Social Media: Twitter & 7 things that you absolutely need to do

I have to admit that the first time I used Twitter, I did not completely comprehend what I was doing, and this annoyed me and this led to me using it once a week and sometimes twice a month. I did not understand the power it harnesses. I realized that twitter operates quite differently from Facebook. Firstly, you only have 140 characters to put your message through, and often I followed some boring people who did not add value to my social networking time. I gave myself a chance to learn, read and then I started to enjoy twitter and most importantly understand it.

There are certain things that you need to posses the minute you decide to join twitter and I have come up with 7 simple things.

1. Swagger - you need to impress some people enough that they are interested in following you. In my case I like hip-hop and I love what I do. So you probably guessed it, I follow Jay-Z as one of the examples, and not because he is a lyrical genius, but he has some really good tweets and I follow people who are in my industry, just to mention a few I follow on twitter are Claire Woodruf, who posts the most amazing articles and news flashes whether in the industry or not, I don't know where she gets them. Susan Waldman, who is a columnist for the Washington Post and her articles are very genuine and full of insight, I was very honoured to find out that she is following Enlyne Branding. Lastly, Donna Rachelson and she has very interesting perspectives and I love the contrast she brings to the industry. And all of them to me, have a certain type of swagger about them or what they present to me, and I believe this is how you grow your Twitter following, to have your own unique identity that others can identify with, your own.....SWAGGER
2. Be Sincere - All of us have this innate sense that can sense when someone is not being sincere, and this is the single most annoying thing you can experience on Twitter. There was a politician I was following, and the tweets he posted were not sincere, or not real, I don't know how to explain it, but it felt like his tweets were fabricated and I felt like he is giving me that fake laugh on the other end. Like I said, I can't explain it, but I can definitely feel it and sometimes I even felt awkward for him while I was reading some of his tweets. Remember that you only have 140 characters, so you need to express and you need to say it as short and effectively as possible. 
3. Create your own inbound links - Make your content remarkable enough that other influencers are retweeting it. Google and Bing representatives shared that search engines will register the value of Twitter authority figures and correlate it with the value of the link posted. So search engines are analyzing the number of followers a user who retweets your content has in order to give the retweeted link its proper value of importance. The Twitter equivalent of an inbound link. Posting updates that appeal to influencers will inevitably boost your optimization efforts. 
4. Don't over do it - Yes it is a myth and a fact, do not over-tweet, if there is actually such a thing. I will say this, if you over tweet, you tweets become meaningless, and your content start becoming very shallow. Tweets, do have a short life span, but if you are tweeting every second, you are probably boring your audience with your irrelevant tweets. So how many tweets are good for you. About 15-25 tweets a day, but there are no rules in social networking, or social media. You can actually do what you want. 
5. Tweet Offers - This is the simplest form of lead generation, and that is to share your offers. Control how often you share your offers to ensure your account doesn't turn into a spam-bot. This will be contingent upon your business. Generate ideas on how you can make your offers regular enough to have a meaningful engagement with your audience. 
6. Build Reach - Everything you do on twitter as a marketer is to build a reach, if you not reaching anyone you are not generating leads. This is where you need to revisit the basics of Twitter and remember to spend time building your following. The more people you're sending information to, the higher your chance of generating leads. There is software that can help you build your reach, and there are several ebooks that you can download to show you how to increase your reach. 
7. Include Keywords in your BIO - Twitter allows 160 characters worth of information to be displayed in your bio. Don't riddle this 'about' section with industry keywords, but be sure to have at least one in the to reflect your business in an accurate way and help you improve search visibility. Keep in mind that search engines often display your Twitter bio in the links description on the results page, so make it attention grabbing. 

Like I said before, Twitter has no set of rules, or social networking in general, but there are a set of rules you need to respect or rather avoid. Avoid your account being tagged as a spam-bot, and watch the name you choose, it should be professional and simple and tweet about 15 to 25 tweets a day and watch your offers. When you do some of these combined with other things. You will enjoy Twitter as much as I am today.