Social media is the phenomenon of the previous year and it seems that, in the near future, we will witness a constant growth whereas such matters are concerned. All the great players of the online industry have quickly understood that this is a very potent niche but, almost instantly, the marketing and advertising industries have followed this trend. Nowadays, social networks represent certitude; skeptics say that this is fleeting, but the huge majority of the Internet users consider these to have an immense potential.

Twitter is one of the most important and interesting networks; if social media is a hot topic, then this is the hottest network.

Briefly, Twitter is a large network and the users can be divided in two categories:

• Followers, the persons who follow some other people and have a timetable full of their tweets;
• Following, the situation when you are followed by other people.

The specific feature of Twitter is the fact that everything is done with 140 characters. Another determinant characteristic of it is that the average user has a different profile from other social networks: the age is higher, the majority of the users are graduating from universities and so on. Being successful on Twitter supposes that the respective profile is followed by a lot of people but this isn’t the only criterion; it should be put in addition to the quality of the tweets and the scheme of tweeting. Twiterverse, as it is called in the terms of specialists, “is following” the rules of human life but it also has particularities and a good twitterer should be aware of these.

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The Decalogue of Twitter

Twitter was launched in 2006 so it is very young and it is early and somehow unjustified to say something about how one should handle an account; there aren’t any golden rules but some facts are very general and work for a lot of users. Here, I propose a Decalogue of a good twitterer; as I previously emphasized, it’s impossible to guarantee that this list will do everything for your Twitter account but it is highly recommended to keep these in mind. Trying to establish a Decalogue of the good twitterer is subjective and surely can be improved; anyone who has another tip or idea is required to write them in the comment section.

01. Tweet, Retweet, Follow and Unfollow!

Twitter is a social network which asks for an active presence; a daily contribution is always welcomed and joining a conversation between two people who you don’t know is possible and if you really have something important to say/tweet, do it without any regrets. The huge advantage of Twitter is that a worldwide community is growing here, a community which has nothing to do with the age, country, social position, occupation, religion or nationality. I am an unknown writer but I am following Bill Gates, Lady Gaga and Armin van Buuren, I know what they are doing and I could ask personal problems. Surely, I won’t receive any response (or a very lately one) due to the immense number of questions sent to them, but be sure if you ask something really important, the answer will come quickly. The fascinating feeling emphasized by Twitter is the fact that everyone is normal, even Bill Gates eats, travels, sleep and work. It is normal that, at the beginning of the account, to not have any followers so it is quite natural to start searching for people to follow them. A study demonstrated that, if someone follows 100 people, he will have returned 17 people to follow him; it is a poor ratio but any beginning in any activity is difficult. It is normal to follow people but it is also required to select them, it is possible that some people quit their account and, in this case, following them is a loss of time.

To be successful on Twitter, one needs to constantly follow people but, at the same time, to unfollow the ones who don’t deserve their time. Another feature of Twitter often used is the ability of retweet someone’s tweet. This is the mechanism: simply, you follow someone and he tweets something really interesting and you think it deserves to be shared with your followers and tweet it. The possibility of retweet allows a magic traffic increase for some blogs; it was enough to write something valuable that someone, usually with a great number of followers, to see it and tweet about and this is the seed for an avalanche growth.

02. Tweet to Offer Something Valuable

Many Twitter beginners believe that, having many tweets, they will attract more followers and their influence will grow. Unfortunately, tweeting with the speed of light won’t bring followers with the same speed. Success is based on something else: the quality of the tweets! Put yourself in the position of a potential follower who has your tweets in his timeline; are these interesting and provide valuable information or are they simple boring tweets? A good user of this social network must find the answers to these questions before posting a tweet, or else your account can be associated with a spam machine of twitting. Success consists in a good and balanced method of tweeting: not too many tweets, but also never forget to tweet something worthy; tweeting only links, ideas about your domain of work and nothing about you isn’t very appreciated and for this kind of behavior bookmark websites exist.

