Twitter users are able to create and curate a community of like-minded, social media savvy individuals who are up on trending topics of the day.

Following Twitter accounts that align with your interests is super easy, too. There are 3 main ways to follow a user on Twitter:

1. From a tweet (use your mouse or tap the ∨ button, then click or tap “follow”)
2. From an account’s profile page (click the profile of the account and then click or tap “follow”)
3. From a QR code (access your profile in the mobile app to do this)

You can even follow a user - say a super popular influencer who might just follow you back - by texting to what Twitter refers to as a short code phone number.

For more on how to follow users on Twitter, click here.

How to Tweet

Tweeting is easy as can be. All you have to do is type your message into the composition box at the top of your timeline and click or tap “Tweet” when finished and voila! Your tweet will be posted to your profile!

What are Handles and Hashtags?

If you want your tweet to speak directly to other Twitter users or you want your tweet to have a wider reach, you need to understand tags and hashtags. You’ll see the terms throughout this and similar blog posts so we want to make sure you understand what we mean.

A handle is essentially a user name. It is signified by the @ followed by the user’s unique identifier. You can include handles in tweets to direct your tweets to those particular handles.

A hashtag is # followed by a word or phrase (without spaces). Hashtags are used to categorize a tweet with other similar topics and hashtags. Using them will increase your visibility because when used strategically, they put your tweet in front of people who are interested in specific topics. For example, if you tweeted about your morning coffee and included the hashtag #coffee, that tweet can be seen by anyone scrolling through that particular topic.

Advantages of Using Twitter

Using Twitter can be advantageous both personally and professionally. Personally, it can be a way to stay connected and professionally, it can be a useful piece of your marketing strategy by generating inbound traffic.

Check out these innovative and practical uses:

Socializing and networking

So Twitter is one of the best ways to keep up with your social and business networks, friends, and family. You can access late and breaking social news as it happens in real-time anytime and anywhere on Twitter.

You also no longer have to scramble for a piece of paper and a pen to copy down someone’s contact info. No longer will you face the risk of dropping this contact info on a busy subway platform or losing it in a pile of scrap paper and old receipts - just pull out your phone, open the Twitter app and search up their handle. Boom, done. You’re fast friends in the “tap” of a finger.

Follow breaking news and watch events unfold in real-time

Social media has made it easy to stay informed. When news happens, it often breaks first on Twitter and is quickly distributed to an audience of millions, thanks to live-tweeting and retweeting.

It is important to be careful, however, and make sure you are looking at legitimate news accounts in order to avoid consuming fake news. More often than not, the objective facts of an event can be lost in the sea of comments that usually follow!

You also don’t have to look too far to uncover a Twitter fan community for just about anything you can think of - sporting events, season premiers, and reality television shows, just to name a few.

Connect with celebrities and boost your own status

If you want to connect with people who you want to influence, Twitter is your one-stop-shop for doing so.

From uber celebrities like Lady Gaga (whose handle is @ladygaga) right through to the local town crier, every level and type of celebrity can forge a direct connection with the audience they want to reach. You can connect with these folks with a simple follow but all that’s necessary to boost your own profile is to tweet often and use hashtags and handles to funnel and distribute posts to intended users.

Simplify life, support causes, and plan events

Twitter can also help you optimize your social and personal time by providing essential information. From train, plane, and bus schedules and travel advisories to what’s on-trend in the fashion, arts, and entertainment industries, there’s probably a tweet about it. Any subject you can possibly imagine is likely to have a tweet attached to it somewhere.

And supporting your favorite causes or making donations has never been easier thanks to embedded links in organizations’ profile pages. Check out the latest news from the charity and not-for-profits you are passionate about by reading their Twitter feeds and make donations all in real-time, all from links and campaigns they are running from their profile.

And event-planning? Twitter can do that too! What better way to bring the community together to support a great event than using multiple tweets with strategic hashtags to help participants connect and even encourage remote participants to follow along.

Tips For Tweeting

While no two people will have the same Twitter strategy, there are a few things you can do to set yourself apart as an account worth following!

• Take advantage of the character count. Once upon a time, tweets were limited to 140 characters. Now, they are limited to 280 characters. Use these extra characters to add depth and context to your tweets.
• Add images and video to your tweets. By using images in your tweets, you will stand out in a timeline full of similar-looking blocks of text! (more on adding video below).
• If you want to grow your reach and engage your followers, consider asking questions in your tweets. This will encourage responses and foster conversation between your followers.
• Share compelling content. Compelling content is a matter of opinion, of course, but if something is interesting to you, it is likely to be interesting to someone else. Share a blog post, a news article, or a re-tweet something that struck your fancy.

How to Embed Video in a Tweet

Including video in your tweets is pretty simple but the process can vary depending on the video source.

If you want to share a YouTube video, hit the share option and choose Twitter. Or, you can paste the link directly into the tweet and the video will appear.

If you want to share a video you saw in someone else’s tweet without having to retweet them (this will allow you to control the copy of the tweet and keep things looking tidier). All you have to do is:

1. Access the original tweet/video from the Twitter mobile apps for iOS and Android.
2. Tap and hold on the video for a second or two.
3. Select “tweet video” when it appears on the bottom of the screen.
4. A new message box will open with the video URL. All you have to do is compose your message in that box like normal, hit tweet when finished and you’re all set.

How to Delete Old Tweets

There may come a day when, for whatever reason, you want to delete an old tweet. Luckily, doing so is not that difficult.

All you have to do is go to your profile, find the tweet you want to delete, click or tap the down arrow in the upper right corner of the tweet, and hit “delete tweet” from the drop-down menu. It is really that simple.

If you need to find a tweet from years and years ago, you can hint it down using an Advanced Search. This will allow you to search for it by word, phrase, or hashtag. You can narrow the results to show tweets from your account and even enter date ranges if you have an idea of when you originally made the tweet.

Unfortunately, there is no way to delete multiple tweets. If you went on a tweet spree you’d rather have stricken from the record, you’ll have to delete each one manually.

How to use Twitter for Business

So far, we’ve covered how to use Twitter in general, so now let’s focus on how to use Twitter for business; it’ll really help you build a following.

Businesses are about brands. One of the best ways to grow your brand is by using social media sites to really target and reach your desired audience. Considering 2 billion people on this planet consume social media, it’s really tweet or be left behind in the dust.

Here are some stellar ways you can use this platform for effective marketing that will help you grow your business:

1. Set up a Twitter card - this will help make each tweet you send stand out
2. Build your Twitter followers - if your followers are engaged and targeted accurately, having more of them will definitely help boost your business (and there are tools that will help you do this like Twiends!)
3. Use influencers to your advantage - you want the followers of an influencer in your field, so engage with them to drive traffic to your account and broaden your audience reach
4. Use strategic hashtags - In this case, research says less is more, so resist the urge to use every hashtag that could possibly relate to your tweet, and instead, use 1 or 2 ...and keep your hashtags short and simple.
5. Interact and respond to tweets about your business - reply, like, and retweet comments, and Twitter users will value your presence
6. Create a content plan and tweet often - Twitter announced in 2019 that users of Twitter Ads can now schedule your tweets, and scheduled tweets mean freeing up your time and staying organized. You can also share links to related resources multiple times a day by adding links to your account and setting up a schedule that will send them whenever you want.

Twitter is a world unto itself and sometimes it can feel daunting trying to figure out where to start. Luckily, you now know everything you need to know to get started. Armed with these Twitter tips, it is time to go out there, start tweeting and grow your followers today!