Twitter Tips for 2012 – Managing the “noise”

photo credit: Wonderdawg777

This is the start of a series of bite-size tips for using social media effectively in 2012.

Twitter can seem like a daunting prospect for businesses new to social media. The “noise” of potentially 1000′s of people conversing with you on the platform often feels a bit much and the tendency is to give up and regain some peace and quiet!

The following will help you to manage Twitter effectively and regain your sanity:

1. You don’t have to “follow” back everyone who follows you. A lot of your followers will be competitors or people who have randomly connected with you on Twitter. Be choosy – follow those whom you WANT to hear from.
2. Create Lists to easily find those who matter. Segmenting Lists into groups (say, networking, inspirational people, industry leaders) makes it easy to keep up with those you follow on Twitter. (Lists can be public enabling others to follow your useful resource, or set to private so only you can view them).
3. Use the hashtag (#). Want to start/be part of a discussion around a particular topic? Add a “#” at the end of your tweet followed by the subject (e.g. #SocialMediaTips – don’t uses spaces between words) and you can find your conversation easily amongst the “noise” on Twitter.
4. Set up Searches. The tip above can be linked with setting up a Search for the hashtag subject to keep up to date with the conversation’s progress.
5. Social Media Management Tools. Make the most of tools like Hootsuite and TweetDeck to manage your social media engagement, including scheduling tweets in advance. (Check out mobile apps for both these free tools so that you can also manage social media on the move using your iPhone or SmartPhone).