03. Make Your Account Well-known

Even the best brands needed many efforts in their first years, in order to become famous and this is a good proof that an account on Twitter also deserves a similar treatment. The biggest challenge isn’t why to promote it; it is how to do it effectively! A detailed solution is the subject of a book but it should start with a relevant username and it should constantly be promoted in various ways as “follow me on Twitter” on the personal blog, in the bio of guest posts, joining the discussions and tweeting cool stuff, organizing competition with the demand of following. All these strategies should be applied in a natural way; superficiality is noticed very easy by other people and you should always pay attention to it: to unfollow a person is as easy as following him.
You shouldn’t be very interested in how many followers you have or how many quit your tweets: everything that is interesting and high quality tweets will be always appreciated. The statistics shows that, if somebody has more than 120 followers, he is part of the aristocracy of the Twitterverse.

04. Be Original and Constant

No one is successful on Twitter if he has nothing worthy to tweet; it could happen to be followed but when the follower will see that your messages are boring, quite sure he will unfollow. The three attributes from the subtitles are more than important for any twiterer:

• Original: having similar tweets, as the majority of the users, will make you an unseen part from the majority and clearly put you in the shadow. Your tweets should be an amalgam of thoughts, information about you, links to valuable resources, replies and retweets. All of us know this but only few have the recipe of establishing a good schedule of tweeting without inspiring from others. It is obvious that if you copy someone else’s behavior, you won’t be successful; clearly people will follow the one you copy. Do you like Michel Jackson or his look alike? Being unique makes people to remember you; it is the first step on the road of becoming an authority.
• Constant: you could be a genius and tweet amazing tweets about all the domains in this world but could the followers maintain your rhythm? I doubt that. It is better, in order to be more competitive, to select some topics to tweet and, in this case, your public target is more clearly defined. It is not recommended to focus only on a single domain but the majority of the tweets should respect a specific profile. To be more specific: I have a Twitter account and I tweet mostly about SEO and social media but, at the moment of writing this article, Steve Jobs took a small medical leave, surely I instantly tweet it and share this important news with my friends.

In a nutshell, be professional, show good tips to the followers but let them know that you are a human being with flaws and qualities.

05. Twitter is to Tweet, Not Only to Advertise

People all around the world are materialists, being able to speculate any opportunity of gaining a revenue. Twitter is considered a selective place and this implies a good financial potential. Many accounts are created with the purpose of simply tweeting about the products or services of a company, it became a spammy account and be sure, it is a matter of time until this profile will have no follower.

On the other hand, Twitter is an application which could help anyone to present his offer but it should be done with a clear and clever strategy. It is wrong and risky to intoxicate the followers with messages about how great you are and what high quality is what you are selling. The efficient method is to have tweets about adjacent fields and smartly insert tweets about your products; the tweets about your services/products should attract the attention of people and not get them bored.

06. Create Followers, Do Not Import Them

Many websites have heavy banners that let anyone know that they are the best source of bringing a massive number of followers. It sounds amazing, much more, the prices are a real bargain so why should you wait so much for any follower and not try it? The result could be very positive, regarding the number of followers, but this is ephemeral and, in the majority of cases, a profile based on this is a miniature of the Tower of Babel. Any twitterer who asks for these services should be aware that the quality of the followers is contestable; they are usually a manipulated mass of accounts specially created for this kind of activity.

Having a huge mass of followers imported and not created in the natural way of Twiterverse is truly dangerous: usually this great number of followers is constituted by various people with different hobbies, styles of life and it is impossible for any twitterer to maintain them without unfollowing you. Let’s suppose you are a web designer and you have 400 followers imported; what do you believe, are they all interested in web design? I doubt that and, more, you as a web designer surely tweet something about your fields; could a watch seller be interested in your thoughts and links? Once again, I doubt that!

