Twitter Tips for employees, who are not in marketing.

With my Twitter Tips I turn to those who should tweet for their employer to promote the corporate topics to the world. I mean those who does not have a job or main job in social media, but use it in their communications. There are many tips and tricks that make it easier for you to tweet. My Top 5 tips I want to share with you today.

I explain every tip briefly. If you want detailed information on the various topics, like or leave me a comment.

Twitter Tips – #1: Use the Twitter app for Smartphone.

Are you traveling a lot? Sitting as passenger in the car, on the train or in the waiting area of the airport? This time you can use to enhance your network (follow, reteweet, like) and to publish tweets directly or prepare tweets! Is actually of course, I’ll tell it anyway: Use the Twitter app for your Smartphone! The Twitter app works well and is always there.

Although in the Twitter app is no function for Scheduling (see point 3), so you can still write tweets and then save them as a draft. If you want the Tweet draft to publish, you open the saved draft and send.

Twitter Tips – # 2: Get content from the Marketing or PR department.

If your company asks that you use Twitter, then there is often also prepared content like text, images, links. You should request that kind of content from the responsible people. And already you have your content, because you need only to copy. My tip: Check the company tweets and retweet them – by adding a personal comment.

If you prefer creating your own tweets, that’s wonderful. Then ask for images that are allowed to use and for links and hashtags. Basically, each Tweet should reference on the website or a specific landing page.

Companies often use shortened links, which at the same time represent a tracking code for the social media activities. Therefore, ask if you should use specific links or simply use the website URL.

Hashtags

It is easy to find topics through hashtags and they are also a good tool to analyze social media activities. Your company may already have set some hashtags to be used. Ask for them and add it when it comes to the topic. Think about it: Characters for a tweet are limited to 140. Using links and hashtags will shorten your text. Hashtags should be short. You should use only a few, 1-2 hashtags are enough. Links should be shortened.

Pictures

A few weeks ago Twitter made a great update. Attachments to a tweet like pictures, GIFs and surveys are no longer reduce your limited characters. 

Twitter Tips – #3: Preparation saves you time

Twitter costs nothing except your time. And time is known to be precious. You can save time by preparing your content.

Tools like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck allow you to prepare tweets and to schedule their publishing. I recommend to invest 30 minutes a week to prepare the tweets for the week or maybe for two weeks. In the tool, you simply declare when exactly the tweet should be posted.

Hootsuite offers a smartphone app as well. Using this app will help you preparing your tweets while you are on travel (tip #2). Tweetdeck doesn´t offer an own app.

I have tested the Hootsuite app for iPhone a few months ago. I have summarized my experiences with the app in two blog post. These are in German language. If you are interested to read them in English, please leave me a comment and I will translate them.

I like to recommend working with a laptop. It is more comfortable to write the texts on the big keyboard, and you have easy access to pictures.

Twitter Tips – #4: Watch the guidelines.

Yes, even in social media communication, there are some rules that you should consider. First of all, the rules, which are probably laid down by your company: the Social Media Guidelines. If you do not already know it or if you do not have access to it, ask the social media managers, the PR or the marketing department.

For example, many companies request that the employee makes it clear that he is representing his own opinion and does not twitter on behalf of the company. Then you can add text in your profile like: “Tweets are my own”, “Opinion is my own”.

In addition, it is often forbidden to include the name of the company or a product in your own Twitter account name or to use the logo. Each company has its own guidelines. Please ask for them.

Please always be polite and respectful!

Twitter Tips – #5: Have fun, be creative and authentic.

Twitter gives you the opportunity to connect with the world and sharpen your profile. Do not hide. Be authentic. Tweet also your own topics and interests and find a good balance between private and business information.

If you use prepared content, then become creative and easily change it so that it fits to you and your role in the company. As already mentioned, you can also retweet the tweets of the company’s account and provide a personal comment.

• Will you tweet about an upcoming event where you give a presentation or in which you are taking part? Then add as a comment “also visit my presentation at xx” or “I am on site and am pleased to meet you” or similar.
• Is a blog entry referenced in the tweet? You can add a comment like “I can only agree with that.” or you just take a point from the post to highlight it.

There are many ways to personalize a retweet. Make sure it suits you.

Have fun