Solidly determine who you are.

The first thing that anyone gets to know about you on twitter is who you are and what you represent. Photo, bio, web link, etc. When someone visits your twitter page,  they need to see you and your brand – more about who you are, what you do and how they can contact you.

Figured out why someone would follow you.

People don’t follow you just because. They need to be given a reason! What are you talking about? What content are you creating? Are you just talking to yourself or are you sharing links, responding to conversations and participating in the twitter world. What do your last 10 tweets say about you? You need a solid mix of the 3: tweets of your own thoughts, retweets of others links and thoughts (quality!), and replies to conversations. Tweets tell people you have your own ideas. Retweets tell them that you share quality content from others and replies tell people that you have conversations and engage. Look at your last 10 tweets…would you want to follow you?

Find better people to follow

Because such a big part of twitter is the conversations – it is always better to have quality people you are following. But, it can be hard to find them. Try these four:

• Lists: Who do you already trust? Take a look at the lists that they have built. You will probably find new and interesting people to follow there. Also, look at the lists that follow you – usually it will help you find more people in or around your area and industry
• Suggestions: Asking your followers is never a bad idea – people like to help others!
• Twellow/Twellowhood: Search through (basically) everyone on twitter by keywords, locations, bio’s, etc. Create your own free account to make sure that your profile on the site is up to date and has the right keywords attached.
• #Hashtags: #smmoc, #leadershipchat, # for a big event, etc, look for ones in your area.

Monitor keywords, conversations and searches.

What are the words that are most important to your business? Tools like tweetdeck, hootsuite and even search.twitter.com allow you to monitor what is going on with the words and phrases you care about. Just like in a search engine, you can search for individual words or put phrases in quotes to search for more specific things. You should have a constant search running for your brand name, your main 3 key phrases and at least 2 general keywords. Yes, there will be a lot of garbage, but if you can catch at least one quality tweet or cut off one problem, it will be worth it.

Stop trying to sell.

While ROI is important, what many people forget is that the ROI of twitter is not usually sales, but conversations, community and learning. Yes, there is a great opportunity to convert social media relationships into clients and sales, if that is your main priority, you will scare off the audience. Start talking, start listening and forget the ‘sales’ and you will see the shift in how twitter works for you.

Stay tuned for tomorrow, when we discuss using Facebook more effectively!