I am in the midst of providing indepth training for a client on Twitter. This is a “Get Started Version”. I’ve spent the last 4 hours researching blogs and document sites to provide me with this information. Credits go to Ogilvy for providing the Do’s and Don’ts, plus Socialblog for the tool information. Here’s what I’ve come up with. If you have more info that’s relevant to newbies, please let me know and I’ll add it to this blog post.

Strategic Approach to Using Twitter

Getting Started:

1) Remember to create your profile in Settings:
• Make sure your profile is complete. People decide to follow you based on the richness of your profile.
• Make sure you upload a picture. It’s always nice to know who you’re connecting with.
• Add a website URL or better yet a blog or destination where you can invite conversation.

2) Who to follow:
• Use http://Twellow.com to target the users. This will depend on the account you created and the objective for the account. If it is to sell your product, then target people talking about your company, or products that your company offers.
• Follow your friends first. Then look at their string of followers to determine whom you should follow.
• Use http://grader.twitter.com to determine the top tweeps to follow — these are the influential voices in the twittersphere.

3) What do I tweet?
• Listen first: figure out what people are saying. Is there anything of value you can add? If so chime in.
• Always provide value: is there information that you have first hand that you think would benefit others? Provide the link and let others know.
• Emphasize another person’s tweet: if you think it’s important, then RT (retweet). This not only makes the other person appreciate that you’ve recognized their contribution, it also opens you up to further followers.
• Promote your programs ONLY once you’ve created credibility: This is OK to do once in a while. If others see you have contributed valuable content, then the more likely they will come to your site.

4) Tweeting long URLS: Since you’re constrained to only 140 characters, many times you need to use tinyURLS or similar functions to truncate your destination URL. You can use your client Tweetdeck to shorten URLs before you post. It gives you more room to add some commentary to your post. (more…)