A very good method to create good followers, who rarely will unfollow you and, in the most cases, will treat your tweets carefully is to grow a community around your blog. The idea is simple but hard to put in practice: having a good blog means a significant traffic it is assured, which is in fact nothing but your loyal readers and some surfers in searching for information. It is obvious that having, in the bio or whatever else on the layout, the possibility of following you, it will happen. This method of increasing the number of followers is the best (personal opinion) and it is quite improbable to be unfollowed because the followers are mostly your readers.
For music stars, public persons or great athletes, the problem of obtaining a great number of followers is easy but not all people are so well-known.

07. Be Helpful, but Spare Some Time for You Too

Twitter is a great community where people are exchanging thoughts, links, problems, questions and answers in a very simple way, without paying attention to sex, religion, political opinions and so on. As in our life, a helpful person is seen as a source of credibility and somehow your soul is saying that he constantly deserves to have an eye for him. This is the power of Twitter: it allows for the following of people, who are good examples for you. A big problem of some people is that they consider being helpful is a must but on Twitter it is only recommended. A followed account which tweets only pieces of advice for no matter what twitterers is annoying and, usually, the results is to unfollow him; he is a new kind of spam who has nothing worthy to say to you.

Definitely, it is great to help others but is also a sin to ignore yourself, try to be in the middle, which assure you the advantages of being someone who help others and has something important to say at the same time.

08. Any Tweet is a Brick in Your Reputation

Even for a twitterer who has tweeted hundreds of tweets, every new tweet is important and it deserves a special attention because tweets are the fuel of maintaining followers. A very important twitterer is studying the effects of the tweets, the growth of the number of followers or any decrease. It is not a secret, but Twitter tends to become a more commercial environment and the specialists are paying great attention to it. This aspect is still in his infancy but already we can find Internet websites which offer to promote some companies or products with the help of the Twitter account. This works in this way: a twitterer is selected by someone who wants to be promoted and asks him to tweet something about the high quality services supplied and this is a paid offer. This is only an example who emphasizes the importance of any tweet but there are many other adjacent aspects one should consider.

09. Pay Attention to the Tools of Twitter

Twitter isn’t a special entity which has no connection with other websites or social networks; no, by far this social network is very active and disposed to new challenges. The developers from all around the world launched a lot of interesting applications to help users; these are very varied and represent invaluable tools in the proper hands. The number of these Twitter based applications is growing but the good news is that many of these are impressive and very useful. Briefly, some of these allow the user to study the evolution of number of tweets per day, the evolution of the members who decide to follow/unfollow. Others are created to reveal which tweet was retweeted by the followers or how a tweet influenced the number of followers.

Some of these applications are requesting money for their services but the majority of these are for free. Another category of the Twitter based applications are these who offer some services for free but for more in depth information, they are asking for a contribution.

10. Before Creating an Account, Think Twice!

Twitter isn’t a social network created to know boys and girls or to make a girlfriend or boyfriend. Personally, I consider it being the next level of a social network; here, the primordial role is played by the activities and hobbies of the twitterer and not by the images where he/she is tagged. A good friend of mine tweeted something which is the real essence of the social media, he said that Facebook is for the people who went to high school together and Twitter is for the people whom you wish to make the college.

Twitter supposes a professional behavior but some aspects considered should be about your privacy. A good twitterer is one who tweets useful links about his domain of work, useful statements, very important news or links to it, helping other people who ask for help and he knows how to resolve the problem. All these need to be blended with personal feelings or thoughts in a very pleasant way, so as not to disturb anyone. A schedule of posting is also required in order to be successful, but, if you have something worthy to say, don’t give up, tweet it! This is the recipe of being a good twitterer so apply it!

My last word: please, if you have enjoyed it, tweet this post!

Image Credits

• Time Gifts
• Writing on a White Laptot
• Person Sending a Message
• businessman Laying
• His Gun Is His Pencil

Find Something Missing?

While compiling this list, it’s always a possibility that we missed some other great facts. Feel free to share it with us.