I have spent a lot of talking to people and companies about their on web 2.0/3.0/Something.0 strategies. Part of these strategies often include Twitter.

Below are some Twitter tips that you might find useful.

The biggest tips I can share are:

1. Follow more people
2. Post more and tie posts back to your website or content that you want to promote. No less than 25% of your messages should relate to the content, site, company or whatever you are trying to promote
3. Interact with other users more

Twitter Clients:

There are a lot of clients popping up. Pick one that works the best for you and is in your face all the time. Only if the client is right there will you always use it. For instance, I use iGoogle as my homepage thus I have the BeTwittered iGoogle gadget so I see Twitter every time I have load the page. I also use Twibble on my blackberry so when I am bored on I can check what is going on.

Blackberry

  • Twibble – allows you to send and receive msgs plus follow people, better UI thank twitterberry

Desktop

  • Digsby – all in one IM client similar to Trillian but with support for Twitter (among other things)

Twitter Lingo:

Once you are in the world to tweets, you must understand the lingo. Here are some common things you must learn:

@user – when replying to a user place @ in front of their name. It lets the user know the message is directed to them. It will also show up in the user’s tweets so they know you are talking to them.

Conversation Tip: When making reference to another Twitter user, e.g. Bernie want’s to say something about Jen, rather then use that person’s real name, you should use their twitter username. For example… “Just saw @jenandcricket’s new blog post on how to compost in your apartment.” or “can’t wait to see @garyvee present at the @idealbite BIG awards, featuring @heatherisabiter and @jenandcricket. This will help other twitter users know who you are talking about.

Direct message – private message between users. To send a direct message, the other user must be following you. You send a direct message by starting your tweet with the letter d, space, username. So, if you were to send a direct message to me it would be “d adamely Let’s meet for lunch at centro in south park?”

Who to follow? Who to allow?

This is a tricky one. Some people go out and follow as many people as they can. I disagree with this strategy. It makes your account look suspicious and many people will not follow you. Also, it could get your account suspended by Twitter.

My strategy on “business” accounts is to follow others that are posting like content and follow those who are following those I follow. This tends to allow me to jump into the circle that has formed and see both sides of many conversations while getting super relevant information. Additionally, the more conversations I participate in, causes more people to see me and hopefully gather more followers.
Don’t follow anyone who looks like they are just spamming. This can be difficult to tell sometimes but if it is bustylady69 and she really wants you to check out her webcam, don’t fall for it.

As for followers, allow anyone to follow you that is interested in reading what you have to say.

How to get followers:

The more people you interact with, send @replies to, and follow, the more users will find and follow you. Also, the more you advertise your tweeting, the more people will know to follow you. If you have a webpage, link to your twitter account and display your current tweets. Email signature? Link to your twitter account.

As mentioned before – Find people to follow. Friends of friends, people tweeting similar content as you, or just people that seem to be interesting. Many people will follow you if you follow them.
The more you tweet, the more people will get to know you and interact with your posts.

Start conversations. Don’t just post. Reply to people, start conversations. Pick something random and respond and ask a question. Remember that when someone replies to you with @yourname, everyone following that person sees it. Thus if curious (aren’t we all?) they will check out your profile and hopefully follow you.

Twitter Bio:
The bio and user name fields are searchable. TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS!!! Put andything you want to be searchable in these fields so it can be found. If you are building a personal brand, be sure to put your full name in there. If building a company brand, ensure the company name and some keywords are in thesse fields. This is SEO for twitter.

Tagging = SEO

When you see #something in a message, for instance “going to #idealbite”, the sender is sending a hashtag. Hashtags are like tags like on flickr or categories on a blog. They group tweets so people can search and find them. Follow twitter user @hashtags and your tweets will be indexed and grouped. So anytime you want to tag the message, throw in a hash tag “just got back form #idealbite office and now going to watch #TBS because #Seinfeld is funny” — Personal note, I hate the use of # in this case. Hashtags said they borrowed it from IRC. On IRC # is a location, not a tag or thing, thus I dislike the usage here. But eh, what ya gonna do?

Update: According to a few people, including domdingelom, hash tags are dead and “http://search.twitter.com is the new black”.  I would agree with this, as I don’t use hashtags though I still see a good number of people using them.

Follow Loyalty

Want to automatically follow those who follow you, auto-send message to those who follow you, or even schedule tweets to send in the future?

Wonder how Obama follows everyone who follows him so quickly? Here is the secret:

Tweetlater

Tweetlater, and other similar services, all you to perform these tasks. One common tactic I have noticed is the use of Tweetlater to send out discount codes and special messages to new followers. This can be a great way to get someone from Twitter to your website or business location.

When to tweet:

When it feels comfortable but at least once a day. Let people know what you are up to. Send out links to good content. Plug yourself, content, or business. Like Gary Vaynerchuk says, self promotion is OK.

How to insert a URL:

Twitter can shorten URLs but sometimes you may insert form a client that does not or want to use a different service that you just like more. Use tools like Snurl or Tinyurl to shorten long URLs, since you only have 140 characters and don’t want to waste it with long URLs.

Want to post a picture to Twitter?
Check out twitpic of the flickr/twitter apps like twittergram.

Have a RSS Feed you want on Twitter?

Easy, twitterfeed has you covered. Just point twitterfeed to your website, blog, or other RSS feed and you get all your posts automatically sent to twitter.

Thanks to everyone who I have talked with, showed me new services, or even added some of the content above.  Special thanks to Scott Boyarsky who put a lot of this together.

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