There are a lot of us out there, who are using Twitter but aren’t doing it as well as we could. I myself, may be guilty of a little self-indulgence at times. However, ignorance is no excuse for breaking best-practices. Know the rules, and then bend and break them knowingly and strategically.

1. Be a resource.
Twitter did the community a bit of a disservice, by telling people you should use Twitter to tell other people what you’re doing right now. It’s the reason we see so many tweets like, “I had a ham sandwich for lunch!” and useless crap like that. Fight the urge, and make sure your tweets would be interesting to someone other than your mom.

2. Get more retweets.
So you want others to spread your message along? There are two important components. First, leave room for the retweet tag. If you take up all 140 characters of your tweet, it won’t be easy for others to retweet you without editing your original tweet and many of them might not bother. It’s even better if they have room to add their own comment. Second, ask for it! It really works, a simple “RT Plz” will get your fanbase to spread the word for you.

3. Shorten URLs and track clicks.
It’s a no-brainer that URLs should be shortened, you want more room for content and less space taken up by your URL. Did you know that http://bit.ly is 100% free AND allows you to see how many clicks your URLs have received? Tracking your URLs helps you learn what types of links are compelling to your audience so you can refine your messages in the future.

4. How to build your following.
There are two great ways to build your following. First, publicize the hell out of your twitter account. Put it on Facebook, your blog, business cards, your e-mail sigs and just about every bit of correspondence you send out. Invite people to follow you at every turn. Second, use a little retweet bait. Post some information that’s REALLY helpful, or interesting and people will retweet. That connects you to their audience and generates more followers from outside your reach.

5. Track your unfollows.
This tip comes to us from @kennykim. Do you wanna know who quits following you, and after which tweet of yours they do it? www.UseQwitter.com will send you an e-mail after you lose a follower and also show you the last tweet they saw.

6. Target your audience.
Know your audience. If it’s friends and close family, tweet things what would interest them. If its brides and other wedding vendors, tweet to their interests.

7. Segment your audience.
Want to tweet about both weddings and your cat’s greatest feats? Set up a second twitter account and segment your audiences that way. It’s not a bad idea to have one for personal use and one for professional use as well.

8. Use an app.
Twitter.com is one of the worst ways to experience Twitter. It’s disorganized and gives you few useful tools for managing a large following. There are a variety of apps for your desktop, mobile phone and others that will make using multiple accounts, segmenting your lists and other things much easier.

9. Tweet on time.
Statistics show that Twitter users are most active between normal work hours, 9am and 5pm. Make sure any important tweets are done between those hours so you can guarantee yourself the largest audience. People who follow lots of others will often skip past the tweets that came in overnight, so your best chance at reaching them is while they’re online monitoring their Twitter feed.

10. Use your power wisely.
Too many contests, self-promotions and so forth can cause you to lose credibility with your followers. At the same time, those are things that can really work for you. Be mindful of how much “fluff” you put out there and keep it to a reasonable percentage.

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